Review: BUCKET LIST

Hum Aapke Hain Koun!

2.5 stars

Mini Review:

When you see Renuka Shahane meet Madhuri Dixit, songs and dialog from their famous film together play in your head. Does Madhuri Dixit with Renuka's daughter's heart remain a stranger? Does fulfilling the young girl's wishes make Madhuri a better person? Why is she doing what she does? If this film had been written a little more carefully, then it would not feel so much like it was a throwback of the 90s. It's moralistic, but it's fun. And yes, Madhuri Dixit is beautiful!

Main Review: 

(Channelising my inner Vandana Gupte - she plays the mother-in-law to Madhuri Dixit - for the main review) 

बहुत ही हसु आता है यह सिनेमा देख के. 

माधुरी दीक्षित वैसे ही गोड़ है जैसे वह सलमान खान के साथ दिखती थी. आणि तिची स्माइल वैसे ही किलर है जैसे आधी थी. आधी मतलब बिफोर, आगोदर। 

पण मैं पूछती हूँ की यह स्टोरी कब लिखी थी? वीस वर्ष के पहले क्या? सब कितना पुराना लगता है! आम्ही मराठी लोग बहुत ही फॉरवर्ड टाइप के होते हैं. हमारे पुणे में कितनी नौ वार साड़ी बाँधने वाली आज्जी लोग मोटरसाइकिल पर भाजी आणणे को जाती है. 

चलो सासुओं के लिए अच्छा है की बहु को पूछते हुए दिखाया है. यह करूँ क्या? वह करूँ क्या! रियल जीवन में कौन पूछता है? और सुमित राघवन जब बोलता है घर का काम करने के बाद जो  करो, मेरी तो हार्ट में अटैक ही आ गया था. इतनी सुन्दर बायको पर ऐसा धाक किस मराठी लड़के को होता है?! वह तोह शेली के तरह उसके आगे पीछे घूमता है. असो. फिल्म में गलत दिखाया है. रियल लाइफ में बायको ऐसा रूसती की गाडगीळ से सोने का हार मिलने की बाद ही मानती. 

माधुरी की स्माइल आज भी वैसा ही पावर है, बर का!

लेकिन मेक अप थोड़ा कम चलता घर के आत कोई इतना मेक अप पोत के काम करता है क्या? लेकिन मेरी एक यंग मैत्रीण थोड़ा जल के बोली, झुर्रियां छिपाने के लिए रे! वह इंग्लिश विंग्लिश में नहीं लय श्रीदेवी ने नाक पे कुछ विचित्र सा किया था? बेचारी अब नहीं है,तो हम इसी फिल्म के बारे में बोलते हैं. 

ये सारे यंग फ्रेंड्स माधुरी को 'दी' क्यों बोलते है? मराठी का अच्छा वर्ड हैं न, ताई. वह वापरने में क्या प्रॉब्लम थी?

और हार्ट ऑपरेशन का यह इतना हाथभर स्कार रहता है. आक्खी लाइफ के लिए. माधुरी के हार्ट के पास कोई स्कार ही नहीं था! दाग अच्छे हैं ऐसा आप लोग ही बोलते हैं, न, फिर ऑपरेशन का दाग क्यों नहीं दिखाया?

लेकिन वह सब छोड़ो. मुझे यह बताओ, कौन सासु आज कल पापड़ बनती है? शी बाई! नसते उद्द्योग! सब सासु आजकल किट्टी पार्टी में जाती है या फिर सीनियर सिटीजन क्लब में. यह चूक दिखाया है.

हाँ कुछ कुछ बहुत हसु आने वाले डायलॉग है. जैसे के माधुरी जब बेटी का टॉप देख के उसे पिशवी कहती है. इसीलिए फिल्म चालेल बर का!

थोड़ी वेगळी है यह फिल्म. मराठी फिल्मवाले सिर्फ शिवाजी पर बनाते हैं, या फिर विठोबा पर. या फिर इतनी गाँव वाली बनाते हैं की कौन इतने पैसे दे कर गाँव के दुःख देखने जाएगा? 

हो, आणि ते सगळे 'मी बकेट लिस्ट पूर्ण करायला गेले आणि त्यात मी माला भेटली' टाइप शिकवण इस वैरी बोरिंग हाँ. आणि माय नवरा विल पळून जाईल अगर मैं उसको बोलूं की तुम मेरी बकेट लिस्ट में नहीं हो, क्योंकि तुम मेरे बकेट हो... बाल्टी कौन कहता है यार!

वंदना गुप्ते का काम अप्रतिम हुआ है, और मुझे तो रेणुका शहाणे बहुत अच्छी लगती है. मैं तो बहुत हैप्पी निकली फिल्म देख के. लम्बी लगती है क्योंकि बहुत ओल्ड फैशन टाइप है. जरा गिलने को तकलीफ होती है. 

Review: BOOK CLUB

Old Is Gold, Comedy Is Fun, 
But Romance Is A Tad Creepy.

2 stars

Mini Review:

Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, Don Johnson, Richard Dreyfuss, Andy Garcia... Awesome actors all, in a comedy that is fun and frothy up to a point. Then the whole thing becomes a tad creepy and derails with scenes of these actors getting hot and heavy. But the film is waaaay better than Last Vegas where you saw grown up (read 'old') actors tried to make out with young, nubile girls!

Main Review:

Jane Fonda is 80 years old. And she shames young actors not just by having a body that is enviable, and acting chops that will decimate anyone in the business.

Candice Bergen as a Federal Judge is brilliant. And you see why Richard Dreyfuss would want to get into the back seat of a car. 

Diane Keaton was a little annoying when she was younger, but she's okay because Andy Garcia makes her look normal.

Mary Steenburgen is paired with Craig T Nelson, and the romance between the two married folks is funny but makes you shudder imagining old people having 'the drive'.

The idea of these four girlfriends being a part of a book club is delightful and if you have close friends, you would want to see the film with them.

Romance is really wonderful when Don Johnson makes Jane Fonda jump into a fountain...

The way the film has been treated, you know they are ageist. It is like us Indians. You don't want anyone over thirty behaving like they are sexual creatures, even though you don't mind a fifty year old Salman Khan romancing 22 something heroines...I too was taken aback by the visual of Candice Bergen losing her push up bra in Richard Dreyfuss's shirt, but my sense of humor brought me right back on the lighter track when I saw his face dotted with lipstick marks!  

It's a lighthearted comedy, and it is fun to watch such good actors behave like teenagers do. I will watch it with my girlfriends, and surely when it shows up on TV. 


  

Review: PARMANU: The Story Of Pokhran

Superb Story. Shoddily Told

2 stars

Mini Review:

With American satellites keeping a constant eye on Pokhran,

India’s Nuclear site for years (India had conducted the first

‘peaceful’ nuclear explosion in 1974), there was no way they

world was going to allow India to join the nuclear nations. So

a civil services officer created a team and helped conduct not

one, but three underground nuclear explosions successfully,

one of the most successful covert operations in the world.

The idea is great, but it takes too long to build and then tell

the story.

Main Review:

JOHN'S DIMPLES ARE DEEPER THAN POKHRAN!

John Abraham needs to be applauded for choosing unusual

stories. That said, if the execution of this film weren’t so

shabby, this film would have been a taut thriller.

But hai...John's dimples...

DIANA PENTY KYON HAI?

Choosing Diana Penty to be the Intelligence officer in the team

is the dumbest decision of the year. We know Bollywood takes

certain liberties in telling of a true story, but she just ruins every

scene she is in. She looks terribly out of place, and the worst

part is that she has a walk that qualifies to feature on

Monty Python’s Ministry of Funny Walks.

WHERE IS THE FIRST HALF GOING?

Initially the film seems very tacky, with the meeting at the

Prime Minister’s office being shot really shoddily. And John

Abraham’s espousing a nuclear option seems like a very bad

propaganda. You look at John Abraham’s moustache which

reminds you of Aamir Khan’s ugly one in Talaash and you begin

to wonder if this movie is going to tank.

Thankfully, the story moves forward nicely and you understand

John Abraham’s Ashwat Raina is disgraced without any reason

and we see a clear ‘making of a hero after initial setback’ trope

shaping up nicely. His wife Sushma is played by the lovely

Anuja Sathe who performs the role of harried wife who has to

handle the home and job while the husband mopes about

really well.

THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE OF THE POLITICS

With the change of government, comes an opportunity in the

shape of the Prime Minister’s Secretary Boman Irani. He offers

Ashwat to prove himself, and gives him carte blanche to create

a team that will deliver the detonation of nuclear bombs in

safety. The idea that ‘the car is the garage, but you never know

it works, unless you drive it’ is a great analogy and is used well.

John’s team comprises a nuclear scientist, an operations guy,

an army chap and a space scientist. And yes, the Intelligence

officer who again, is just the silliest thing in the film. The

supporting cast could have been sharper and smarter. Your

begin to hate the operations guy for being dumb and the 'south

Indian' space scientist because he's munching banana chips

all the time. Ugh!

Ignore silly Diana and the movie picks up pace. How the people

learn to work as a team and organise the work is shown

beautifully. And we also see how people betray. There is a CIA

spy working in cahoots with a Pakistani spy and there are

Indians paid to betray. You want the spies to be caught so bad,

you realise that the story has perked up your interest.

The setbacks and the little wins, everything engages you.

CHAK DE WALA FEEL, SUPER SECOND HALF!

The movie is actually a thriller in the second half. Yes, the

Pakistani spy keeps saying, ‘Kanda’ for ‘onion’ which is a

Marathi word used in Bombay and Maharashtra instead of

the Hindi word, ‘Pyaaz’ which is used in Rajasthan where the

story is set. This really jars the senses. The last forty five

minutes are truly exciting and push the right patriotic buttons.

The film falls in the could have been great category.

Review: BIOSCOPEWALA

If It Ain't Broke...

1.5 stars

Mini Review:

Based on a wonderful story ‘Kabuliwala’ by Rabindranath

Tagore, this story turns a dry-fruit vendor into a

Bioscopewala, and Minnie and her dad into this modern

dysfunctional family. It is not just a stretch but the whole

film is about Minnie rediscovering ‘facts’ that everyone and

their popcorn in the audience has already guessed. You

want to slap Minnie many times, but Danny as Bioscopewala

wins your hearts…

Main Review:

Minnie (Geetanjali Thapa) has to fly down to Kolkata from Paris

because her father Robi Basu (Adil Hussain, in a short sweet

role), is feared dead in a plane crash. The plane was flying to

Kabul and the family retainer Bhola (played wonderfully as

always by Brijendra Kala) brings her back home from the airport.

She’s hot and irritated and does not like that the airlines does not

know what and whys of the plane’s disappearance. Minnie

comes across as all-curly hair and pretty face and self absorbed

because she has to deal with this ‘nonsense’. She is shown at

first to ignore her father’s call (father sits down at the airport and

writes a letter to her! Of course they haven’t heard of emails!).

Of course she tells the boyfriend she’s irritated by it all. Her father

has been stern to her and she gets flashbacks of going into the

photo studio and being scolded…

Now she has to deal with the police, the airlines and even

unscrupulous lawyers who want to cash in on the tragedy. The

cops are there to drop off an old man in their house. Apparently

the father had fought for the custody of the old man for years

and years. Brijendra Kala too is unable to say who the old man

Rehmat Khan is. Because Minnie is too self absorbed to find out

who and why the old man was a subject of her father’s

fascination. She just wants the old man out.

Danny Denzongpa plays the old man Rehmat Khan. He suffers

from Alzheimer's and the way Minnie treats someone she doesn’t

know, makes you want to slap her hard. Danny is a gem. He

emotes so well and carries the past on his shoulders magnificently.

The flashbacks show us how amazing an actor he is. He’s pining

away for his daughter who is the same age as Minnie, and despite

all these years in prison, she is still the child he has left behind

and so is Minnie.

Minnie gets her father’s belongings and conducts the last rites.

Very reluctantly. She even tells people who have gathered home

that she is not connected for years with her dad. What we want to

know is why she has not opened her dad’s belongings collected

from the airlines’ office?

There are a lot of annoying things like that in the movie. If she

doesn’t want to deal with Rehmat Khan, she could easily drop him

off at some old folks home or some hospice. Why is she looking

for people who knew him? Brijendra Kala could have told her the

man was her childhood Bioscopewala! The poor retainer takes

her all over the place while she is trying to ascertain if Rehmat

Khan is innocent or no. That brings in Tisca Chopra and sundry

other people who talk about Rehmat Khan. After what seems like a

dumb pointless trip to Kabul (where she finds amid the rubble of

Rehmat Khan’s village the signboard of the cinema he ran until the

Taliban took over! At this point you want to throw something at

the screen because you have suspended your disbelief too

much). She’s so self-absorbed, even when the boyfriend shows up

in Kabul, she doesn’t even hug him!

Thankfully for one lucid moment Danny makes you forget the

stupidities of Minnie. And the credits roll. You come away

wondering how they took a wonderful story and spat out a

stupid version. Bring Balraj Sahni’s Kabuliwala (Bimal Roy

directs!) back, I say!  

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

Review: KHAJOOR PE ATKE

Magar Audience Aasman Se Gir Ke Seedha

Nark Mein Jaati Hai

1 star

Mini Review:

A copy of the Marathi film Ventilator, Khajoor Pe Atke

exaggerates in every possible way bringing down what

could have been a wonderful situational dark comedy to

something unsavory. A brother is about to die, and the

family gathers around to ‘be there’. Each person has his

or her own motives for being there. Alas, instead of letting

the audience decide when to chuckle and when to fall off the

chair laughing, the loud comic sounds and the constant

overacting puts you off.

Main Review:

There’s nothing subtle about this film. There’s no dark comedy

here. There’s only loud acting, ghastly music and comic sounds

that deafen you and blind you to the really, really funny bits in

the film.

The Marathi film Ventilator too had the same story. An older

person is in ICU, about to die, and relatives show up from all parts

rural and semi-urban places, to claim love and hope to inherit the

mango trees in the dying person’s care. In Khajoor Pe Atke, it is

a brother who is in the Intensive Care Unit, and his two brothers

and their oddball families, their sister and her son show up to

offer support to the soon-to-be-widow and her son.

The poster should tell you how exaggerated this film is going to

be. Everyone has googly eyes, everyone speaks as if the rest

of the world is deaf, everyone has strange quirks, everyone

overdoes the small town person wide-eyed in big city thing. If

that is not enough, everyone in the big city is ‘bad’, out to

cheat the out of towners. Or just horrified at these ‘item’ people.

Nikhil Pahwa is Jeetender Sharma, married to Sushila

(Seema Bhargawa). They have two kids a son and a daughter

Nayantara (she’s stuck by the Bollywood bug and wants to

be heroine).

Vinay Pathak is Ravinder Sharma, married to Anuradha

(Suneeta Sengupta), and they have a kid. Dolly Ahluwalia is

Lalita Didi who has a grown up son. So these nine people

show up at the hospital where their Debu Bhaiyya is in ICU

and his wife Kadambari (Alka Amin) and son Amol host them

in the waiting area.

The brothers and their wives are hoping that after the brother

dies, they will finally get a share in the ancestral apartment the

dying brother has been living in. They have to bribe the hospital

staff to enter into the ICU at will. Ganpat the hospital chap is

played by Kishore Chougule who has a finger in all the pies (he

can arrange not just the funeral, but the bhajan singers as well

as fake guests at the wake, he knows the local cops and can

rescue the lads after getting them into trouble). Nayantara has

a whatsapp love affair with Rokky Dilwala (a delightful creepy

lad played by Prathamesh Parab) because he has promised her

a role in a movie. The boys are there to stare at girls and want

to experience ‘dance bar’ delights. Kadambari eats non stop.

The dying man’s son has a girlfriend who cannot stop saying,

‘I understand you’. The worst of these ‘eccentric’ offenders is

played by Dolly Ahluwalia who brings a babaji into the ICU to

smear (and feed) ash on the dying brother.

The joy of watching a dark comedy is about doing really horrible

things (like trying to arrange a wedding match for their daughter)

in a straightforward way, as though they were a part of everyday

ordinary life. Kadambari eating in every scene is so brilliantly

done, you wish the rest of the scenes weren’t so exaggerated.

But Vinay Pathak cannot resist his  parodying of Amitabh

Bachchan’s Deewar dialog…

Nayantara’s audition is funny, but did it need so much

accompanying cartoonish music? The rented funeral

arrangements are funny because the man isn’t dead yet, but

you wish you did not hear the comic phone ringtone.

You end up not caring about the loud portrayal, the item number,

what happens to the dying brother, the eccentricities, the fact

that this ensemble cast could have been so much funnier had

they not been so loud…

(this review appears in nowrunning dot com)

Review: ANGREZI MEIN KEHTE HAIN

Lessons in Love and Longing In Benaras

3.5 stars

Mini Review:

A lovely story about love, duty, everyday life set in Benaras.

A grouchy, crotchety man who does his duty by his wife

and daughter announces that he has arranged for his

daughter to be married off. The daughter rebels and

questions her dad: do you even know what is love? How the

question is answered is this lovely tale of heartache and

love and new beginnings.

Main Review:

Think Sanjay Mishra. And you know he can deliver the grouchy,

dissatisfied with his life, crotchety father who works at the post

office, quite well.

Think Anshuman Jha, and you know he will do his role of small

town lad Jugnu, who is love with the crotchety dad’s lovely

daughter very well.

Think Brijendra Kala. And you know he will make a very sweet

dad to Anshuman Jha. Slightly eccentric, he is a foil to Sanjay

Mishra’s Yash.

Think Shivani Raghuvanshi whom you saw last in Titli, makes a

very pretty daughter Preeti who is in love with Jugnu and mostly

good daughter to grouchy Sanjay Mishra.

Think Pankaj Tripathi and you know he can surpass any role

given to him. In this film he is Firoz, the husband of Suman, who

is on her deathbed. Pankaj Tripathi is shown to be the man who

loves his wife so much he is willing to give up everything so she

has a few more days to live. Pankaj Tripathi’s very evident love

stuns Sanjay Mishra (who has promised to and delivers a very

important letter that would bring money for Suman’s hospital stay)

who is amazed at such display of emotion. Pankaj Tripathi is so

good at this small role, you wish he were cast as Sanjay Mishra’s

grouchy dad instead.

That brings us to last character in the story. Ekavali Khanna.

Remember this name. This actor plays the long suffering yet

quietly happy wife to grouchy Sanjay Mishra and mother to Preeti.

She is the buffer between daughter and father, the foundation on

which grouchy Sanjay Mishra can live his grouchy life smoothly.

This actor is magnificent. She is beautiful in close-ups, conveying

her hurt and love and every other emotion demanded by the role

with ease. And she’s stunningly beautiful. She’s wearing sarees,

and salwaar kameezes in the film, and you want to know where

the costume design person sourced these clothes because you

want to buy them. You also wonder, how is it possible that Sanjay

Mishra is unable to say that he loves this woman? The audiences

sighed and fell in love with her wonderful screen presence!

Sanjay Mishra is a fine actor. And you know and understand his

dilemma. The fact that he doesn’t realise that love needs to be

expressed, and he hopes ‘she understands that I love her even

though I don’t say it’ is very obvious. His ego is wonderfully written

and his change of heart is also good. Although his attempts of

wooing his wife back are so terrible, one thinks the film is going to

go off the rails and shoot itself in the foot. Thankfully the awful

sequence is just an aberration (maybe the newbie director could

not rein in the overacting by a senior actor like Sanjay Mishra) and

the film is back on track.

The end is horribly predictable because we love the wife’s

character so much, and it seems like a compromise because

Sanjay Mishra’s patriarchal character is ‘hero’. But all in all, if you

know someone who is unable to express their love, drag them to

this lovely little film.

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)