Review: KABIR SINGH

WHY DOESN'T ANYONE SLAP HIM?

2 stars

Mini Review:

A shot by shot remake in Hindi of the Telugu hit film Arjun Reddy, this film stays true to the tale of an obsessed lover. Shahid Kapoor and Kiara Advani are lovers in medical school but when she’s forced to marry someone else, the brilliant doctor goes into a downwards spiral of alcohol and drugs. The misogyny is very difficult to swallow for 174 minutes. The acting and the relationships between the characters make this film a decent watch, even though you slap people in your head several times.

Main Review:

SLAP! SLAP! SLAP! Right across their faces!

Never could understand why it is okay to endorse misogyny if the lad is good looking and brilliant and bad if he is/looks villainous. I have never slapped people in real life, but did so several times to everyone in the movie and even those who made such a toxic film.

One Tight Slap for thinking that it's okay to REMAKE Southern Misogyny as Northern Misogyny

If you have seen Arjun Reddy, you will naturally compare the film with this remake. Vijay Devarakonda makes for a super convincing character: short tempered and violent and yet brilliant at his work. Shahid Kapoor is a wonderful actor too, and the casting is not at fault. It’s just that in this case, he just doesn’t look like someone would throw down a baseball bat and hit someone with his bare fists. Promoting violence like this is just plain awful because there seem to be no consequences.

Besides, Bollywood’s obsession with neat beards just does not sit well with a character who just flings himself down a spiral of sex, drugs and alcohol. That’s why Devarakonda’s Arjun Reddy was alarming and Shahid’s Kabir Singh is not as demented.

But if you have not watched Arjun Reddy on Amazon Prime, then you’re coming into this film cold. Kabir Singh is a wild card and yet the best student at a medical school. He loses his temper on the football field and gets suspended for beating up the members of the opposite team. He’s unrepentant and offers to transfer to another med school. As he waits for the Dean to sign the papers, he spots a gorgeous girl, Preeti Sikka, among the fresh batch of students and tears up transfer papers.

Slap! The Girl Is 'Rank Holder' But Spineless! Slap! For Everyone who thinks they can Brand Women as 'Mine'

What happens next is so cringe inducing you will either walk out of the theater in disgust or take it like a masochist. Kabir proclaims that the girl is his. And no one dare say anything, including the girl. She has no choice. He tells her whom she should befriend and how she should study. He just drags her out of class and teaches lessons to her. She just accepts this like some lamb to slaughter. And you are supposed to find this behavior tolerable because he lets her stay in class when it is time to learn about the anatomy of Upper Thorax. Also because he won’t let anyone even look at her, beats up the lad who touches her. The fact that he kisses her against her will is considered as ‘something cool’ rather than repugnant. The reaction of his best friends is worse! They behave as if Preeti is privileged to have been ‘chosen’ by Kabir. Imagine a filmy villain like Prem Chopra or Ranjeet doing that... Why is that not okay, and this awful behaviour by Kabir 'cute'?

You cannot stop rolling your eyes, when Preeti falls in love with Kabir and moves into the boys hostel. They’re physical and the friends seem to encourage this ‘Kabir rules!’ behavior. She’s also shown to be obsessing with him, showing up unannounced at his new med school where he’s studying to be a surgeon.

Slap To Everyone Around Kabir. No One Calls Him Out!

Thankfully they insert ‘years pass’ into the film and both are back in Bombay. He shows up at her doorstep, kisses her and her dad naturally throws him out because Indian culture. Of course he overdoses on morphine in anger and she’s married off. Now he’s angrier and drunker and tries to forget Preeti by doing drugs. Of course the Indian Censors are very strict with Hindi films and they don’t show Kabir do any kind of drugs as they let Arjun Reddy do. So the whole I’m drunk because she’s on my mind does not work because he’s also supposed to be a brilliant surgeon. How does one do mind bending drugs and still operate? Why are the nurses plying him with alcohol? Kabir tries to forget Preeti by trying to have an affair with a movie star and almost rapes another woman (at knife point) but fails… And even if you like Shahid Kapoor, the story gets too long winded. The end cannot come sooner. And if there’s a handy wall nearby, the explanation of the slap-one another love will make you want to crash your head on the wall. And then when you hear Kabir’s friend say, ‘Preeti’s pregnant, so she probably liked being with her husband…’ makes you want to slap the next person who says that this movie is great.

Arjan Bajwa is a good older brother to Kabir. His best friend/ sidekick has the best lines and makes for great person to have in your life. His grandma played by Kamini Kaushal is sweet too (Actor Kanchana plays the granny in Arjun Reddy and is leagues ahead!). With so many good people around him, it’s a miracle no one tells Kabir off, or at least slap him. At least once?

Again Vijay Devarankonda in and as Arjun Reddy is not only alarming when drunk and drugged and angry but also brilliant when he shows his softer, vulnerable side when he’s around Preeti. The music in the Telugu version is more mellifluous in comparison. Kabir Singh is not a good guy, and neither is the misogyny. But there’s something about poisonous love that draws you to such stories... And do remember to slap yourself for spending hard earned money on such films.

(this review sans slaps appears on nowrunning dot com)

         

Review: THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF THE FAKIR

A Delicious Frothy Fun Filled Fairy Tale

3.5 Stars

Mini Review:

Can a little boy from a slum in Bombay dream of Paris? Sure! When he grows up can he use his street smarts and a fake hundred Euro note to get to the city of his dreams? Dhanush (whom you saw in Raanjhana) makes this journey frothy, fun, magical and wonderful.

Main Review:

The film begins innocuously enough. A little boy in the slums gets his first lesson in school, he realises that he’s poor. His mum - who washes and irons clothes for a living - teaches him how to dream big. Tells him that if he talks of poverty, she won’t take him to Paris.

The Paris dream, now firmly planted in his brain, little Ajatshatru grows into the street smart thief/magician/fakir (played brilliantly by Dhanush). You realise that the film has made you fall in love with his dream and Mohini (go find out for yourself who she is!). This happens so naturally and easily, you find yourself grinning as someone in Paris tries to con him.

This is where you will decide whether you like the film or not. If you do, you will enjoy the escapades of this young man. You will ignore the leap of faith you have to take and enjoy the film. If not you will see a large hole: how can the large ‘Swedish store’ have the same furniture as in the catalog Aja loved as a child?

However, if you choose to ignore that gap in tale, you realise that everything the lad does in the store, including flirt with a young American girl (Erin Moriarty) makes him adorable. And as he promises to meet her at the Eiffel Tower, you know something will go wrong. It does.

From Ikea to the Eiffel Tower is a long journey for Ajatshatru. That’s the fun part of the film. The froth is in his never-say-die attitude. He meets many interesting people on his journey and he learns so much from them. The stunning Bernice Bejo helps him make a wish at the Trevi Fountain in Rome, and Barkhat Abdi (you saw him as a Somali pirate in Captain Phillips) shows him the human side of refugees in Libya.

No don’t ask what happens, book your tickets and watch this delicious film that has already made waves at film fests… Oh yes, we also get to see Dhanush dance to ‘Madaari’ at a Roman Nightclub…

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

Review: GAME OVER

This Game Is Very Lame

1 star

Mini Review:

Taapsee Pannu likes video games so much she has a tattoo of the console. She is supposed to be a video game designer or a player, afraid of the dark, plus has suicidal tendencies. Her home is invaded by a serial killer. With both her legs fractured, can she face him or is it 'game over'? Yay! Title justified. Unfortunately, the premise is so lame you know Home Alone was more interesting, the asthmatic killer is not scary at all and the film falls flat on its face.

Main Review:

Yeh Karti Kya Hai? The Flawed Character Set Up...

The opening credits are really cool. But that does not a film make. You begin to giggle when they try to set up Taapsee Pannu as a designer of game characters, or is she a game developer? Or just a video game nut? But with such cool video games available on Xbox today, it does not explain why she’s playing Pac Man that is dated! (The Pac Man championship game on the Xbox is rather awesome with choices in setting - like Manhattan, Spiral, Train station and so on - and the ghosts are cool too!)

If she’s a designer, for games, why is she drawing Super Mario type characters on a sketchbook? Game designers use graphic tablets… and don’t bother to look at her computer screen at all…

Of course I'd choose games like Recon, Doom Eternal or even Rage, which have really cool graphics and could work as inspiration for dealing with a home invader. But no! She plays Pac Man. Okay, why not use that fact and dress the home invader as Ghost or mention the word 'ghost' on TV where the news is announced. But that would require too much thought. This movie has that one line pitch feel...

Okay so she like Pac Man, and plays it all night because she cannot sleep. She says it too. But she does wake up on the sofa every single time from her nightmares. She has a maid looking after her.

Melodrama Central. The Killer Should Kill The Maid!

Kalamma the maid is played by Vinodhini. It looks like concern, but she’s rather intrusive ('Your parents called, you should call them!) and even shows up sitting with her at the shrink’s. Before you ask why is the maid sitting at the session, you sigh because they show why she’s terrified of the darkness. Again. Looks like the director likes this women tied up trope. Because in the beginning of the film, a young woman was tied up (with plastic ties and plastic bag over her face) killed horribly. We were also told of several young women being beheaded and burnt etc. That part of the film looks inspired from a bad Korean serial killer film. We only have Netflix to blame for such a scene. It’s too lame to be scary.

But Kalamma offers unintended hilarity when the serial killer shows up at the heroine’s home. Oh yes, by this time Taapsee is on a wheelchair, her legs are broken. Kalamma gets a chance to be all melodramatic and googly eyed with horror and fear.

Zabardasti Ka Bhoot Trope

Remember, Taapsee got herself a tattoo? They have a creepy explanation about ashes of a cancer victim's ashes that is meant to add a bhoot element. But the mom of the victim is creepier and it would have been more fun if she stalks Taapsee... But this ashes of cancer victim in tattoo ink only ends up logical questions: how is the tattoo studio still working if they mixed up ink meant for someone else on her? How come the tattoo person realises the mistake and does not follow up apart from, ‘I tried to call you…’

Is the ghost of the cancer woman haunting Taapsee? Apart from giving Taapsee a rash the ghost does little. The poster 'I did not die alone' suggests that the serial killer should be an angry cancer sufferer or a cancer wala zombie... But no. They're disconnected. You swallow these silly things and then after intermission (completely unnecessary, since the film loses steam) the story picks up when an intruder shows up at her home. The ghost is gone now, but a greeting card (seriously? A greeting card for a cancer patient?!) serves as inspiration for Taapsee.

The Film Is Like Browsing Netflix Serial Killer Films And Picking Plot Points In A Hurry

No one knows why the door kept slamming with no visible aandhi toofaan elsewhere...No one knows why or how the killer chooses his victims, or where on the Net does he post the kill videos. Is the killer her rapist? He liked videotaping too... Here you realise you don’t care. Home Alone was more fun and this is not the scary version of that film. It’s not even interesting enough to be Groundhog Day. It just takes one decent metaphor about lives from video games and uses it. But Detective Pikachu was more fun and so was Pixels which showed us an evil Pac Man.

The dubbing in Hindi is plain awful. Taapsee's smile after she gets the tattoo is beautiful, but she's mostly meant to be incoherent in the film. Why should we care if she dies? The girl dying of plastic bag asphyxiation is shot really well, but it goes nowhere, so you just know they’re trying too hard. And the serial killer tries to breathe like Darth Vader - to scare us - but ends up sounding asthmatic. The film is 142 minutes long. Just feels longer.  

(A politically correct version of this review appears on nowrunning dot com)    

Review: BHARAT

Too Swacch This Bharat Is.

Bring Back Dabanng.

2 stars

Mini Review:

Bharat is a good guy, and though he promises that his life has been more colorful than the salt in his beard, the film does not live up to that promise. In fact it is so boring, you wonder if ‘bhai’ has forgotten his fans come to watch ‘action’ not wimpy comedy. We live through his many jobs and his devotion to dad. It’s two and a half hours of being average. Fans want more.

Main Review:

It’s Eid, and therefore Salman Khan fans are out in full force to watch Bharat. There are hoots and whistles when that familiar walk on the silhouette shows up on screen, but there’s no thunder and lightning, there are no villains flying in the air, there is no ripping off shirts. It’s Salman Khan as Bharat, celebrating his 70th birthday.

He begins to tell his story to grandkids about how during partition, his mother, brother and sister and him climbed up on the train and the gorgeous father climbs down because little ‘Gudiya’ slipped back on to the platform. The father is Jackie Shroff, the Station Master who manages to give little Bharat his watch and extracts a promise, you will keep the family together and wait for dad to get to the Ration store in Delhi…

Sonali Kulkarni plays the mom who cuts a tragic figure that stitches something on the sewing machine to help make ends meet. Kabir Sajid is the little boy who plays Bharat, and alas, makes sure he’s ‘acting’ (wide-eyes, fear, happiness… His emotions are studied, but who cares, it’s Bhai’s movie!). In the aftermath of the Partition, Bharat meets Vilayati (a Muslim lad who gives us a lesson in National Integration the moment we meet him: We haven’t gone to Pakistan because this is our country and will always be so on…). Bharat and Vilayati become friends for life. Vilayati grows up to be Sunil Grover. He’s the one decent role in the entire film. He’s Bharat’s one man support system and a partner in everything good.

Yes, everything Salman does is good. After all, he’s Bharat. He even sings the National Anthem in the film (makes his fans wake up and stand in a flurry of popcorn!). This kind of forced patriotism in the film makes you want to weep.

Bharat grows up to be Evel Knievel in the Great Russian Circus. But he’s so good, he gives that awesome job because ‘many kids will want to emulate this dangerous stunt’ and chooses to wait to be employed. He’s so good, he dances with pirates on a merchant ship (no leaf chewing wicked Somali pirates here a la Captain Phillips, but pirates who dance to Bachchan songs!). He’s so good, he saves all the miners trapped in the mines a la The 33. He’s so good, he won’t marry Katrina Kaif because he cannot divide his love for the family with her… Whilst you gag at this ‘good’ guy thing, you’re hoping for some ear-splitting action a la Dabanng.

The audience sighs through tamer and tamer songs, and you see people checking their messages on the phone until the fifteen minutes to the end, when four motorbike riding goons attack Bharat with tube-lights. A roar goes up in the audience but the four go down easily. And so does the excitement.

The film has a couple of funny moments, but the ordinariness of his life needed more than Sunil Grover dressed up as Bharat Maa or his sister fall for Jawaharlal Nehru...

Katrina Kaif too has many jobs - from employment officer to supervisor in an oil field to news reader (a la Salma Sultan) and Creative Director of a TV channel to hausfrau who is really in a ‘live in’ relationship with Bharat -  and you are happy she is made to dance to some strange not so hummable Hand-pump song. Her dialog delivery remains as strange as ever. Why make her say words like, ‘namankan patra’ (candidate registration papers for election)?

  

Bharat grows older visibly, but his screen mom and other characters don’t. They just wear glasses. We follow Bharat’s life through India’s partition up until 2010. And you as audience watch every year go by excruciatingly slowly.


(this review appears on nowrunning.com )