Review: Commando 3

Very Good Action Set Pieces, The Rest Is Kuch Bhi Dikha Do.


Throw This Film Back Into Time. Even Then It Won't Earn More Than 1 star


Mini Review:

There's a cool knife fight, fights with local white thugs, car chases, bike chases, helicopter rescue but the filmmakers forgot to chase this thing called logic and no one told them it is 2019 not the 70s. 

With all actors doing whatever they feel like, little wonder the camera person left his camera on close ups. Watch if you want to get really familiar with everyone's skin, or if you have friends who laugh at every dialog by saying, 'TWHS' and 'TWSS'!

Main Review:

'Ooooh... Gulshan Deviah!' I said, 'Oooooh! So talented he is... Wasn't he fab in Mard Ko Dard?' I gushed right before the film, 'He might bring some sense to the senseless display of muscle expected in this movie...'

How I wish I had not opened my gob.

He plays the Mad Muslim NRI Terrorist as if he had taken acting lessons from GIF selector. He displays ALL of the emotions in ALL of their glory ALL the time. 

No one told him ki bhaiyya terrorists do not have to be grim reaper walking the ramp all the time. 

But no one told all the other terrorists how to NOT overact either. If you are a bad guy in the film, you had better have a sneer ready. 

Learn villainy from Gulshan Deviah: '(Snarl!) Maine Biryani banayi hai... (Sneer)...Taste karoge? (Mad Eyes!)...No? (Narrow Eyes)... Eat! 

He has all the accents too: 

Urdu bhi, Hindi bhi, 'Gonna-wanna' type American English bhi, and whenever he remembers it, thoda Brit accent bhi...

But there are others in the movie too. The Hero Vidyut Jamwal has the propensity of choosing the worst scripts ever. A script where everyone talks. And talks. And talks. And you begin to laugh even at the seemingly simple dialog like: Koi Commando hai?

You automatically answer, 'Nahi bhai, chaddi pehen rakkhi hai!

And it doesn't help when he beats up langot clad pehelwaans on 'hero wali entry'.

To his credit though, he is a great action star. And I don't say this lightly. His jump across the balcony towards the guy re-loading his machine gun is full on paisa vasool, as are the knife fights. But the rest...

So there's an angry Brit Indian Muslim man who wants to create terror in India via messages on VHS tapes. YAS! The Internet is only mentioned. Perhaps they knew how bad cell phone service is...

They assume all Muslims in India wander about in skull caps and can be converted to the ways of the jihad by butchering calves... I mean seriously?! Have they never seen Tik Tok videos where young people thrive on doing contrary things?

So Commando and his partner with an appearing and disappearing South Indian accent (she says 'Roy garu', but also wears the very North Indian Chooda to show she's undercover in London) reach London (suspiciously empty during vehicular chase scenes)

The British Intelligence (they also know it's an oxymoron the way this film treats everyone) has to have one cliche officer (oooh! yeh bhi Muslim hai, but 'uski ungliyaan sirf computer par chalti hain')...

Okay I fell asleep trying to explain...

But it's fun to see Indian Intelligence chief and his British counterpart yell at each other over skype. Super fun how the Indian Intelligence HQ looks like NASA / ISRO operations room and you expect Akshay Kumar to show up any moment and save Chandrayaan.   

Almost forgot! The terrorist loves his one expression kid and hates his ex-wife (if my ex-wife spoke Hindi like that, I would hate her too). She runs a flower stall, and the British court granted custody of her minor child to the dad... Happens only in movies...

Never mind all that... The final encounter is so laughable I have to tell. 

So something big is going down on Diwali day. But they've got Ravans everywhere in India. Whaaat? Baaaad looking Muslim men indoctrinated by VHS tape messages are hiding AK47s, so you know they're going to shoot people... But it give Vidyut Jamwal a chance to get real close (remember camera is set on CU) to Gulshan Deviah and ask him 'When? Where?' How? and so on as the very rich baddie with a ten rupee digital watch does face yoga as answers...

While bad foreign guy uses VHS, the good Indian guy does Sat phone video call that shows up on everyone's cell phone in India (except the bad guys). Clearly better technology wins and bad guys are caught by the common people...

Do you want to wait for the Raamji beating Ravanji for Seetaji dialog?! 

Am only glad they don't go Modiji ki jai...

I know there are plot holes in the film the size of Nazca lines, the scriptwriter is a wannabe Kader Khan, but you should watch this movie to be gobsmacked by the changing size of Vidyut Jamwal's man bun. 


P.S: 

Q. Why does Vidyut Jamwal take off his shirt while fighting baddies?
A. He can't take off his jeans because he's Commando.



    
  

Review: MARJAAVAAN

Starting With Riteish Deshmukh's Vishnu, 
There's Not A Single Original Thought In This Film.

Rating: Stabbing yourself is more entertaining

Mini Review:

They paid the screenwriters so much they had the gangsters on verbal vomit mode all through the film! And not just gangsters, the heroine (who speaks through a friend), the hero, the hero's friends, the cops... AAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHH! They retain the audience by getting them to fall asleep. I started counting unoriginal stuff coming at us and then gave up. 

Main Review:

Hero has an Amitabh Bachchan hangover, right from fighting the baddies and the ambulance bit (choreographed here because he brings a first aid box to a fight) to the matchstick in the mouth. 

Then we gag when the great Nasser who is big bad guy Anna who gives us the Laawaris spiel. But his name is not Heera after the dog, but Raghu. I hear Kamala Haasan's voice in my head saying, 'aappdiyaa!' 

Yes, there's a nautch girl (Rakul Preet Singh) who is in love with the hero. Hardly original that. And the songs she sings are so not new you don't really care if the name of the bar is Dilbar.

but as the song goes ek toh kam zindagani is wrong! This film goes on and on and on... and a dumb but not deaf (apologies for not being politically correct here) girl from Kashmir whose name is Zoya and she wants to take talented kids to Kashmir for a song contest (aaaaaaaargh Riteish Deshmuskh did not tell the writers about Banjo the film!). 

The film is so lazy, they show close ups of Siddharth Malhotra's hands which are so well cared for, they don't have a trace of a hard life. 

Poor Siddharth Malhotra! he is made to wear a leather jacket in Bombay heat, but I guess it is handy to ward off a pathetic Molotov cocktail that is barely effective. What kind of stupid goons are these?

There's Tara Sutaria who plays Zoya who wants to change the future of the basti kids with music. Move over Gully Boy and Banjo we choose kids because they eve tease other kids. Ugh! And the Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram is poor man's version of Rani Mukerjee in a short dress singing Om Jai Jagdeesh Hare. Original my...

Poor Ravi Kissen is reduced to spouting crap like 'Hamare Bihaar mein ek kahavat hai...' 

The only thing good about this movie is Vishnu, the dwarf son of the big bad guy who is jealous of Raghu's loyalty to his dad. Riteish Deshmukh plays Vishnu really well but they gave him so much dialog, the menace is reduced. And yes, none of us have seen Game Of Thrones to know where the idea must have germinated, no?

The final fight (Wow! So new!) goes on and on until we begin collecting our things (including a shoe I almost threw at the screen seeing that very tired idea of sending goons to kill a hero who has been incarcerated). Then the villain and the henchmen and the hero die. But not before dead heroine shows up to give the hero darshan... Rani Mukherji outdid that in DDLJ like a hundred years ago,no?

Last cry for help: Grammar check dialog, please! it is not 'Is dusshehra ka din' but 'Is dusshehre ke din...'

Review: MOTICHOOR CHAKNACHOOR

Small Town Shaadi Tale About Average Joe (And Jane) 
That's Too Long And Too Average.


Rating: Two Surprises Many Groans


Mini Review:

When I was happily surprised, people around me asked, 'You didn't see the trailer? It's in there!' Am glad I hadn't seen. Because the film has gin-ke two twists. And the rest is ghastly predictable. If you can get over the Bundelkhandi (or is it Malwi) Hindi spoken, you will fall in love with the heroine's spunky Mausi and the hero's Bhai, and it will be on Netflix soon. 

Main Review: 

I love and respect Nawazuddin Siddiqui as an actor but his Puspinder's sex face was hard to handle. And they show it not once but at least four times. 

So he's a Dubai returned Pushpinder Tyagi (pronounced, 'pus-pinder') , thirty six year old (way past 'marriageable' according to family) who seems to want to desperately get married. The colloquial term they use again and again, 'Naada dheela' is so ghastly you puke into your popcorn. Is that why he looks so uncomfortable in the role? How often through the film I wished he'd turn into Faizal Khan of Wasseypur and get us all out of this small town misery. 

His family is what most supposed small town families are meant to be: A managing mom, uncle and aunt, a bhabi (her husband is in Muscat), a younger brother (a wonderful actor, not credited on IMDB) and a sister who is still doing her BA (six years and counting). Plus a grandmother who wears the post-cataract sunglasses. There is also an annoying kid called Ikka (obviously the bhabi's kid)

They stay next door to Ani or Ankita (Athiya Shetty, in a surprisingly good fit) who dreams of upping her friends and posting her 'foreign life' photos on facebook, and will reject any 'rishta' with anyone who won't take her abroad.

Her family has an unmarried mausi, Karuna Pandey in a brilliant, brilliant role, a dad and mum (both very Hindi TV serial parents). They are all totally involved in trying to get Ani married off. 

See you are already tired. So were we. Watching these people interact really is tiresome. Because the 'shaadi karaa do' thing is so passe you groan into your coffee. You have seen Puspinder's sex fantasy (a girl's hair moves off and you see his sex face) and you puked into your popcorn, so you cannot eat that any more. 

The winner in the movie are clearly the jalebis and kachoris and cashews which everyone in the family keeps consuming through the film. And yes, Pani Puris. 

You want to forget the awful pani puri flirtation like, 'Bhaiyya give her sweet pani because she's so hot' and her saying, 'Bhaiyya, give him sour pani because he's sweet!'

Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!

The fun happens (yes, the first plot twist) when both show up married. After all the mausi has said, 'You are not getting anyone who will take you to London-Amrica, so Dubai hee sahi, And the lad is decent.'

The post marriage thing could have been interesting, but everyone in the audience has guessed already that he's lost his job abroad... More tedious events later (like she can't do it with him because there isn't 'love') he just leaves after showing up (second plot twist) from under razais. 

And you just wait for the last supposed to be comic event - that looks like terrible homage to Anees Bazmi - the run around the home to end, and it finally does. Everyone cries and hugs one another. 

You groan. Then you remember Puspinder's sex face and you run out of the theater. 



P.S. Whoever chose the sweaters for the cast should get a super pat on the back!

NO MORE EASY STARS! WE WILL MAKE PEOPLE READ WORDS.

Generally fed up of being asked KITNE STARS DIYE.

I mostly want to land one on their noses so they see stars. Thankfully I'm a pacifist.

After taking a break from the 'give stars business', I'm back changing the format a bit and offering you words to read instead.

Make up your own mind if I'm asking you to watch the film or not.

See y'all at the movies!