Review: MIRZYA

Hooch In Single Malt Bottle

1.5 stars

Mini Review:

A high concept film is a welcome change from the usual loud Bollywood love stories. But when all you see is a Zhang Yimou hangover on screen without the vision or the depth, you realise that it’s just a pretentious film. And the world that the characters in Mirzya occupy are neither ancient nor in the now. It’s a sad debut film of two young people who just go through the motions because everything is pretending to be art.

Main Review:

Pretentious (Adj.): Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture etc., than is actually possessed.

When will filmmakers learn that two people who know Shakespeare will not recite verses and say, ‘Shakespeare, right?’

The pretentiousness starts right there. But then we are already playing the game of Kings and Princesses (because everyone and their uncle is a king in Rajasthan!). And if someone told a modern woman that a true princess should know how to ride a horse, she would have said, ‘I fly planes’ or something, and never married the man who wanted her to learn this or that before she was worthy enough to be his wife.

But then this princess obeys, because she needs to later ask the lad she is running away with, ‘Petrol khatam ho gaya, now what do we do?’

When will we stop showing wilting violets and dare to give her a bow and arrow and fight like Gong Li?

The filmmaker has borrowed so extensively from Chinese epic period films (including the man bun), that you’d rather fast forward those parts and watch Jet Li in Hero instead. Not one spectacular memorable scene, we either get Punjabi songs sung on top of the octave, or South Indian background music. And the movie about a Punjabi folk tale is set in Rajasthan. But there are snow-clad mountains and Revenant like scenes of horses galloping through waters. Remember the beauty of Jet li’s sword touching the mirror like water before the fight? You get none of the beauty in the film and all the topographical confusion.

Shakespeare bhaiiya via Jaques in As You Like It says, 'And one man in his time plays many parts.' In this film, the director shows how in many lives you play the same part...

You do get slow motion dancing of what could only be the Greek Chorus of a dance troupe that is mostly in a collective orgasm (they appear many times through the film, to give you time to forget that story has not moved). Except when they’re play catch the hammers while dancing on the partially underground furnace. Then you wonder why they’re always working. Are they manufacturing guns for the army or are they making up for some huge backlog on bullock cart wheels?

The two young stars who make their debut as star-crossed lovers are saved from emoting by songs that interrupt and freeze their faces. Or the scene is cut to the past or the present or to Art Malik who plays the father of the heroine and really saves the film. Anjali Patil plays a more believable character than Saiyami Kher. Anuj Choudhry is good as the Prince Charming who turns out to be a beast. Why Om Puri was cast to read a couple of notes and spout three or four bit dialog, no one can guess. But it was fun watching the strange tree of 'Ishq Wala Love' from Student Of The Year shows up in the middle of nowhere for ancient Mirzya and his girl to rest under.

There are fifteen songs in the least, and stanzas broken up to make the 129 minute film feel ‘timeless’. But when you do get out of the warp, you paraphrase Shakespeare’s Scottish King: the film is ‘but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the screen/And then is heard no more: it is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing.’

P.S. Why is Mirzya in both lifetimes so greasy and dirty? Does he work in a coal mine?

Review: TUTAK TUTAK TUTIYA

Silly Fun, But Don't Admit You Laughed

1.75 stars

Mini Review:

A bachelor obsessed with marrying only a modern, English speaking city girl ends up marrying a village belle. Embarrassed by his predicament, he moves in an apartment occupied by a ghost of a starlet. The ghost happily occupies the wife’s body and blackmails the husband. The comedy is silly and physical, and you do laugh at some jokes. But you wouldn’t admit to anyone you watched the film.

Main Review:

Prabhudeva is a super dancer. No one can contradict that fact. But his style of comedy which is physical, seems rather dated, But he does have good timing. And that’s why the Sunday morning cartoon-type trick or simply Mad magazine’s Spy Vs Spy style of imagining one thing and doing something completely lame in reality gets repetitive.

Some of the lines are funny though and you do laugh when they hit you unexpectedly, but none are memorable. But yes, the ghost watching the movie star from the ceiling was really, really unexpected. And the special effects in this scene are perfectly executed.

Sonu Sood’s Shah Rukh hangover finally finds a super outlet, and he does have flashes of resemblances to the star through the film. It does get tiresome, and you wish they’d wrap up the film within a film soon. But the gags continue and we begin to feel the fatigue creep in. So much so that the end shows up quite conveniently.

Tamannah Bhatia does not have too much of a role except to wear ‘heroine’ outfits and dance, change costumes and dance. Oh yes, she needs to widen her eyes in anger and in her ghost role. The South Indian housewife scene with the puja aarti and a towel tied on her wet hair is so real, you can actually smell malli-poo (common flowers worn in their hair by women in South India ) in the theater. Murali Sharma is good as the stereotypical star secretary.

There are many songs in the film but none memorable despite Prabhu Deva’s dancing. Had the tale been told without wandering after every gag, the film would have been more enjoyable. Wait for it to show up on cable.

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

Review: QUEEN OF KATWE

Mira Nair Adds Masala To Sports Prodigy Movie

2.5 stars

Mini Review:

Mira Nair takes us on a blindingly colorful yet bumpy ride to the slums in a small town called Katwe in Uganda and shows us how a young girl earns the title of the film by playing chess. An unlikely sports film, the movie captures lots of human emotions, but drags along, unable to keep our attention on the 64 squares.

Main Review:

This movie falls into the same gigantic pit that most sports movies crash into: repetitiveness and predictability. Yes it’s yet another story of a prodigy that comes out of the hopelessness of slums bogged down by humiliating poverty and then shines at an unlikely sport. Yes, yes, you have seen the formula before: there are sports tournaments where the prodigy wins, the winning streak ends because of pride or sudden wealth and either the prodigy fades away, or overcomes all odds and wins again, this time with real heart.

We’ve seen it in the neverending Rocky franchise, in the numerous baseball movies (and cricket too), golf and horseracing movies, even the unlikely game of carrom has similar plot structure. Queen of Katwe is not different. Girl from slums discovers chess and becomes a champion!

‘It makes my brain sharp!’ young Phiona tells her sister Night. Her sister has chosen the easy way out of the slums: she has found a man who takes her on rides on his motorbike, gives her food and dresses her up. But Phiona believes chess can rescue her from her life.

The young Phiona, Benjamin and the other little kids who play chess and are part of the Pioneers club will make you laugh with their innocent antics.

‘Ketchup is the best thing in the world!’ they say, and you want to agree.

‘Spice for the fish, spice for the rice!’ they kids sing and dance at the market and you are there to do that little jig with them.

Lupita Nyong’o is simply fantastic as Phiona and Night’s feisty single mother who has two other kids to provide for. She is haughty and will not ‘put out’ for anyone even if she has to lose her home. She brings so much to that role you unconsciously imitate her disapproving, ‘eh!’ long after the film is over.

And the coach played brilliantly by David Oyelowo makes you believe in the good that is left in the world.

That said, it still becomes a, ‘How much chess are we going to watch?’



(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

Review: MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN

Thoda New, Thoda Deja Vu

2 stars

Mini Review:

Tim Burton’s fans have always enjoyed the spectacle of his vision and this movie is a visual feast. Trouble is, you cannot get rid of a niggling feeling that you’ve seen this somewhere before…It’s a time travel thing, I suppose.

Main Review:

Eva Green is gorgeous as Miss Peregrine who is in charge of taking care of peculiar children. A bit like Professor Xavier, but these children are stuck inside a time loop. We discover this with the help of Jake (Asa Butterfield), a young boy whose disinterested dad (Chris O’Dowd) brings him to the island…

You’ve seen the talented mutants in X- Men and you come to know and like them. Rogue and Iceman’s little skating piece in the moonlight is just as fascinating as the Kurt Wagner’s abilities to teleport himself. You remember their nicknames as well as their given names. That’s because their backstories are well established in the movie as well as in the comic books. Here, we only know someone’s lighter than a feather and some other person is invisible and so on, but it does not generate interest, and you don’t know whether the nakedness of the invisible boy is meant to be funny or alarming.

The special effects are a visual treat. The seeds that grow instantly into a vine was fun to watch. And so are the antics of the little girl who has exceptional strength. But what is her name? How did her parents discover her ‘peculiar-ness’? It would have been great to know. But it was all bogged down by the fact that the story is set in 1943 and they needed to take care of creating a whole set as well as clothing and so on and these backstories would get in the way.

We know also why Eric became Magneto. And even though his life goals are evil, you have a certain empathy for the evil characters. Then why don’t we have any for Samuel L Jackson’s character? He comes across as just someone bad. And yes, if you’ve seen Terminator, the arm turning into weapon effect is so much like Robert Patrick’s T1000 in Judgement Day, you are not alarmed. Even the Hollow Monsters seem to be familiar.

The film fails to engage simply because it wants to say too many things about Jake, his grandfather, his relationship with his dad, the peculiars, Miss Peregrine, war, loneliness, the science fiction part about time in a loop, Jake’s sudden attraction for the floating girl, Judy Dench in a sudden appearance and callous disappearance, period costumes, the creepy boy who reminds you of Sid from Toy Story… And nothing satisfies.



(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

review: M.S.Dhoni: The Untold Story

The Awesome Supporting Cast Behind Captain Cool

2.5 stars

Mini Review:

Neeraj Pandey proves that he is a Dhoni fanboy. The movie starts out awesomely well, telling us details about Mahi’s early life we eagerly lap up. But we want to know about his growth from getting selected in the team to becoming a captain. We get Bollywood style romance instead and then we begin to look at the time: 190 minutes. Cricket wins, but the supporting cast steals the show.

Main Review:

Let’s get one thing clear: we’re cricket crazy. And the kids in the audience (who bunked school) and college lads (who skipped classes) were all there to watch anything and everything about Dhoni. We don't care who plays Dhoni, as long as we get to watch cricket. And poor Sushant Singh Rajput. He means well, but his arms are never going to be as sexy as those on Mahiman. And his back (when he strips to wear his #7 shirt does not look anything like what the girls would imagine makes great helicopter shots.

But the excitement stays with you for the whole first half of the film. The little boy Mahi who wants to play instead of studying earns a lot of laughter and shared emotion in the theater. Every frustrated sports person who has parents who believe that a good job is everything nodded their head in the movie. Anupam Kher rightly says, ‘Everyone cannot be Sachin Tendulkar!’. But for every father like Anupam Kher, there is a Coach (played brilliantly by Rajesh Sharma), a mentor - the head of Railways (Mr. Ganguly), his friends (each one has acted better than the main cast), his mother (uncredited on the film’s wiki page), his railway homies, heck even his girlfriend’s roommate Ritu.

It’s actually for the supporting cast that you should go watch this film. How else would you know how this star was made?

The first half just sails past you like a catch you have missed in the field. Then the movie begins to stump you. However does he become captain? The movie will not tell you. How does lad from Ranchi become Captain Cool? Where is Sapna Bhavnani who gave him freaky hair? How did he become such a motorbike fan? The movies does not tell you. Were there machinations involved in team selection? The movie does not tell you. Yuvraj Singh and Dhoni have crossed paths as kids, do they become friends as they both become teammates? This movie does not tell you.

The movie goes full frontal Bollywood with his first girlfriend whose story seems straight out of afternoon soaps. Each time she says (and she says this so many times), ‘We do have lots of time together, don’t we?’, you know that horrible things will happen. Each time Bollywood shows anyone driving with a vapid smile on their face thinking happy thoughts, you know they’re heading towards a disaster. And here’s where you want to ask Neeraj Pandey, ‘Who needs to fiddle with the steering wheel so much while driving straight ahead?’

Anyway! This fanboy tale drags on through several, no more than several terribly morphed shots of Dhoni into Sushant at different matches. But the film won’t tell you how Dhoni learnt to be the master strategist of the game? Did he sit down to watch his opponents play with someone? Did the team party together? Did they hate each other?

Azhar the movie failed because they whitewashed all his misdeeds and portrayed him as 'good'. This one comes very close to sugarcoating everything about Dhoni as well. You know BCCI is not exactly untainted. You know careers were made and broken when he became captain. You want to know this and you are shown more Bollywood. He meets the girl who he is to marry in the same fashion he met the girl before. Now that’s so Bollywood, you forget to laugh along with the hero worshipping roommate Ritu. What a lovely little cameo.

And songs! Who needs pointless songs? Why can't they just make a sports movie? But you know they're going to take you through the final world cup win, which makes the bad morphing (sometimes you know that is Dhoni and not Sushant Singh Rajput) tolerable. But how did Yuvi take the change of batting order? The film does not tell you. It needs to get back to cricket.

And cricket fans just love watching the world cup win again and again. The theater erupts in wild clapping when the real Dhoni is shown at last. And you realise that had this film been a documentary of Dhoni’s achievements, it would be a full house. But then you would not have seen so many lovely uncredited characters (the film PR has done them injustice!). You come back home 190 minutes later wishing there was someone like Coach’s wife (marvelous bargainer of fish!) at home who understood the game and made you chai.

Take a bow all you awesome actors: Rajesh Sharma the school coach, his bargaining-brilliantly-for-fish wife, Dhoni's mum, Dhoni's best friends, local cricket commentators, the BAS bat maker, Bihar selector who is in a meeting and forgets that Dhoni might not have money to reach Kolkata, Mr Ganguly of the Railways, all ticket collector friends Dhoni shares his 'quarters' with, young lad who plays Dhoni at school, the young man who plays Yuvraj Singh, the Pakistani shopkeeper who is a cricket fan, and even Sakshi's dizzy over Dhoni roommate Ritu. Without you people, the movie would have been just plain awful.

Review: BANJO

Fun, Frothy, Musical Romance As Long As Nargis Fakhri Does Not Speak

3 stars

Mini Review:

We make good musicals, that everyone knows. This film is about a street music band, hugely popular at religious festivals, community celebratory gatherings like dandiyas, but get no respect because they’re not posh ‘rock’ bands. This film brings their music and their lives on to cinema and tell us an engaging love story.

Main Review:

Local hoodlum Tarrat (played quite convincingly by Riteish Deshmukh) is an extortionist by day, and a Banjo player by night. His band is a bunch of misfits: Grease, Paper and Baaja. Grease (Dharmesh Yelande) obviously works in an auto garage; Paper distributes newspapers, Baaja plays little drums in a wedding band that plays melancholy music to get the bride to cry…

They make awesome party music. And the drums play through your chest as the Dolby Surround sound in the theater adds more magic. Then comes Nargis Fakhri out of New York, bearing her bizarre accent to Bombay in search of the sound and the frenzy that Banjo generates. The surprise connect is Luke Kenny who looks like a ‘firang’ but speaks like a local (the audience loves it when he speaks perfectly good Hindi!).

The accent is the one thing that annoys you so much you stuff popcorn in your ear to simply watch her generous lips (trying hard to not say ‘duckface’) mouth those words and wonder: How does she pout so much?

Her fisherwoman fantasy act in the song ‘Udanchhoo’ will make you forgive her everything. She looks gorgeous then. And there’s a club song ‘Rada’ is fun too.

Now Ms. Bizarre Accent wants to record two songs with the Banjo group to enter some contest (of course she seems to forget all that until the very end) so she gets some gig...But she ends up working for this awful research agency who sends her off to take pictures of unhappy people in slums. Who? Whaaaat? Whyyy? This brings Tarrat (she calls him Tarot in her bizarre accent!) to her. Every time she wants to tell him why she really is wandering about in the slums, something happens.

You cringe because you’re going to her her speak some more, alas.

The band is fabulous, and they share a brilliant chemistry. The film has been shot in narrow alleyways and the local thug Patil saab makes for a fun character to watch too. More than his gold, it was fun watching him near a plate of the mava cupcakes, every single time (even when he’s on the phone on the terrace, there’s a goon holding a plate of those cupcakes behind him!). Well done Ravi Jadhav! It is these little details that make up the movie.

While the second half sags a bit, it picks up pace rather quickly and you have fun. Loved the four of them at the funeral and loved the awful cops that beat up and talk at the same time. There’s a little boy called ‘Cutting’ who was a delight to watch. I loved Luke Kenny’s quiet support role, as much as I did the old man in a band uniform in the scene where Tarrat comes home drunk both on love and alcohol, and he quietly places his hand over the lad…

The fly in the ointment? The horrible stereotypical club owner played by Mohan Kapoor. Come on! We’re not in the 70s any more we could have done with a less lecherous person.

The climax is good fun. The movie ends rather well. Great song, and ending of rivalries. Yes, yes, there’s a rival band there too. Go watch them, and dance in the aisles. And hope Riteish stops acting in the awful sex comedies and gives us such happy frothy romances.     

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

Review: BRIDGET JONES'S BABY

The Franchise Is Truly Dead.

1 star

Mini Review:

Want to see what a fizzled out franchise looks like? Then watch this film.The cast you loved is all there. It’s just that they don’t realise that they’re all rather ancient and pretending to be cute looks just puts the audience off their popcorn.

Main Review:

Bridget Jones is still writing in her diary. She’s still complaining about her batty mum and dad. She’s complaining about this and that and being cute yet alone and being cute and yet drunk and being cute and… You get the picture…

She’s 43, people! And to watch Renee Zellweger scrunch up her eyes and nose to try and look like the original young person struggling to keep her job, lose weight, find a man, and she’s dancing and jumping on her bed to a song (Jump Around by House of Pain) that was released in 1992 in 2016… No wonder she doesn’t recognise Ed Sheeran. Cute? Perhaps the only thing cute in the movie. And only because all of us have some time of the other missed recognising celebs on a flight or at a restaurant.

The rest seems to be forced and after a while ‘I cannot pronounce foreign names because they sound stupid’ or ‘All Chinese look alike’ type jokes seem really juvenile and xenophobic even.

But there’s Colin Firth and his Brit accent that makes everything tolerable. Remember Jennifer Aniston’s rom com movies like Object of Affection and how we sort of thought that pretty women manipulate men into doing things they want? Here, even those of us who invested our attention on Bridget Jones because she fell in love with Darcy (from every girl’s favorite novel) cannot help but be a little angry at the woman who wants Jack played by Patrick Dempsey (so-oh the perfect boyfriend material!) but cannot let go of the inner hankering of Darcy. ‘I didn’t feel like telling’ is not a cute excuse at 43, it is a calculating move. You hope both men walk away into the sunset leaving her gold-digging arse behind!

Fans of the original movie should skip this one. And if you have a hankering to not miss rom-coms, the wait for it to show up on the telly.    

  

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

Review: PARCHED

Same Ole Abala Naari Tale In New Bottle

2. 5 stars

Mini Review:

Rajasthan is probably the heart of patriarchy land, and the villages hide many ugly tales. But three friends are there to support one another and they eventually learn to help each other fight the ugly reality that is their life. Shot beautifully, the film seems much longer than its running time because it is full of cliches about women and the feminist text seems to be borrowed rather than believed.

Main Review:

‘How come all the insults are connected to women? Why only ‘motherfucker’ and ‘sisterfucker’, why is there no ‘fatherfucker’ or ‘brotherfucker’?’

Such easy feminist rants have come and gone on social networks. So you wish the filmmaker had thought up of some other ‘clap because I’m saying cool things’ moments.

Shot beautifully in a Rajasthan village, this film is a story of three women frineds - Tannishtha Chatterjee, Radhika Apte and Surveen Chawla - and how their lives keep them thirsting for a better life.

Some will choose to be shocked at the lives they lead: women are ‘allowed’ to have cell phones, but no tv; women do all the work and put up with husbands who prefer whorehouses than home; not one woman expects tenderness from the husbands… Adil Hussain is wasted as a one night stand and the young girl who plays Rani’s daughter in law is made to cry all through the movie as a cardboard cutout. But others are no better. It’s just that the actors are talented and they bring their own personalities to the characters they play.  

Tannistha plays Rani, a widow householder who is ready to get her son married to a girl barely fifteen. The son of course is a nasty piece of work called Gulab.

Radhika plays Lajjo, a wife who cannot have babies (hence cursed) and lies with her abusive husband.

The surprise package is Bijli, the dancer, the whore who is Rani’s friend (and therefore by association, a friend of Lajjo too!). Surveen Chawla is simply outstanding in her portrayal of a dancing girl who hankers for love under her natural outrageousness…

The connect between the three women is so amazing, you wish all the other domestic things they are shown involved in go on for too long. You wish the filmmaker had been inspired by Thelma and Louise and had learnt the art of brevity and precision from there.

The story wanders along the pains and the suffering so much you begin to groan each time the women are tortured by the menfolk. The violence is not new but there’s only so much of slapping across the face one can watch on the screen without cringing. Some moments are luminous, but you fail to understand why no one sits down to edit, edit, edit.

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

Review: THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

Exactly As The Title suggests: Magnificent

3 stars

Mini Review:

Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai has been made and remade and made again in so many languages. Now Antoine Fuqua brings you his version of the same story. It may not rent your soul like Seven Samurai does, nor does it make you drool over the easy macho of Yul Brynner and other cowboys in the 1960 version. But it’s fun, fully action packed, and has seemingly unending ammunition.

Main Review:

If you have watched Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, you have seen humanity at it’s wretched worst. Your hearts melt at the poverty the villagers have been trapped in and the cruelty of the bandits. The 1960 version is less wretched even though it remains a tragedy, but it gives you heroes each with his own unique quality.

If you are a fan of the earlier versions, you will expect this new film to have the same emotional connect. It doesn’t. You know the story too well and yet, the beginning freezes you in the seat. It is surprising. It is shocking. And it sets the tone for the story. You are terrified of Peter Sarsgaard as you should be. You want the village saved.

As you settle down with the popcorn, you wish you could have had a better emotional connect with the cowboys but you are happy just watching their skills.

‘Throw, slice, stab!’ There’s nothing more to it, Billy Rocks tries to teach the villagers to use the knife…

‘Her name is Ethel, and she’s the love of my life,’ Faraday talks about his gun…

And Denzel Washington attempts to be as laconic as Yul Brynner but his character comes across as too broody.

But Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio bring so much passion to their characters, you fall in love with the story once again.

The body count is more, and the bad guy is badder and even more cruel than Gabbar could ever be in the desi version of the story. The second half action as the movie prepares to meet the baddie are really shot like they loved it. But in spite of all that, you do wish for a Revenant like view captured for the big screen. But still, when the old familiar music comes along with the end credits, you emerge happy from the theater, pleased with the experience.

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

review: Raaz Reboot

Isharon Ko Agar Samjho RAAZ REBOOT Ko Raaz Rehne Do!

1 star

Mini Review:

Emraan Hashmi is Aditya again. Alas there’s no Bipasha Basu rebooted as Shanaya, but another pretty girl (Kriti Khabanda) rebooted as Shaina redoing the Arth 'mangalsutra beads are broken' act, the ghosts that possess bodies are still levitating and contorting bodies, and creaking doors and yanking screaming women under the bed… Reboot means Rehash.

Main Review:

The movie has great locales and the setting is so amazing (it earns its sole star), you wish they had taken advantage of the local legend of vampires (the movie is shot in Romania) to make it a little more fun. But it’s the same ole story of possessed bodies that levitate and contort, get dragged under beds, screams and dreams, creepy crows at windows and exorcists that run out of rooms terrified.

There is a moment of hundred per cent creepiness, though. It’s when the creepy crow turns kamikaze and crashed through the windscreen.

Sorry to tell it, but the rest of the times, it’s a very tedious watch. Shanaya has fought with Rehan the reluctant husband (he does not want to be finance head of a Romanian bank, he does not want to sleep with his beautiful wife) and have now come to Romania where they met and fell in love. Within a month, the pretty wife is possessed after she unpacks a bleeding computer (am not offering a vituperative, the computer really does bleed).

Why is Rehan (Gaurav Arora) so reluctant and sulky? Maybe he needs a haircut (his hair weighs probably more than his entire body weight, and it’s so fluffy, they missed a shampoo/conditioner endorsement!), maybe he needs to wear less tight trousers, or maybe he realises that he missed acting classes that taught expressions other than plain sulky… But they tell us that he has a secret that makes him permanently sulky. And the trouble is Shanaya wants to know it and on top of it, she is plagued by a spirit. How one missed Bipasha’s Shanaya and Ashutosh Rana’s Professor Agni Swaroop here. But all is not lost! We have a blind man who writes with a pen on paper (would have been easier in braille, no?), he even knows when there is no more space left on the page, and reads from an illustrated ancient text he carries around and reads from…

But thankfully the pretty girl is very pretty. So pretty, the spirit wants to drink chai from the same cup with her! And follows her everywhere and lays her naked on the dining table (all the better to feast on, I suppose), It even… You have to stop falling asleep in the movie, the person next to you shakes you awake. You miss Adhyayan Suman here… Even though he lost the baby with his Nandita in the second Raaz, at least he gets her to the hospital. Here sulky Rehan with silky head of hair simply attempts to imitate Hrithik Roshan’s pinched nostril act and fails. His friends (poor Indian couple) get stuck with reading what the blind man has written and generally there so that the spirit can beat someone else other than ridiculous Rehan.

Emran Hashmi must have has a whale of a time in this film. He is Aditya again. This time a Creative Director, photographer who has had a passionate affair with Shanaya (rehashed… I mean ‘Rebooted’ character), and just like Prithvi who drew slashed wrists pictures, this time he dreams vivid dreams…

By the time the music has lulled you into thinking you have heard these tunes before, thankfully spirits have emerged from the possessed girl in a black smoke and crashed into the windows and it is daylight again (the ushers in the theater have opened the ‘exit’ doors for you). It’s a relief from this terribly rehashed story.    

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

review: PINK

Drama Stuck In The 90s

2.5 stars

Mini Review:

Two hours and sixteen minutes long moral science lessons on molestation of women and the attitude society still nurtures. You learn nothing new, you haven’t seen anything different, you have heard it all before. But having Amitabh Bachchan make an argument for the cause, his whisky and honey baritone commenting on male entitlement and patriarchy makes all the difference.

Main Review:

Remember Damini? With Sunny Deol’s fist on court desk  makes a memorable point about courtrooms, ‘Tareekh pe tareekh!’? Well, it’s been 23 years since that iconic film, but looks like nothing has changed. This time it’s Amitabh Bachchan using his impeccable baritone to preach to the converted, ‘No, means no’

Is the film good? Sure. It has superb moments when Amitabh Bachchan lawyers up and finds all the loopholes in the investigation made by the police, the prosecution. It has outbursts from the girls who have been accused of everything from solicitation to attempt at murder. But it also has a sleazy prosecutor (Piyush Mishra) - a stereotype you have seen in so many movies (and on police tv shows) you are not surprised at all at any dialog. Not one. It’s so formulaic, you are not even surprised at the outbursts from the girls and the judge admonishing them. The only thing missing is the instruction to the jury (you’ve seen in Hollywood movies) which goes something like, ‘The jury shall ignore the last remark’ and to the court reporter, ‘Please strike that last outburst from the record!’

The subject is current and important. Molestation is never right, and it does not matter if the girl was drunk or wearing flashy clothes, when she says, ‘No!’ the men need to back off. So when you hear praise for a film such as this one, just step back and look at it as cinema. You’ll realise that everything that happens is so ‘seen that, heard that’ - from the neighbors who ogle at girls, to the gentle landlord (whatever does happen to him, you wonder!), to the waiters and manager at restaurant, to Falak’s office colleagues - everything and everyone is so predictable, you actually admire the bad boys. They are brilliantly cast: the creepy cousin (Vijay Verma) who wasn’t even there but is outraged about women who do not stay in ‘aukaat’ (boundaries), the Bengali lad (Tushar Pandey) who is accessory to the molestation but attempts to do the right thing, even the two girls Falak (played beautifully although hysterically by Kirti Kulhari) and Andrea Tariang are cast well. But the stories of the girls are so much like you have seen on TV shows like Saavdhaan India and Crime Patrol that you find more mystery in the mixed caramel and cheese popcorn tub in your arms.

You wish Tapsee Pannu did not have to be such a wuss at the trial (remember Jodie Foster in The Accused? You want that!). You wish the film had been crisper. You wish there was at least one Amitabh Bachchan dialog you could take home with you. ‘No means no’ does have the same drama as Sunny Deol’s ‘Tareekh pe tareekh’ or the laconic brilliance of ‘Tera naam kya hai Basanti’... Watch it because you cannot miss out on a film that attempts to talk about a subject that needs talking about. Just remember that the subject alone does not make it an amazing film.

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)