Turning 30

Sometimes I wonder if it I am losing my sense of humour. Or have I completely lost connect with what people find humourous these days. Because I catch myself not laughing at stuff which the entire theatre seems to be guffawing at. Maybe its old age. I don’t know. I hope to find out soon enough. And when I do, you would be the first to be told about it. Of course, if someone has the answer to it, I would be more than glad to listen. I have one more worry. Its been over 100 reviews now and I find myself being a little more stringent on my ratings than before. Is that the general feeling with everyone or just a figment of my imagination? Do let me know. Comments welcome.


Nevertheless, let’s shift our focus to the life of Naina (Gul Panag). She is 2 weeks from her 30th birthday. An event that has been made out to be supremely larger than life by a vast majority of the public in general. These days, it would seem as important as achieving puberty or getting a driver’s license. Naina is in an extremely fulfilling relationship with her boyfriend Rishabh (Siddharth Makkar). They have been seeing each other for nearly 3 years now. And the time has come to take the relationship to take the final plunge – that of marriage. Add to that the fact that Naina is a successful creative director @ ADZ. Things couldn’t be better for her. And she knows that her boy friend is going to propose to her anytime. Rishabh’s parents are happy. Her mother (Anita Kanwar) is happy. What more could a woman ask for just before she is about to turn the biggest corner in her life.

But, like most stories, things have to fall apart sometime. And that happens when Yamini (Ira Dubey) walks into their life. An innocent meeting between Rishabh and Yamini ends up activating Rishabh’s instincts to be responsible towards his parents and not just himself. Seeing the opportunity to marry rich, he decides to change his mind and now get married to Yamini instead. Very smart boy I say. Obviously Naina is shattered and spends the next few days crying over it. She is given reasonable support by her buddies Rukshana (Jeneva Talwar) and Malini (Tillotama Shome). Add to that the politics in her office where her colleague (Sameer Malhotra) takes all credit for the work that she puts in thanks to an affair he is having with her boss Rathod (Bikramjeet Kanwarpal). Before she knows it, she is also out of a job. But as easily as she goes through the pains, she gets her job back by threatening to escalate to the New York Office. And her boy friend from the past, Jai (Purab Kohli) comes back into her life. If only things were as easy an lucky in everyone’s life.

Alankrita Shrivastava gets added to the list of fast growing first time directors in Bollywood. I am sure her intent was very noble to say the least but she falls quite flat with Turning 30. Long way to go for her to get to any reasonable level of directing it would seem. And was it a figment of my imagination that Gul Panag was a solid actress on her way to being better with each movie? Her last 2 outings i.e. Hello Darling and Turning 30 would seem to indicate otherwise. She just cannot cry OR the quality of her tears is so superb that one cannot see them due to the transparency OR the print used @ PVR Mulund was that of an extremely poor quality. I somehow think it’s the former. Extremely disappointing to say the least. The stand out performance though is from Tillotama Shome  (Alice in Monsoon wedding – who Vijay Raaz is trying to court – yes she speaks too J) who plays the role of a lesbian friend extremely well. Especially the point where she comes out of the closet – well executed I say. The only other high point of the movie would be the portrayal of Naina’s desperation to get Rishabh back at all costs. The rest of the movie was imminently forgettable. 4 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/broadband/video/Movie-Promos/4VPAFj39/1/Theatrical-Trailer-Turning-30.html

Aisha

I was really really looking forward to catching up with the first day show of Aisha. I had been listening to the music for the past 3 weeks. Set up Aisha songs as my caller tune coz the music was really good. Very typical Amit Trivedi. A nice mélange of several genres of music. 6 neatly packed songs into what seemed to be a fresh and exciting movie to watch. Professional commitments and then a week long illness kept me away from the screen till last evening. The movie started off as I had predicted with the foot tapping chick number – By the Way (Anushka Manchanda). But what started off promisingly and sustained the momentum all through the first half kind of just fizzled out into – I would be harsh if I were to call it a damp squib – but it almost got there.

Aisha Kapoor (Sonam A Kapoor) is your average rich semi spoilt kid from South Central Delhi whose Dad (M K Raina) is rich enough to buy her a Volkswagen Beetle. Probably as her 21st birthday gift or something. She is bestest friends with Pinky Bose (Ira Dubey) who is a self confessed man lover but also commitment phobe – I already like her . She is also close friends with Arjun Burman (Abhay Deol) who has kind of grown up with the family. Arjun is now an investment banker – I sometimes find it extremely difficult to digest these fancy professions which get credited to characters in movies, lead or otherwise. Do the people involved in making movies even know what goes into the life of an I-Banker or what does an investment Banker’s schedule look like? Or does an I-Banker even have the bandwidth after her/his 18 hour work days to spare time on some random weekend for a polo game? Maybe I am wrong but my impression of these corporate slaves is far different from what was shown.

Nevertheless, completing the entire shebang are Randhir Gambhir (Cyrus Sahukar), Aarti Menon (Lisa Haydon) and Dhruv Singh (Arunoday Singh). Randhir is the usual rich bum whose dad owns a massive sweets business. He is totally smitten by Aisha. Aarti is the NY return colleague of Arjun who is “just friends” with him. And Dhruv is the nerd grown hunkie. Son of Col. Singh (Yuri Suri) who has just married Aisha’s Maasi – Chitra (Anooradha Patel).

Now Aisha is fully capable of finding herself a job but as I had mentioned earlier, she is the semi spoilt rich kid. Semi spoilt coz she restricts herself to spending 53 grand on her dad’s credit card without batting an eyelid. 53 grand is like peanuts for the average rich Delhi household. In most cases the response would have been, “Bas Itna hi??? Jawaan Beti hai, aaj nahin kharchegi toh kab karegi. Aur itna paisa kis liye kamaaya hai”. She instead, indulges herself in what she calls – Social Service i.e. setting up couples together. She claims to run an event management firm but honestly the movie does not give any indications of this other than her claiming it. Her current pet project is Shefali (Amrita Puri) who has come to Delhi from Bahadurgarh with the sole intent of getting married. The movie revolves around Aisha’s attempts to get her hitched first with Randhir and then with Dhruv. In between all of this there is Saurabh (Anand Tiwari) who is smitten by Shefali but thanks to Aisha is not allowed to even get close simply because he is too middle class. Arjun doesn’t like this interference one bit and keeps giving Aisha a piece of his mind which is to no avail.

Aisha is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. I have read Emma a really long time back and tried to get my hands on the book so that I could go thru it once again before I saw Aisha but guess what – out of stock. I somehow don’t think it is due to Aisha. I do have a vague recollection of the book and I think the story is quite similar and Rajashree Ojha & Devika Bhagat (Screenplay) have done it some justice. Most importantly, they have credited Jane Austen with the script and story which is very unlike most Bollywood production houses. I guess it was Anil Kapoor’s attempt to increase his credibility in Hollywood.

Performances are quite acceptable. Sonam A Kapoor has increased her level just that one bit in her 4th movie. Abhay Deol as usual is completely at ease in front of the camera. Ira Dubey too has done quite a good job as the forever spiteful, Randhir hating, Pinky Bose. Stand out performance is by Amrita Puri who in her debut movie who has done full justice to the role of Shefali from Bhadurgarh. My friends from Delhi would agree with me when I say that she has actually captured the nuances of such a character very very well both in demeanour as well as dialogue. Good show Amrita.

The editing, consistency and sound editing are however atrocious to say the least. Come on guys at least ensure the movie is finished well. Could have easily gone upto 6 on 10 with proper finishing and some cuts in between to ensure the movie was of the right length. Thoda overboard chala gaya. Khinch gaya. 4 on 10 final verdict.