Samrat & Co.

The first thing that cheeses you off with Samrat and Co. is that the lead character is referred to as STD.  Apparently that expands into Samrat Tilak Dhari (Rajeev Khandelwal).  That it would send us back in time to the days of expensive phone calls or remind us of some unwanted diseases really didn’t cross the mind of anyone in the entire team.  Maybe it was intentional.

Mickey Virus

For the rest of the week, I will be catching up with reviews that are horribly delayed thanks to a really tough 3 weeks.  But now that I have the time, we will have a minor flurry of them starting with a decent movie called Mickey Virus that I had the opportunity to catch up with on my way back from Pilani in the capital a couple of weeks back.

Shortcut Romeo

Consider a husband who has a 13000 crore business believes in meditating in front of a wall size picture of a bearded swami baba. After that, he doesn't quite bother about his sex-starved wife - one that is described by our hero Suraj (Neil Nitin Mukesh) as Makkan jaisi jawaani (crudely translated as sizzling hot). Usually the result is infidelity of some kinds. No?

Go Goa Gone

Predictably, the page for Go Goa Gone (GGG) on www.bollywoodhungama.com refers to the genre of this movie as Zom-Com.  It was obviously intended to be funny – the term that is – and does strike as funny for a bit.  Say it in your head a couple of times.  There were RomComs and now there are ZomComs.  Funny no?

 

What you will soon realize that the funny feeling lasts only upto the time that you walk into the cinema hall.  After that, it will dawn upon your pea brain that the joke was actually on you.  That you were the one who was conned by a superb marketing effort by the producers who lured you into the nearest hall to squeeze the living daylights out of you while you try and sustain GGG.

 

Hardik (Kunal Khemu), Luv (Vir Das) and Bunny (Anand Tiwari) are close friends who work together and stay together in what can be best called – A Bachelor Pad.  Hardik and Luv are lazy as can be.  They are also horny as can be.  The 3 of them take off to Goa after Luv gets dumped and Bunny gets called for a business presentation.

 

Here Luv conveniently bumps into the sizzling hot Luna (Puja Gupta) who also invites the gang to a rave party that is being organized by the Russian Mafia on a desolate island off the coast.  The main attraction – the latest drug that is sold in a red capsule and costs $100 a pop.  The side effect – everyone turns into a zombie the next day.  WOW!!!!

 

Now if you don’t find the story ridiculous then get a load of this.  To test if you are a zombie, the following tests have to be conducted.  First you find out what the person has had the previous night.  Next you ask him to narrate multiplication tables.  Then ask him the capital of Uganda and finally show him blood so that you can find out if he gets excited by its sight.  Wait a minute.  Why can’t we just jump to step 4 directly?

 

If you still do not find the concept ridiculous, then by all means go ahead and watch Saif Ali Khan making a fool of himself as a Russian Mafioso and drug dealer called Boris.  The music is nothing great.  The only saving grace is Puja Gupta in a blue 2 piece bikini and some other shots with not too much of clothing.

 

Are we in for a slew of Zombie movies in the days to come? We have had 2 in about a month or so.  I hope to god – and I seriously would like to pray – that we get over our fascination with this genre. I have never been a fan – Hollywood or Bollywood – of critters coming out of the ground and roaming around trying to be scary.  And Bollywood isn’t doing much to change my opinion in any way. 3 on 10.

 

Watch the trailer on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V5zGNVRmaE

Vicky Donor

There was an aura of “cheap slapstick” in the promos of Vicky Donor. It didn’t quite indicate anything about the content except that it had to do with donating sperm. Well it was about a guy who takes to donating sperm but there is much more in Vicky Donor. A cue that a lot of trailer makers can take to ensure that one needs to communicate more about the movie in a trailer. I agree with the mini skirt analogy for a trailer as well but with Vicky Donor it was more like a maxi.

John Abraham’s first home production is about Vicky Arora (Ayushmann Khurana) who is a twenty five year old young Punjabi boy from Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi. He lives with his mother Dolly (Dolly Ahluwalia) and his grandmother (Kamlesh Gill) in a barsati in an atypical house of Lajpat Nagar. Dolly runs a beauty parlour downstairs and does well enough to keep the three of them alive. But she worries about her son who is doing nothing as of now. Vicky doesn’t want to join Dolly’s brother clothing business and is struggling to find the right thing to do.

Cut to Dr. Baldev Chopra (Annu Kapoor) who runs a fertility clinic which is not doing too well because of good quality sperm. That is where he has a chance encounter with Vicky who picks up a small argument with someone close to Chopra’s place. Gut tells Chopra that Vicky will make the best sperm donor that he could have found. Therefore the first part of the movie concentrates on getting Vicky convinced to donate. All of this is peppered with a love story that builds between Vicky and Ashima Roy (Yaami Gautam) who is an executive at a local bank.

The highlight of Vicky Donor has to be the lovely use of Delhi or should I say Dilli humour. The average Dilli wala is enough of a character and speaks in a manner that is unique enough to build memorable characters. Vicky Donor utilizes this characteristic to maximum effect. Right from the lead character who gives his best to get the Lajpat Nagar effect all the way to the Bengali father-in-law played by Jayanta Das, the peculiarities of the typical Delhiite have been captured beautifully.

Kudos as well to the script by Juhi Chaturvedi a first timer in the movie business. The humour is very good and flirts with the slapstick. It however retains a clean nature. One cannot help but laugh through most of the movie. Even in its serious parts. Even more importantly, it is clean and can be seen by most of the family. Just be prepared for some innocent questions about sperm if you have kids around. Shoojit Sircar comes back to the screen after what was a critically acclaimed movie called Yahaan from over 7 years back. Maybe he was waiting for something as good as Vicky Donor to come by his way. This is a must see for those who haven’t seen it yet. 7 on 10 in my books for certain

Trailer on http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2872812313/