Dolly Ki Doli

It is always pleasantly surprising to walk into a movie that you didn’t expect to be even remotely watchable and it turns out to be just that a little better for you to walk out satisfied.  Although I will not allow it to affect my overall rating, DOLLY KI DOLI, falls into this category and was a good start to my Thursday.

Happy Ending

Saif Ali Khan is getting a tad predictable these days.  Over the past 4 years, he is trying to carve a niche for himself as the leading hero for Romantic Comedies. Not unfortunately but not excitingly either it doesn’t seem to be putting forth anything different for audiences.

Bullett Raja

Tigmanshu Dhulia is associated with hard hitting intense movies that have really solid dialogues and more importantly a really solid story.  Bullett Raja ticks most of the boxes but at the end of the day it is nothing we haven’t seen before.  The narration, the overall feel of the story, the performances and even the music had “seen that” written all over it from frame 1 (technically frame 1 + 10 mins coz I came in late) to finish.

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

Race 2

All of you would know what to expect when you walk into a movie that has the tag of the Burmawalas associated with it.  One can expect a lot of colour.  By colour I mean every perceivable shade of every perceivable colour would be splashed all across the screen in primarily in the form of the outfits that some gorgeous specimens of humanity would be seen wearing.  In Race 2, the colour extends itself to the houses, the parties, the aircrafts, the scenery, the ruins and of course – the parachutes.

Cocktail (Hindi 2012)

Cocktail is directed by Homi Adajania whose first movie was Being Cyrus (remember) which I thought was a very good piece of work. And I was quite amused at the expression that someone gave me when I predicted that Cocktail will be a very good movie. I trusted Homi to deliver a movie that was at least as well made as his singular previous attempt.

For those who came in late, by well made, I mean attention to detail, getting the finer aspects correct, ensuring that the right cuts are made, making sure that there are minimal or zero consistency errors etc. etc. etc. At the end of 150 minutes, I was disappointed with all these aspects of the movie – I can now visualize my friend grinning ear to ear saying “I told you so”.

Thanks to a decent story line, this RomCom which is written by Imtiaz Ali and Sajid Ali (and it has Imtiaz Ali ALL OVER IT), turns out to be a decent watch. Cocktail is the story of three people who get thrown in together by some twists of fate and go onto become really good friends. Gautam (Saif Ali Khan) is a Casanova of sorts. A software engineer in London who hits on anything that is in a skirt or a saree or salwar or even a pair of jeans. And is successful more often than not. Veronica (Deepika Padukone) is the female equivalent of Gautam who spends most of her non working time getting smashed out of her wits on endless rounds of tequila shots and other varieties of alcohol.

And then there is Meera (Diana Penty) who is a demure damsel from India. She has flown into London only to find out that her husband (Randeep Hooda) is part of an elaborate immigration scheme and doesn’t want anything to do with her anymore. She bumps into Veronica who takes her in and they become close friends in a short while. In comes Gautam and so does a steamy relationship with Veronica. Meera makes sure that she stays out of their way and makes her dislike for Gautam quite obvious at all occasions – but then one cannot help remember the Airtel tag line about friends.

Cocktail turns out to be a good enough film to be seen once at the end of the day. A story line that has been seen before in Indian cinema but hasn’t been portrayed in a RomCom sort of way. Cocktail bridges that gap for sure but it could have done with some better finishing. The performances are reasonably strong across the board but I was disappointed with Deepika who has gone over the top at times. Diana Penty is quite good if you manage to look beyond her stunning looks that is (I can assure you it was extremely difficult) – but I guess she will stick around just on the basis of the latter for a while to come.

Superb performances from Boman Irani and Dimple Kapadia who outshine everyone else with little or no effort. Pritam’s definitely inspired music sounds good in parts but not so great in parts. Lot of psychedelic effects to show the pain and conflict in Veronica’s mind towards the end. Was irritating but good. Overall, worth a dekko. Don’t expect much and definitely don’t expect something as good as Cyrus. 5 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FfBzyiU0ZU

Agent Vinod (2012)

In a recent quiz, I had asked this question - The kidnapping of a prominent scientist, Ajay Saxena (Nazir Hussain) prompts the Chief of Secret Services (K.N. Singh) to assign flamboyant X (Mahendra Sandhu) to this case. While on this assignment, X meets with Ajay's daughter, Anju (Asha Sachdev), who insists on assisting him. The duo is further assisted by Chandu aka James Bond (Jagdeep) and his gypsy girlfriend (Jayshree T). The two couples will soon have numerous challenges thrust on them, and will realize that their task is not only very difficult but also life threatening. Which 1977 movie am I talking about? The answer was the 1977 movie Agent Vinod – In service of the nation. I was surprised that a team actually cracked the answer.

The biggest controversy of course leading upto the movie was that involving our very own inspired music director Pritam. The Pyar Ki Pungi Song which was apparently lifted from the Iranian Song “Soosan Khanoom” bears little resemblance to the so called original. I think the Iranian Band Barobax should listen to some of Pritam’s other inspirational numbers to understand where the person can go down to. In fact they should thank Pritam because thanks to him, the hits on their you tube video have crossed a million. Judge for yourself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE63JoBA6iI. And they should also feel better because almost all songs have been copied. Including inspiration from that great ode to Russia’s Public Enemy #1 from BoneyM – Rasputin (in case you were wondering).

Now that we have got the useless pieces of trivia out of the way, lets get down to the review of the movie. Do not let the detractors tell you that Agent Vinod is a waste of time or torture (as someone said while exiting the theatre). It is in most parts a smartly made espionage movie – with loads of inspiration from our friend from MI5. It is great to see one from our part of the world. If you keep aside the corny one liners that Vinod makes – attempting to be slick like bond, you will breeze through the movie. And hope that you don’t get into a PVR which takes 30 minutes to start the movie and has a 20 minute interval!!! The cinematography is good. The titling is very well done and gives you feeling of a well made movie in the first few minutes only. The disappointing part was the lack of good finishing towards the end but one could overlook that I guess.

Sriram Raghavan (Ek Hasina Thi, Johnny Gaddar), claimed all the way through the build up that the 2012 movie which released today was in no way inspired by the 1977 hit (if I may call it that). I am quite certain there was an inspiration hidden somewhere. While I liked Raghavan’s previous 2 movies – and I wasn’t alone there, Agent Vinod I would guess falls short significantly. The last time Saifeena paired on screen in that famous size zero movie, audiences reportedly left the hall tearing their hair apart – or so I am told. I guess Raghavan had more confidence on them but the chemistry fails miserably. Mostly from Kareena’s side – and it has nothing to do with the absolute bias I have against her. Guess they are one of those couples who have chemistry where it matters to them as a couple.

I must confess that I found myself really enjoying the movie in parts and then Raghavan kind of stretches a point too far and lets the movie wander all over the place before getting it back on track. The good scenes like the fight between AV and Prince of the LTTE have been edited exceptionally by Pooja Ladha Surti (Ragini MMS, Johnny Gaddar). I thought it AV was enjoyable. I leave it to you to decide. 6 on 10. Definitely the movie to watch out for this weekend.

And watch out for the hotties - Maryam Zakaria, Vasilisa Petina, Leeann Roberts, and Malika Haydon

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi929669401/

Aarakshan

The power of marketing or should I be more specific and say “Jab PR kiya toh darna kya”??? (Corny as hell ain’t it :P). But that is exactly what you could describe the events over the past 2 days as. First there were reports from Uttar Pradesh and then Punjab if I am not mistaken. And then finally Andhra Pradesh joined the bandwagon. One can be quite certain that this bandwagon is not going to grown exponentially. The reason – Because there is nothing objectionable at all in Aarakshan. Its nothing but a brilliant piece of PR and I tip my hat to the agency behind it. A superb way to generate more excitement around a movie that was anyways expected to be good and fare quite well at the BO. The news of the ban and the intense promotion around the news has only helped it more – or has it? I would have thought that people would have anyways gone to see the Big B in his 2nd movie for the year and his first truly respectable role since Paa. I thought BBuddah was OK but nothing immensely respectable by a country mile for the biggest star in Indian cinema. As such the entire PR stunt was generally much ado about actually nothing. In fact I thought I may have missed a thing or two since I was so eagerly looking out for what was it that people of UP or AP and most surprisingly Punjab found in the movie to ban it. Weird I say.

Aarakshan (Reservation) tries to deal with the ever controversial topic of reservation on the basis of caste and creed. Is it justifiable to use reservation as a means of getting back at another caste or group of people from a specific caste purely because hundreds of years back, you were a victim of the same? Doesn’t it make sense to reserve seats for the truly economically backward and that too if and only if they really show some spark? Why is it that teaching as a profession is not given as much importance as say the Police or Civil Services. So where you have options to become an IAS Officer or an IPS Officer, why is it that you don’t have the option of becoming an ITS Officer (Indian Teaching Services)? And then again should the government not be doing its bit to really work on quality primary education and providing facilities to those who are economically backward or for that matter from the so called backward communities which give them a level playing field with anyone else and encourage fair competition? Are these coaching classes just converting education into a full fledged money making business and nothing else? Just some of the questions that Aarakshan throws up. What was so controversial about it, I would never know. Just leads me to believe that we are still just a literate nation and far from being an educated one.

I have always loved Prakash Jha’s direction especially since Gangajal where he really got his levels of intensity into direction really high. A trait which kind of seems missing in the first few minutes of Aarakshan but if you are a bit patient, it slowly creeps up and comes to the Prakash Jha that we are familiar with. The tempo also keeps fluctuating but Jha keeps the overall interest alive all through. What I did find a tad tacky was that some scenes were not seamlessly stitched together. From a perspective of performances, I could only find fault with Pratiek Babbar who still seems like a struggling child artiste. The screen presence of the Big B and Manoj Bajpayee are superb to say the least. And Saif continues to do reasonably well with the exceptions of some robotic moments. The same case with Deepika (who is totally stunning especially for 10 seconds when she wears the blue saree and pink blouse). Music was average. A couple of consistency errors which I found too surprising just added to the feeling that not only was this clearly not Jha’s best effort to date but also one where not much attention has been put in either. A tad disappointed but still a good movie to catch up with. 6.5 on 10 is the verdict.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi792042521/