Bajirao Mastani (Hindi) (2015)

At the outset, let us first tip our hat or in fact give a standing ovation to a few people involved in Bajirao Mastani.  Fistly – Sriram Kannan Iyengar, Sujeet Subhash Sawant, Yantra Design Studio and Saloni Ankush Dhatrak for some breathtaking Production Design – probably the best we have seen since Mughal-e-Azam!!!

Lai Bhari

Lai Bhari has probably been the most hyped Marathi movie in recent times and the expectation is probably what left me feeling a bit let down at the end of it all.  If I had taken my usual trip in the weekend of release, it would have helped up my rating a notch I guess.  So, in the spirit of a fair rating, I will still put this as a 6 on 10 – watchable for sure but not necessarily on the screen.

Bobby Jasoos

It has been nearly 3 weeks since my last review.  For reasons that aren't the most pleasant and therefore will not be delved into.  But apparently I haven't missed much in Bollywood during my hiatus. Sajid Khan gave ACP Pradyumn and Daya their simplest case and Ritiesh Deshmukh played villain (I'm catching up with that next).

Dekh Tamasha Dekh

About 2-3 minutes into Feroze Abbas Khan’s second venture into Bollywood your reaction would be, “This doesn’t seem like a movie at all”.  For those unaware, FAK is a much more well known for his exploits in the theatre circuit.  It seems like the baggage from theatre has been carried over to Dekh Tamasha Dekh not just in terms of narration but more obviously in terms of cast.

Aurangzeb

Aurangzeb was known for his resoluteness towards one goal and one goal only – that of taking the empire from his father.  He went to the extent of jailing his own father for no apparent reason other than greed for the throne.  That, is the apparent logic for this thriller based out of Gurgaon that shows the deep rooted nexus between politicians, gang lords (mafia) and cops.

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/

Bubble Gum

It is very rarely that one comes across a weekend where there is absolutely no movie that was really great. My weekend started with Smurfs which was OK followed by Khap and Gandhi to Hitler which were both quite bad. @ noon on Sunday, a casual look at the PVR listings and I was glad that I woke up on time to see Bubble Gum – glad because I would have missed it and that would have meant one review lesser on the blog *sigh*. So it had to be the 1410 hrs show of Bubble Gum to kick start Sunday for me followed by the creepy Cowboys & Aliens which I wasn’t too optimistic about. The trailer of Bubble Gum and its posters scream out, “Its hard to be 14”. Seemed interesting. And I was hoping to get 4th time lucky as well considering that there were 1 average movie and 2 bad movies done and other than Bubble Gum there was 1 expectedly average movie to come up. I wasn’t about to be disappointed – thankfully.

Bubble Gum traces the story of a bunch of kids who are predictably – around 14 years old. Jamshedpur seems to be the flavor of the decade with quite a few movies in the recent past based out of the steel city – the more popular one being the Rajat Barmecha starrer Udaan. Nevertheless, Vidur (Sohail Lakhani) and Vedant Rawat (Delzad Sanjay Hiwale) are the sons of Sudha (Tanvi Azmi) and Mukund Rawat (Sachin Khedekar). Vidur, the elder one @ 16 I would guess, is a deaf mute and stays in a hostel. Vedant is the pesky and irritable 14 year old who believes that his parents are partial to his elder brother and hates the situation that he is in. There is a continuous comparison on how everything is oriented only around Vidur and no attention is paid to him. The frustrations of an average 14 year old actually. And to make matters worse Vedant falls in love – puppy love – the worst of its kind. The kind that leaves indelible scars on anyone who has been through it. The kind that at times haunts you for the rest of your life and leaves you incapable of falling in love again :D:D:D:D. And the girl is Jenny aka Cookie (Apoorva Arora), the daughter of the local commissioner of police. In between all of this is our 14 year old villain – Ratan (Suraj Singh) who also has a big thing for Jenny.

Bubble Gum tracks the emotions that go through a 14 year old in all of the situations described above. It talks about how parents should learn to let go and not be too protective about their children, about how people who we consider to be disabled may actually be far superior to us in many a way and about how at the end of the day the people who stand by us are invariably family amongst other messages. The movie is well made and reminds you of both Udaan and Do Dooni Chaar. However, it does have a strong star cast missing. Tanvi Azmi and Sachin Khedekar are as always solid and continue to be under-rated. The kids turn in a decent performance but turn out robotic many a time and therefore give the movie a feel that is not quite natural. But full marks to the overall story and treatment. Full justice given to the subject matter. Could have done with a few cuts and better music. Definitely watchable and entertaining. 6 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.top10bollywood.com/2011/07/bubble-gum-trailer.html