The Shaukeens (2014)

Towards the end of The Shaukeens, there is a scene wherein Ahana (Lisa Haydon) has landed a plump role in an Akshay Kumar movie and is struggling with that evergreen dialogue, “Mein Tere bachche ki maa ban ne waali hoon”.  It is supposed to be a scene wherein she is acting in a manner that she doesn’t know how to act.  Little did she realize that it came naturally to her.

Desi Kattey

Anand Kumar’s previous attempts should have made me a bit wiser and it did.  I walked into Desi Kattey expecting the worst possible storyline, a random item number that just pops up in the movie without any build up or reason and of course some really bad performances from the cast.  I was anything but disappointed – in my expectations that is.

Jai Ho

What do you expect in a Salman Khan movie? If this question was asked of a focus group, one answer would always be a shirtless fight sequence and in the climax of Jai Ho, the audience was chanting, “Shirt Utaar! Shirt Utaar! Shirt Utaar!” and our hero gladly complies in a matter of a few seconds.  Totally awesome!!!

Enemmy (Law and Disorder)

A gangster's truck load of cash is intercepted by just 2 people in black masks.  So you have one peeved gangster– Mukhtar (Zakir Hussain). His crony and associated family bite the dust. He launches a full scale offensive on all gangs. The cops led by Ekalvya Karmarkar (Suniel Shetty) have to intervene and lock him up. Ekalavya has Eric Colaco (Johnny Lever), Madhav Sinha (Mahaakshay) and Naeem Shaikh (Kay Kay Menon) by his side.

Delhi Safari

I must admit first of all that a few minutes into Delhi Safari, I started losing interest and my ability to stay awake for too long. I, however, managed to stay awake all the way through using quite a bit of my will power in the process.

Now, Delhi Safari is not just an outright bad movie by any stretch of imagination. It is just that we may be the biggest suppliers for animation world over but when it comes to creating animation movies ourselves, we fall woefully short. I wonder why?

Delhi Safari tracks the story of a bunch of animals who stay in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivili, Mumbai. Thankfully, the animals are the same ones that are found around this area. A family of leopards – Sultan (Suniel Shetty), Begum (Urmila Matondkar) and their cub Yuvraj (Swini Khara).

Then there is the laid back and sensible Bagga the Bear (Boman Irani). But the chief mischief maker and the grey character is the monkey – Bajrangi (Govinda) who harbours hopes of ruling the jungle because as per him – the monkeys used to rule the world much before man came in.

Trouble starts brewing when rampant construction starts moving into the park and in the bargain, Sultan gets killed. The rest of the animals, pushed by Yuvraj’s innocence and confidence decide to take their voices all the way to Delhi – to the powers that be. Accompanying them is Alex (Akshaye Khanna), a parrot – who is the only animal who can speak the language that us humans understand.

Now, here was a superb opportunity to pivot India into the fascinating world of animation. There was a story that had a strong social angle. There were characters which were created quite well and true to the local landscape. The voice overs were to be done by a bunch of really talented people – Govinda, Boman Irani, Sanjay Mishra, Saurabh Shukla and even Prem Chopra were really good with their voices.

But there were the tacky dialogues and weak one liners that fall flat. And most importantly, when you feel that the paws of the animals don’t look like they are touching the ground – you feel the disappointment. Why not spend that extra bit of money to get the end product finished well. Always the case with Indian animation – penny wise, pound moronic – not just foolish. 5 on 10. Watch on TV if ever it comes up there.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMem1yAmAQw

Thank You

He should probably thank his stars that he has a reasonable fan following in this country – enough and more morons who will walk into an AK movie just because its an AK movie. But that’s what we do to stars. Glorify them. Make temples for them. But even the extreme madness that this country has for Bollywood will not be able to save AK this time around. His acting talent or screen presence or whatever you want to call it has definitely reached it’s Nadir. AK – you cannot get worse than this. If you look at it positively, anywhere you go to from here will only be better. Or touch base quickly with Mannapuram Gold Loan – I am sure they will extend your contract for another year or so. I am quite certain that Akshay Kumar’s career with a major cinema house has ended successfully. For any future releases, he will have to trust his own funds or maybe depend on some rich relatives. Maybe Thank You was a test run – partially produced by Twinkle Khanna as per credits.

Thank You is a movie made in extreme bad taste. It once again endorses the concept of a cheating husband and in fact goes one step further by glorifying him. But then again, I guess there are enough and more women in this world who do not mind going back to husbands who have cheated on them. So why not capitalize on the movement (in a manner of speaking). The characters of… or should I say characterless – Raj (Bobby Deol), Yogi (Suniel Shetty) and Vikram (Irrfan Khan) run a business of selling yachts. And if one can describe the word “Tharki” (sex maniac), they would be the ideal examples. The epitomes. Raj’s wife Sanjana (Sonam Kapoor) believes in blind faith and obviously the husband takes as much advantage of that as possible. The other two are married to Maya (Celina Jaitley) and Shivani (Rimi Sen). Maya has already caught Yogi cheating on her and is getting back at him by treating him like a slave – which doesn’t seem to matter much to Yogi as such. And Vikram dominates Shivani as if there is no tomorrow. Things are about to get nasty for the promiscuous trio though thanks to the entry of Kishan (Akshay Kumar) who was responsible for Yogi getting caught.

If you liked the senselessness of the likes of No Entry and No Problem which seem to be reflective of Anees Bazmee’s favourite topic – cheating husbands – then Thank You is exactly the kind of movie that you would like to watch. If you are the more sensible kinds who believes in the concept of true cinema then please do not waste your money on this work that doesn’t have any semblance of direction, acting, screenplay, cinematography, editing and any of the other departments that are required to make a movie. The only one that continues to be worse than this is that sob story that spent a decade in a canister called Milenge Milenge. Thank You comes really close to being a case study at any Film Institute about what a movie should not be. I do wonder what people like Irrfan Khan were doing in this movie. And was definitely disappointed at how Sonam Kapoor crash landed from a curve that was showing signs of going North. As of now her stock has gone south. Maybe she should put the A back in her name. It may just about help. The rest of the cast has anyways not been worth mentioning and will not be. The miracle of course was the Rimi Sen did not speak in Bengali in this movie. The 1 additional point in the score for the movie comes for that and the fact that there are a couple of tracks that are definitely going to be doing their rounds in discos across the country. 2 on 10.

Watch the trailer on http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi226729241/