Film Reviews

Kurbaan is worth a Sacrifice

Sankat City will amuse you but ....

The main reason I watched this movie was because of Pankaj Advani, the director of the movie, assisted the great Kundan Shah of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron fame. The movie has some influences of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, but somehow it falls short and you feel something was missing. On paper you can get a promising dark comedy when car thieves get mixed up with loan sharks, movie makers, godmen and a con artist; however the overall impact is average. The story itself is pretty good but in some streches it loses it's way.

The comedy revolves around ten crore rupees that car thief, Guru (Kay Kay Menon) who is fond of fishes (don't know why), finds in a trunk of a stolen car. This money was a loan from a gangster/loan shark Faujdaar (Anupam Kher), to a film maker Gogi (Manoj Pahwa), who is making a movie with fading star Sikandar Khan (Chunkey Pandey). The film maker wants to buy land using this money from a builder, Pachisia (Yashpal Sharma), and to make the circle complete, Pachisia owes the same amount of money to Faujdaar. To make things more interesting the con artist Mona (Rimi Sen) wants to steal the money from Pachisia. If this amalgamation of situations and characters makes you dizzy, you are not alone … however this intertwined plot makes the movie interesting and produces tons of comical situations. The bomb disposal squad sequence is one of those out of the world situations that will remind you of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron style of comedy and then there are many situational comedy sequences, with rib tickling dialogs that will remind you of Hera Pheri. The climax, I thought was not appropriate; the bad guy getting killed in the end does not seem to gel with the mood of the movie.

Kay Kay Menon comes out of his usual intense and serious characters and plays a comic role very well. Anupam Kher and other supporting cast have done a good job except Chunkey Pandey, who overacts. The surprise package is Rimi Sen, she has transformed herself in a witty con artist that makes you forget all her earlier roles.

Overall the movie will amuse you in many parts but as a whole will not fill your appetite for comedy. I think it loses its way in trying to follow different styles of comedy, however if you are bored over the weekend this can be nice rental.

Kaminey redefines "masala" movie

Fasten your seat belts and get ready for thrill ride, one of the best caper movies made in Mumbai. Kaminey breaks the classic "Bollywood masala" stereo type and creates it's own definition of "masala". In this masala the basic ingredients (romance, action, comedy, emotions and songs) are still there but the way they are mixed and presented makes your taste buds wanting for more. Thanks mainly to Vishal Bhardwaj, the multi talented director, who before Kaminey had made children films, films on Shakespearean and Ruskin Bond literature, but with this film he proves his metal in the "commercial" cinema format (Second biggest hit this year).

This movie has multiple plots running in parallel, all of them converge on twin brothers Charlie, who has a lisp and Guddu, who stammers (Shahid Kapoor). Charlie works with the bad guys and dreams of making quick money while Guddu, the only nice guys in the film, has planned his life in advance and is happy. The trouble starts, or you could say the thrill starts when Charlie bumps into corrupt cops and Sweety (Priyanka Chopra) disrupts Guddu's planning, all this take you on a roller coaster ride ands ends in an apocalyptic ending. The speech defects of the brothers and some of the wackiness of the crazy supporting cast gives the comic relief from the fast pace of the movie.  

Shahid Kapoor is the star of the movie, he has stepped out of his lover boy image and given a great performance, Priyanka Chopra in a de-glamorized Marathi girl is great. The entire supporting cast is one of the highlights of the movie. Considering that almost the entire support cast is made up no name actors, it is great feat by the Vishal Bhardwaj. Watch out for Bhope (Amol Gupte, writer of Taare Zameen Pe) and Mikhail (Chandan Roy Sanyal), Charlie's partner in crime.

Dhan-Te-Nan, the song, is another star of the movie whenever it comes up in the movie it gives you an adrenaline rush. Gulzar's lyrics as usual are very poetic and thought provoking. All the songs are mainly in the background and do not hinder the flow of the movie. On the whole this movie belongs to Vishal Bhardwaj, he is the director, producer, co-writer and the music director. Cinematography by Tassaduq Hussain is very raw and keeps the pace of the movie alive. 

In future if my masala movies are going like this I am ready to lap it up. In the movie there is dialog "Life gets screwed up not by the path you take but by the path you did not take", so folks take the right path and watch the movie :-).

Watch Love Aaj not Kal

When it comes to romantic movies, all of them have more or less the same story, the difference is how the story is told. Love Aaj Kal is wonderfully told romantic story, for which Imtiaz Ali (director) should be given a lot of credit. This movie follows two romances separated by a generation (one is current the other in 60s), both these romances are very different (sometimes in funny ways) and very similar at the same time. Raj (Saif) and Veer (Rishi Kapoor) are of different generations, they both go through a journey to get their life partners. Their journeys and social environments are very different but ultimately their experiences and feelings along the way is exactly the same.

The movie has a good cast, direction and cinematography. Saif (Raj) has done a wonderful job, specially in scenes where he is in a dilema whether to express his emotions or not. This is by far the best performance by Deepika (Meera), and looks gorgeous in the  movie. Rishi Kapoor  (Veer) plays his role perfectly, however his sikh make-up was not well done in some scenes. Finally the "secret" actress that plays Veer's love interest, Harleen, is a Brazilian girl by the name of Giselle Monteiro, she fits well in a the role of a sikh kudee.

The movie is shot beautifully, it makes Delhi and Kolkata look colorful and refreshing. In the direction department, as I mentioned above hats off to Imtiaz Ali, he is also the story and dialog writer. In my opinion he has outdone himself when compared to his last movie Jab We Met (except for the Kareena Kapoor character, that was a classic). The story is very concise (2 hours only), actually too concise in few places specially in the start it seems to be going too fast. Dialogs are very urban/metro and at times very funny, actually there are quite a few funny scenes in the movie that are based on dialogs, not situations.

Music by Pritam is good, for me it sounds better after I watched the movie. The "Twist" number is really foot tapping and the "Dooriyaan" number is heart warming. In the movie all the songs just blend in the story and "Chor bazaari" number is the best shot song.

Over all Love Aaj Kal is a refreshing and colorful movie the will appeal to all generations, in my opinion it is worth watching.  So watch Love Aaj not Kal you Mango People :-).