Tevar - A review

First things first, though Tevar had all ingredients needed for a masala entertainer but this script has been done to death so many times in Bollywood before that there is nothing new to offer. The movie would have probably worked if it had come in the early 2000s. I wonder why would a debutant director trying to make his way into the top league in Bollywood, want to take up a subject that is as old as some 10 years or so? Tevar is a remake of the Telugu hit movie Okkadu that came way back in 2003. Thus the plot is outdated, and so the almost three hours long movie gets really boring post interval. Unnecessary and inconsequential songs only stretch the movie even further. The movie left me terribly disappointed, as much by the plotline as by the leading actors Arjun Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha. This movie required a persona of a star like Salman to carry off the style which Arjun Kapoor still lacks, he is too young and new in his career to be able to create that image, so fails badly though he tries hard at it. Probably he is trying too hard to shed his image of a chocolate boy hero and instead to transit to an action hero. Sonakshi Sinha on the other hand yet again plays an inconsequential role. I have lost count of such roles that she has been playing in the recent times. I wonder why she keeps choosing such scripts while she is still trying to find her feet in Bollywood.

The story is set in Agra and neighbouring Mathura and revolves around a young boy named Pintu Shukla (played by Arjun Kapoor) who does nothing but playing kabaddi (but he is surely well-known in the city for his kabaddi skills). His father (played by Raj Babbar) happens to a senior Police officer, the SP and keeps warning him not to get involved in any trouble whatsoever or else he would put him behind bars someday but Pintu can't help himself from getting into something or the other. It so happens that oneday while he had gone to Mathura with his friends to attend a marriage, he bumps into Radhika (Sonakshi Sinha) who was being dragged away by a goon, Bahubali Gajender Singh (Manoj Bajpayee), from the bus stop, because she was trying to flee to Delhi from where she could have left for the US. Bahubali Gajender Singh had fallen heads over heels for Radhika and wanted to marry her. Radhika wasn't interested and when her brother, who happened to be a newsreporter tried to warn Gajender to stay away from her, he gets killed instead. Seeing Radhika in trouble, Pintu, without knowing who Gajender actually was, beats him up and thus gets chased by his men. The movie is all about what follows next but then isn't it along the predictable lines, that we have already seen so many times before?

Speaking of performances, only the two seasoned actors, Manoj Bajpayee and Raj Babbar manage to hold your attention. It's only because of their acting that the movie is somewhat "jhellable". Manoj Bajpayee once again plays the role of a baddie, that of a rustic goon to perfection and comes up with a flawless performance. You would sit up on your seat with attention every time he comes on screen. His terrific dialogue delivery and mannerisms of a UP waley bhaiya deserves to be seen. Raj Babbar too delivers a class act. But because of a stale script and the weak plotline their performances go waste. By the time the movie draws to an end, we already know what’s going to happen. The music by Sajid - Wajid and Imran Khan is also mediocre. The only noteworthy song I found somewhat worth listening was "Superman, Salman Ka Fan". All other songs felt very thanda. So the movie can surely be given a miss.

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Be Clean-shaven and Get Lucky

Theme: Luck or Confidence?- Will you leave your fate in the hands of destiny or will you step up and say yes to a well-groomed face to be at your best everyday?)

This is my blog submission for the #WillYouShave activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette.

We all know how important are the first impressions because only a good first impression will determine whether we will get through in the job interview or will have our love proposal accepted by the girl or her family or whether someone will be friends with us. So we need to put our best foot forward and make every possible effort to create a favourable impression on others with our personality traits, while not letting our grooming traits cause anyone to form a negative opinion of us. Only then shall we be able to become unique. One of the most important factors that adds a charm to our personality is cleanliness and that includes a clean shaven face as well. A man needs to be well-groomed, clean and neat on most days like not only should he have well-maintained hair, clean nails and should be smelling good but he also needs to be clean-shaven. Because once a bad impression about us has been made, it becomes very difficult to change it. The first impressions are what paves the way in which people perceive us. So it is extremely important not to commit a mistake because of our grooming habits. Thus men should shave every day.

[caption id="attachment_60" align="alignright" width="300"] (Photo used from Gillette website)[/caption]

Gone are the days when men with a stubble were considered studs and sexy. In the present age, almost every girl prefers a clean shaven man and finds them more charming than an unshaved one. Girls often express their disapproval about unshaved men, they don't find those men appealing at all for they feel men with an unshaved face looks like he hadn't taken a bath since days. He doesn't look fresh.

Well, let me share with you how I almost got rejected by my first crush because I wasn't clean-shaven. I too fell in love, that too at the first sight of Karuna (whom I went on to marry later on). Right from the time I saw her for the first time at school, I was head over heels. I felt like my world had suddenly changed and so did I. She was my classmate, but she was in the commerce stream and I was in science. Though that never mattered much to me, but it was definitely an impediment for me to get to talk to her. There were very few opportunities to meet as well. Except during our maths class i.e.. We used to have a combined class of students from both science and commerce streams. Since I was good in studies and maths had always been my forte, I was Madhu ma'am's (our maths teacher) favourite student. That came as a blessing for me, because whenever Karuna needed any help, Madhu ma'am would recommend me saying that I could help her. All thanks to Madhu ma'am, that is how my friendship with Karuna grew, we started talking more often, and eventually exchanged numbers and started meeting too. Even before one could realise we were in love with each other, though I had already lost my heart to her the first time that I had seen her.

Our courtship continued well beyond our 12th standard, into our college lives. But I felt it was time to take our relationship to the next level, I had to propose her. What could have been a better occasion than her birthday. Though I had rehearsed my lines quite a few times but I was pretty nervous from inside. What if she says No? I couldn't have taken a chance. So I took every care to look my best, more so, to have a clean-shaven look, Because she had once said that to me, that she always preferred clean-shaven men. I called her up, asked her out for a date and took her the Garden Inn restaurant, which was coincidentally her favourite. She had no inkling of what was in store for her, whereas I had started feeling anxious. But taking a deep breath, I bowed down before her and taking her hands into mine and with a ring, I said those magical words to her, "I love you, Karuna. Will you marry me?" She was taken by surprise obviously, but was equally happy too. With a loud yes, she sealed my love.

Later on, she disclosed that had I been in my usual scruffy look which I felt looked cool on me, she could have rejected me. Phew. So my advice to all guys out there, do not take your looks and the ladies in your lives for granted. Girls always prefer clean-shaven men, so do make sure that when you are with them, you look well-groomed, prim and proper.

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Zid - A review

The latest movie that I saw was a shabbily made psychotic thriller, Zid, which is about an obsessed lover, Maya (played by Mannara Chopra, Parineeti Chopra's cousin). With a gripping plot in place, the movie had some mettle initially and it did keep me hooked until the interval but thereafter the story became quite predictable and poor acting coupled with some mediocre screenplay made it plain boring and could induce only yawns. Its anti-climax made things even worse. Zid was apparently inspired by the English movie "The Good Neighbour" but it hardly had anything in common with the English movie. Instead I felt like Zid was more of a hotch-potch of "Poison Ivy" and "Wild Things".

Karanvir Sharma plays the character of Rohan Achrekar, a crime reporter for a Goa daily. He has an estranged girlfriend Priya (Shradha Kapoor) who doesn't respond to his calls and emails and so he decides to move on with his life. He starts by changing his house and so looks for a new house to take his mind off the bad memories of his recent breakup. Veteran actor Mohan Kapoor who plays his editor's role, suggests him an outhouse in the woods and Rohan complies. While going to the place, he sees a beautiful girl by the beach and clicks her photos from the boat. Little does he know that the same girl (Mannara Chopra) would turn out to be his house's owner, Maya. In no time, they become good friends. Meanwhile Mannara gets smitten by Rohan and starts obsessing about him. Then it so happens that while returning home from a party on a stormy night, their car hits someone on a scooter. Being scared they both run away from the spot leaving the girl to die but later on it turns out that the girl whom they had left to die was none other than Priya's sister Nancy. More murders follow and also grows Maya's obsession for Rohan.

Regarding the performances, Karanvir Sharma was okay (though he needs some polishing) but Mannara Chopra didn't look the part at all. Apart from her erotic dreamy sequences, she looked very cold and could hardly impress. Regarding the character of a female obsessed lover, I can think of a better example than Urmilla Matondkar who had played the role to perfection in "Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya". This movie too required that sort of a performance. Sadly Mannara could enact that well and lacked intensity. The movie's narrative rested on the lead actress's performance but Mannara instead looked very synthetic with her expressions, acting and dialogue delivery. Mannara does look good onscreen but she lacks the charisma of her famous cousin Parineeti. May be she will attain that with experience. Shradha Das hardly had any screen space but she still did good even in her minuscule role.

The background score was no doubt chilling but the stereotypical depressing setting of gloomy and ever-raining days and nights, coupled with dark settings actually put me off. The screenplay too lacked pace and intensity that's needed in a thriller movie and there was hardly any suspense. So the movie couldn't impress me at all.

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Happy New Year - A review

For some reason I found Farah Khan's masala flick Happy New Year to be entertaining though it has a hackneyed plot and has nothing new to offer. May be because I had got too fed up with the so many ordinary movies that have got released in the recent times in Bollywood that Happy New Year, with its grand canvas, beautiful exotic locations and to be fair with the actors, some good acting by the star cast. No doubt the movie is visually appealing but as per me, what made the film likeable was the convincing act put up by the lead pair and the supporting cast as well. It also had some genuine funny moments and some cheeky lines too.

The movie is about Charlie (played by Shah Rukh Khan) who wants to avenge his father's (played by Anupam Kher) death from Charan Grover (Jackie Shroff) because Grover betrayed Charlie's father, which landed him in jail and he committed suicide. Grover runs a safety lockers' business and his company wins the contract to shield an expensive diamond at the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai before it was to be put up for display in an exhibition. The diamonds are locked in a safe which can be opened only Grover’s own son, Vicky (Abhishek Bachchan) with his finger prints. The safe, called Shalimar, was designed by Charlie's father and another colleague, Tammy (played by Boman Irani) whom Charlie recruits. So Charlie wishes to steal that diamond and get Grover arrested in charges of stealing it. Thus his locker business as well as his reputation would get tarnished and he would be finished forever. For the robbery, Charlie forms a group of people (Abhishek Bachchan, Sonu Sood, Boman Irani and Vivaan Shah) who are in some way good enough to help him steal the diamond. Coincidently the day the diamond is going to be arrive at the hotel, a world dance competition too was going to be held. So their plan was to participate in the competition and using that guise of being dancers, then to enter the adjacent room in the hotel and from there to make their way to the vault. But since they all were bad in dancing, so to get selected as the participant, they rope in a bar dancer Mohini (Deepika Padukone) to teach them some dance moves.

Though the movie is predictable and there are some glaring loopholes in the plot too. We always knew that the hero would eventually succeed in making his way to the vault but the journey to stealing the diamonds from the vault could have been more gripping and entertaining. Nevertheless, the acting performances make up for the lapses. Shah Rukh Khan was entertaining like he always is. He had worked really hard on his body to get those rippling muscles and he flaunts them unabashedly, much to our joy. Deepika Padukone too is sincere with her role but she doesn't get to do much other than playing the love interest of Shah Rukh and to sing and dance with him. Abhishek Bachchan is the funniest of the lot and the others too do their part well enough. Visually Happy New Year looks great and there are quite a few minutes when one will find himself chuckling. The music of the movie given by Vishal Shekhar and the songs are quite good. By the time, the movie ended, I was definitely smiling because the movie does make you feel so good. It was definitely a paisa wasool entertainer.

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Haider - A review

So beautifully has Vishal Bhardwaj adapted Shakespeare's Hamlet into Haider, using the troubled landscape of Kashmir as the backdrop. It's not your regular Bollywood masala flick. After a long time, I got to see such an intense and a really powerful script coming from Bollywood, which was also ably performed on-screen by its star cast. The director and the co-writer, Basharat Peer, should be lauded for making such a brave attempt at taking up the Kashmir issue and presenting an insider's view of the problems that the local kashmiris face like identity crisis or the torture of separatists and terror suspects in army camps etc. Earlier too, Bhardwaj had successfully adapted Macbeth as Maqbool (that came way back in 2003) and Othello as Omkara in 2006 and he had extracted brilliant performances from his star cast. This time too the actors in Haider have given their all.

Set in Kashmir, in 1995 when insurgency and militancy was at its peak, the story revolves around a young student named Haider (played by Shahid Kapoor), a young student studying poetry at Aligarh University, who returns home on getting to know that his doctor father had been arrested by the Indian army after a random raid but since then had been untraceable. He also gets very upset on finding out that his mother (played by Tabu) since his father's disappearance had got into a relationship with his uncle (his father's younger brother, played by Kay Kay Menon). Later on through Roohdar (Irrfan Khan in a special appearance) with whom his father was locked up in the same prison, when he comes to know about the conspiracy by his uncle and probably by his mother too for his father's death, he is shattered and seeks revenge from both.

Speaking of performances, well, almost everyone in that top-notch cast carry out their acts to perfection. As Haider, Shahid Kapoor has delivered his career's best acting performance, convincingly playing the role of a helpless and shattered son and then going to play the role of an obsessed son hell-bent on taking revenge from his uncle. Tabu too is brilliant as the hurt wife seeking love and peace. Kay Kay Menon too plays wonderfully well the role of the conniving uncle. Shraddha Kapoor, playing Haider's love interest and childhood friend in the movie oozes earnestness with her expressions. Even Irfan Khan puts up a powerful performance in the small role of Roohdaar and mesmerises you.

Though the movie felt tediously long at certain times but it is a solid and well-acted movie that deserves to be seen by one and all.

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Kick (Hindi) - A review

I am a Salman Khan fan myself, and I have been biased towards him on previous occasions but by now even I have got tired of the kind of movies that he continues to dish out in the name of masala entertainers. All of his movies have now started to look the same and though they are still faring very well at the box office, in fact some of them even are going onto become blockbusters (I don't know how), but most of his fans have now got tired of watching the same "all-style-no-plot" stuff again and again. Before watching this Hindi remake, I decided to watch the original Telugu version first, that had Ravi Teja and Ileana D'Cruz and though it wasn't that appealing a movie but still there were moments when I found it somewhat entertaining. But this Hindi version of Kick with the larger-than-life avatar of Salman in it just couldn't entertain me at all. I found it really bland and cold. Some people might laugh at me saying that it's nothing new and may even question me, that hasn't Salman, even with a weak script, so often managed to set the screen ablaze with his charm and magnetism? I agree but how long can he manage to do that. After all he is not getting any younger!

These days, it's foolish to expect a plot in Salman Khan's movie. Salman Khan plays the quirkier character of Devi Lal Singh, an adrenalin seeking junkie who keeps on changing jobs in search of a kick. Funnily enough he is egged on by his father (played by Mithun Chakravorty) to go in his pursuit of 'kick'. Meanwhile Devi runs into Shaina, a psychiatrist (played by Jacqueline Fernandez) and falls in love with her. He fondly calls her Dr Psycho. She too loves him a lot but when she finds out that Devi had been lying to her all the while and that he had yet again left his job because he couldn't find it exciting enough, because he couldn't find a kick in it, she feels she can't put up with him. And so they break up. That's when Devi vanishes away from her life like forever. During this time, he had now evolved into Devil, a Robin Hood-type masked robber who steals from the rich to give to the poor. How many times have we seen Salman playing a charming, playful, slightly crooked superman with a heart of gold character? Anyway, his robberies catch the eye of the policemen and so enters into the story, the super cop Himanshu Tyagi, played by Randeep Hooda, who also happens to be Shaina’s fiancee. Following Devi, Himanshu lands up in Poland where he meets Shaina and they are about to be engaged when Devi re-enters their lives.

Salman Khan with his charisma, carries the film on his broad shoulders. Jacqueline once again puts up a wooden act with her expressionless face in almost every scene. Randeep Hooda does good in whatever scenes he got but he needed a better script to act in. Apart from some funny Salman moments, what stood out in ‘Kick’ was Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the wicked Shiv Gajra, with a trademark evil laugh of his own, something that we see with the villains in Bollywood movies. In fact in certain scenes, he almost stole the thunder from Salman Khan. The rest of the cast just does its job.

But overall, it is an outrageously silly film, there is neither any coherence nor any consistency and it drags on at times pulling the famous emotional manipulation-card. One finds so many gaping holes in the story and at times it gets unbearable. I would have given it a miss if I had known beforehand that I was going to waste two and half hours.

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Saare Jahaan Se Mehnga - A review

[caption id="attachment_29" align="aligncenter" width="660"] Picture copyrighted to Revel Films[/caption]

It was by sheer accident that I came across this movie when the other day while surfing through youtube for a particular Kishore Kumar song, this movie's video came to my notice. And for some reason I felt an urge to watch this movie even though I had never heard anything about this movie ever before and so I knew beforehand that I could end up rueing my choice. But by the time the movie ended, I wasn't really sad about my decision. Because Saare Jahan Se Mehenga is a charming, honest attempt by a rookie director and the earnest performances of the talented star cast quite made up for the lapses. It's definitely a one time watch movie, atleast for the honest performances and a commendable setting.

At a time when inflation is constantly on the rise and thus in the face of continually galloping prices of most essential household items like groceries and vegetables, Saare Jahaan Se Mehenga comes up with a whacky idea to tackle the issue. Though the idea shown in the movie is no doubt an utterly ridiculous one but I liked the sincerirty with which the film makers and the actors put in their efforts to show how a common man's life is getting affected by the continuous price rise and how inflation continues to wreak havoc on the household budget of a middle class family. So often a middle class family is forced to make compromises with their choices when wishing to buy something.

The movie is set in a small town in Haryana where a lower middle class man Puttan (played by Sanjay Mishra) with not much income from his government veterinary service is saddled by the constant price rise and the increasing demands of his family members. Though his wife too runs a beauty parlour from their house to augment the family income but they still often fall short and so are forced to make compromises. That's when Puttan is advised by one of his office colleagues to apply for a government scheme loan in his younger brother's name for starting a business but instead use the money to buy and stock up on groceries and home supplies for three years, because the loan came at a zero percent interest. Initially his family members laugh at the idea but when Puttan tres again, they agree and so they make a long list of all essential things of their choices that they felt they would need in those three years and buy them to stock them up at their home. But little did they know that the loan inspector would come to their place to inspect how they were utilising the loan amount. Thus what follows is a sequence of some funny and bizarre situations.

As far as acting is concerned, the two veteran actors Sanjay Mishra as the middle-aged man struggling to provide his family with their essential necessities and Zakir Hussain as the loan inspector stand out with their performance. It is because of these two men in particular that the movie looks good. The movie does have some funny moments but there are also some yawn inducing scenes. If only the makers had paid some attention to logic (for example every product comes with an expiry date and so how would the things that they had bought from the loan amount have lasted three years? Though the intention was honest but somewhere due to the lack of logic, the story and the movie went astray. Nevertheless it can still be watched as a satire on the price rise.

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