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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My New Blog and My First Post

I am one of those people who love to maintain a journal. There was a time when I used to maintain a diary of my day-to-day happenings. It was my most prized possession. I used to regularly jot down every little and big thing that happened around me or affected me in some way, my thoughts and my opinions, sometimes my random dreams too, my fun moments with my friends at school or my not so happy days as well. My diary was the mode to vent out my inner feelings, my joys as well as my sorrows, those that I couldn't share with anyone else. Days and months later, when I used to turn back the pages to read, I used to feel really good to read my own emotions and so treasured that diary. But sadly I couldn't keep it going for too long. That was long time back, when I was still a teenager. Times changed pretty rapidly and with it, my habit of entering in every little thing into my dairy too got abandoned somewhere, more so with the advent of the laptops and tablets and cell phones into our lives.

But even as I moved on with life, sometimes I still felt an urge to once again renew my old habit of keeping a daily journal and writing down my thoughts and viewpoints. Because being an opinionated person, I have always had something to say about most things. But sometimes they got left unsaid and remained buried in my heart. That's when I came across a friend's blog and I was so impressed by his blog that I too started to blog and thus started my blogging journey. This was when I was in the final year of my graduation. For a few months, I remained very regular with my postings but yet again, lethargy got the better of me and my blog too died just like my diary.

Thus this is my second attempt at blogging and I hope I will remain regular with my writings this time and won't let this blog to die prematurely.

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