Ladies vs Ricky Bahl

Ladies vs Ricky Bahl

Language: Hindi
Critic Rating:  (3.0/5)
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Release Year: 2011
Cast: Ranveer Singh, Anushka Sharma, Parineeti Chopra, Aditi Sharma, Dipannita Sharma 
Producer: Aditya Chopra 
Director: Maneesh Sharma 
Music Director: Salim Merchant,Sulaiman Merchant 





Don’t we love Anushka Sharma for her sass and sensuality, for how she turns from an adorable Aphrodite to a bindaas belle in a mere wink? Don’t we just gawk with admiration when she dances with abandon, as if it’s her last dance and she must milk out all her Jazba into every move she makes? And don’t we get brainwashed of all the talk about her skeletal frame when she peels off to flaunt a body tailormade for bikini (not vice versa). I, at times, do, and so went to watch Ladies V/s Ricky Bahl all game to be happily clean bowled by Anushka again. But I was stumped by another girl.


Parineeti Chopra. This hitherto anonymous girl with ordinary features and no acting background emerges from the marketing wing of the YRF and takes to acting like she was born and bred for it. Playing a feisty Delhi girl, Parineeti is impudent, crass, bluff, and all moony over her man, a con he may be. Though her role isn’t chunky, she leaves you wanting to hear more of those funny lines (finely penned by Habib Faisal) that only she, with her natural flair and Punju accent, could have mouthed. 


In a film populated by four ladies, it’s hard for a man to hold his stead, but Ranveer Singh just about manages that with a subdued charm, boyish smile, washboard abs and some talent too. He plays Ricky Bahl, a conman who exclusively targets girls. Assuming varied guises like that of a clothes merchant, gym instructor or art dealer, he woos the ladies, wins their trust, and when the iron is hot, bang and poof! he’s gone with their lakhs safely stuffed in his briefcase.


Among his pretty victims is the gullible Dimple (Parineeti Chopra) from Delhi, a shy and reserved Saira (Aditi Sharma) from Lucknow and a suave executive Raina (Dipannita Sharma) from Mumbai. The three ladies gang up to give the slicker a taste of his own medicine and hire a smart, clever salesgirl Ishika (Anushka Sharma) to trap the Bloody Kameena (as they call Ricky Bahl) and beat him at his own game. Will the swindler bite the bait and be hoist by his own petard? Or will he pull a fast one on the ladies again when they least suspect?


For one, the film has an interesting plot and director Maneesh Sharma doesn’t let your interest wane for the first half. Ricky Bahl’s exploits with the three ladies aren’t cerebral, but they make for a fun watch. The trouble starts in the second half, when Anushka and Ranveer are made to loiter around Goa more than a taut script should have offered, and the pace slackens thereon. It’s also hard to stomach the fact that a clever conman like Ricky Bahl could so easily be made to shell out lakhs with nothing much to offer for his confidence than a website of a business empire whose heiress he hopes to ensnare. And it’s a droll but unconvincing sight to see the ladies buying ersatz goodies from roadside stalls at bargain-basement prices and pasting them with the labels of high-end brands like a Gucci or Fendi while Ricky Bahl happily foots the bill. Also Anushka Sharma’s role ought to have more meat. Just when one expects her to outfox Ricky Bahl, she’s a weak, lovestruck girl, a mere shadow of her former self.


But credit to the ladies for putting up good performances. Anushka and Parineeti steal the show, while Aditi Sharma and Dipannita Sharma chip in well for their part. Aditi makes for a believable picture of a bashful small-town girl, while Dipannita is her diametric opposite: a city-bread, tough taskmaster and a go-getter. 


The music by Salim-Sulaiman is plain ordinary but the cinematographer Aseem Mishra shows an eye for the detail. Director Maneesh Sharma bookends the story well but lets it go limp in the middle. And sometimes that’s where things matter the most.


All in all, Ladies V/s Ricky Bahl is a fun one-time watch. Just don’t go expecting the moon, and you’ll come out smiling.


Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

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The Dirty Picture

The Dirty Picture

Language: Hindi
Critic Rating:  (3.5/5)
Genre: Drama, Musicals
Release Year: 2011
Cast: Vidya Balan, Emran Hashmi, Tushar Kapoor, Naseerudin Shah, Anju Mahendroo 
Producer: Ekta Kapoor,Shobha Kapoor 
Director: Milan Lutharia 
Music Director: Vishal Dadlani,Shekhar Ravjiani 





Sex and substance rarely go together. The former unfailingly dominates the latter. So it’s a given that when a woman plunges herself headlong into an unabashed display of her femininity and pulls down her necklines to the eye-popping glances of deprived souls (not few in number by any count), one isn’t interested in looking beyond. What for? 


Vidya Balan flips this seemingly cardinal rule on its head. By dint of her unalloyed talent, she makes you look up from that ‘Grand Canyon’ cleavage and pneumatic orbs, and into those eyes that speak tons in silence. Into those quivering lips, those bleary eyebags, at that lofty brow and pursed forehead and thereby into the insides of the tormented character she plays. In these rare moments of brilliance, she provides a sliver of substance behind sex. It’s like watching a kamasutra pose and being hit by a flash of light inside your head that makes you look beyond those coiled bodies and at the aesthetic beauty and the greater union beyond. To be able to do that in a Bollywood film is no mean feat. And Vidya Balan pulls it off with flying colours. In short, she makes the dirty SUBLIME.


She plays the unapologetic, fiercely ambitious siren with few scruples and a troubled past. Her character Silk ploughs her way through the dirty world of showbiz, on the way willingly succumbing to the lust of a superstar (Naseeruddin Shah), to the affection of an admirer (Tusshar Kapoor) and the hatred of an arthouse film director (Emraan Hashmi). And out of it all she emerges scarred and sexploited, a woman drowning her loneliness with alcohol, puffing off her failure with cigarettes, and finding love a little too late.


Though it’s a story with lots of skin, there’s sorrow at its heart. The dazzle of Silk’s rise to fame is offset by her spiraling decline as her life fall apart, piece by piece.


Director Milan Luthria and writer Rajat Aroraa have come up with a finely crafted film, but how one wishes they had put a leash on the dialoguebaazi. The characters speak in the language of Salim-Javed dialogues, often spinning out innocuous metaphors about things as mundane as a cigarette pack or a car-gear lever. Even the song where Silk and new siren Shakila compete could have been edited short.


These foibles apart, The Dirty Picture has its share of gripping moments. For instance, the night of subdued intimacy between Vidya and Emraan, or the sequence where Silk dances publicly on a car bonnet to spoil the party of a critic, or Silk’s incisive award-acceptance speech.


The performances by the male cast are spot on. If Naseer is every bit the cocky, smug, vain superstar, Tusshar is the bashful younger brother with a soft spot for Silk. Emraan plays a somewhat complex character of a man who doesn’t know if he loves to hate Silk, or hates to love her.


But taking the cake is the lady herself -- Vidya Boombat Balan. The character of Silk might have turned into an image of vulgarity if played by a lesser actor. Of course, there’s nothing great in stripping. Even Poonam Pandey does that. But it takes Vidya Balan to stir your thoughts, not just testosterone.


Go watch The Dirty Picture for Vidya Balan. 


Rating: 3 stars out of 5

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Desi Boyz

Cast: Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, Omi Vaidya, Rajat Barmecha, Danny Anson Jones, Chitrangda Singh, Sanjay Dutt

Language: Hindi
Genre: Action, Comedy
Release Year: 2011
Producer: Krishika Lulla, Vijay Ahuja
Director: Rohit Dhawan
Music Director: Pritam Chakraborty



Nonsense, besides sex, sells! And two beefy hunks, one in late thirties and the other in mid-forties, ripping their shirts off and showing off their finely waxed chests hardly make for an eye-pleasing sexual content. Not for the male lot this raunchy display of the ageing beefcake, I’m sure, sexual orientations notwithstanding. With sex scratched out, we are left with nonsense, something that director Rohit Dhawan, having inherited a good chunk of genes from his dad David Dhawan, can be veritably relied upon to be at home with.

And home with it Rohit Dhawan indeed is. For he manages a laugh out of situations like John Abraham and Anupam Kher rubbing against each other and looking into each other’s eyes, before the latter declares “Don’t get ambitious”. To Rohit’s credit he wrings out a few comic moments from the otherwise wooden John. Catch John absolutely nonplussed when his fiancé (Deepika Padukone) and her father (Kher) show up at his pad while he’s having a raunchy party with a bunch of eager-to-strip guys and girls.

Where Rohit Dhawan falters is in his bid to squeeze in melodrama where none was needed. The sequences involving Akshay Kumar and his orphaned nephew whose custody the latter is about to lose are aimed at leaving you moist eyed. They don’t. More embarrassing is a scene where a maths professor scoffs Indians as harebrained and Akshay spiels about the contribution of great Indians: from Aryabhatta, the contributor of ‘zero’, to Sabeer Bhatia the cofounder of hotmail. Worse still, Rohit filches an idea from an advertisement and turns it into a full-blown scene when Akshay makes a show of being beaten up by his interviewee to scare away the other contenders for the job. That’s lame! If anything was left, we have Sanjay Dutt who runs a male escort agency Desi Boyz and claims to be the purveyor of happiness to the womankind.

The story of Desi Boyz is pretty slim. Two best friends find themselves scrounging for a decent living in London after being hit by recession. Jobless but not hopeless, they must find something to make ends meet. Nick has a fiancé Radhika (Deepika Padukone) who craves for a perfect wedding while Jerry is trying to come good to gain the custody of the nephew he dotes on. Pushed to the wall, the two become male escorts, which involve stripping for women at bachelorette parties and even fulfilling their fantasies in the bed.

But this job turns their already derailed lives topsy-turvy. So the two Desi Boyz set out to make amends and get their lives back on track.

The movie’s pace is bumpy for the most part of the first half. The second half begins on a promising note with the introduction of Chitrangada Singh as the hot Economics professor who has a crush on her overaged student, Akshay Kumar. Chitrangada doubtlessly looks prettier and hotter than Deepika. There’s a scene where she offers to strip layer by layer for her student Akshay if he answers the economics questions correctly. The scene is almost exploitative, but Chitrangada makes it work. In comparison, Deepika’s character is reduced to looking sulky. Akshay Kumar and John Abraham are the two lifelines of Desi Boyz and they just about deliver the goods.

The film’s music by Pritam is below par. Cinematographer Natarajan Subhramaniam cans a few interesting shots, particularly one where Akshay and John are shown sitting on the ledge of their penthouse. In the dialogue department, Milap Zaveri comes up with some lines that leave you grinning.

All in all, Desi Boyz is a film that’s not a laugh riot but just about a tolerable one-time watch. Its humour may be irreverent, facetious and even crass, but it works at times.

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

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Rockstar

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Diana Penty, Nargis Fakhri, Shammi Kapoor Director: Imtiaz Ali  Producer: Ronnie Screwvala Music: A. R. Rahman Sound: Dileep Subramanium Lyrics: Irshad Kamil Cinematography: Anil Mehta Editing: Aarti Bajaj Story/Writer: Imtiaz Ali Costume: Aki Narula, Manish Malhotra

All the rockheads who have been expecting Imtiaz Ali’s film Rockstar to be a follow-up to Rock On!! here’s the bubble-burst. Rockstar isn’t about rock music. It’s a love story, and not a great one at that. In his bid to move beyond the Bollywood mush, Imtiaz Ali tries to weave a love story with spiritual undertones, but ends up with a cobweb of his own creation: a film that tries to be profound but knows not what point to make.

A film that’s made with passion but still lacks the heart of an entranced Sufi or the grace of a whirling dervish. Yes, there are a few epiphanic moments when a glimpse of something from the beyond flashes through, but that’s just about it. The film is a story of an uncouth Delhi lad Janardhan Jhakhar (Ranbir Kapoor) who idolizes Jim Morrison but doesn’t have in him what it takes to make a cut. Pain, he’s told by a stocky canteen manager (Kumud Mishra), is the grist of creativity. So he seeks pain in the heartbreak by proposing the most beautiful girl in the college, Heer Kaul (Nargis Fakhri). But pain, like joy, is hard to come by. And it takes a long and outstretched relationship -- beginning with hate, turning into friendship and blossoming into love -- before our hero Jordan and his much married Heer are left with a shattered heart and an amputated soul, scarred enough to shuffle off their mortal coil. You play with fire, you get burnt. And our hero is the one to willingly stick his neck underneath a guillotine suspended by a silken thread. All for musical inspiration. But here’s the catch.

Imtiaz Ali never taps into the maturing musical genius of the protagonist, never making music the vehicle to cleanse, so to speak, the doors of perception to a place beyond the right and wrong. Rather, he sticks only to LOVE, as if music and love were one without the other. And what comes through is just the pain of two separated lovers, with no greater calling than to just be united. So if you are digging for some profundity from this love story extraordinare, you’re digging a dry hole, my friend. For despite all the seething rage our protagonist pumps into his music and performances, Rockstar strictly remains a sexed up version of Devdas. The film could well have been called Devdas Learns To Rock. Having said that, Rockstar is not a film to be pooh-poohed dismissively.

For one, it has an entertaining first half with moments aplenty of light humour. The camaraderie between Ranbir and Nargis makes for a fun watch even though the latter is a non-actor. It’s in the second half that the film goes for a toss, and keeps veering between a drunken and jilted rockstar’s self destructive streak and his guilt-ridden ladylove’s paranoia. Nargis has been saddled with the most complex character in the film, and given her halting Hindi and lack of experience in acting, you really feel for the girl. She struggles to slip into the skin of her character, her expressions wavering between pretty smiles and exasperation. Ranbir Kapoor comes up with a solid performance that sees the transformation of his character from the crass Jat boy Janardhan to a sullen, snappy, yelling, tortured soul, Jordan. Kumud Mishra and Aditi Rao Hydari (playing a journalist) lend support from the sidelines, and the late Shammi Kapoor sprinkles his charisma in a few scenes.

 A R Rahman’s music remains a formidable backbone of Rockstar, most notably the song “Saada Haq”, the best the rock anthem to have come out of Bollywood to date. Anil Mehta’s cinematography is excellent, particularly the shots of the concerts. Imtiaz Ali had a darn good story on his hands but he makes a hash of it in the second half and concludes on a rather predictable note. There’s no burning out. No fading away. This story of Jordan rotten ends suspended in a Rumi “field” beyond the right-doing and wrong-doing, where the lovers are forever united. By then you are already looking at The Doors to exit.

 Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

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Immortals

Release Date: 11 November 2011
Genre: Action | Drama | Fantasy
Cast: Henry Cavill, Mickey Rourke, John Hurt
Directors: Tarsem Singh
Writer: Charley Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides
Studio: Relativity Media







The brutal and bloodthirsty King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) and his murderous Heraklion army are rampaging across Greece in search of the long lost Bow of Epirus. With the invincible Bow, the king will be able to overthrow the Gods of Olympus and become the undisputed master of his world. With ruthless efficiency, Hyperion and his legions destroy everything in their wake, and it seems nothing will stop the evil king's mission. As village after village is obliterated, a stonemason named Theseus (Henry Cavill) vows to avenge the death of his mother in one of Hyperion's raids. When Theseus meets the Sybelline Oracle, Phaedra (Freida Pinto), her disturbing visions of the young man's future convince her that he is the key to stopping the destruction. With her help, Theseus assembles a small band of followers and embraces his destiny in a final desperate battle for the future of humanity. -- (C) Relativity Media

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The Adventures Of Tintin

Cast:: Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell, Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Nick Frost, Kim Stengel

Director: Steven Spielberg

Producer : Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy & Peter Jackson

Music Director : John Williams ...

All the Tintin fans have been waiting for this day with bells on! The Adventures Of Tintin has hit the big screens in India and trust me, it does not let you down!

Well, the oncoming of The Adventures Of Tintin was long due since Steven Spielberg had acquired the rights to produce a film based on the Adventures of Tintin series following Herge’s (the creator of Tintin) death in 1983! However, with some issues and problems always making their way, the movie has finally managed to reach its fans in 2011! Nevertheless, the wait was worth it!

The Adventures Of Tintin tracks the journey of Tintin and his four-legged companion Snowy, along with Captain Haddock, who head out for a treasure hunt. Tintin, the famous journalist, buys a model of a ship named Unicorn. However, he soon realizes that there is something more to it than just being a model-ship since some people are willing to offer him more than the double amount he bought it for! Tintin, however, refuses to entertain them.

Tintin’s doubt over the ship carrying some imperative information turns true when someone steals the ship from his home. Luckily for Tintin, the information inside the ship was stored in the form of a scroll, which fell down during a fight between Snowy and a cat before the ship was stolen!

Tintin reaches for Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine as he was the one willing to pay him any amount in exchange for the ship. He then realizes that there are three such scrolls which will ultimately lead to the hidden treasure!

But, Tintin knows too much by then and is abducted by Sakharine and his men and is held hostage on a ship. While finding his way to escape, Tintin meets the supposed captain of the ship, the always-drunk, Haddock. Haddock was kept uninformed about the happenings on the ship by Sakharine since a hint on the scroll read that only a true Haddock can discover the secret of the Unicorn.

Haddock and Tintin then somehow escape from the scene in a life boat. Haddock’s character always manages to get a smile on your face now and then by his dumbness and his drunkenness. I literally burst into laughter in the scene where Haddock himself ignited bonfire on the life boat since he was feeling cold!

Anyhow, the story picks up pace when Haddock hallucinates because of dehydration and suddenly starts remembering everything about the Unicorn. The story then unfolds and it is revealed that the treasure was hidden by Haddock’s ancestor after an attack on his ship by Red Rackham!

*Spoiler alert*: The story takes a whole new twist when it is realized that Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine is the descendant of Red Rackham! Thus, the hunt for Unicorn is not just about the treasure hunt, but vengeance as well!

Speaking about the direction, The Adventures Of Tintin started on a really slow note and I had a yawny first half! Though the story picked up effectively in the second half, one expects flawless direction when it comes to Steven Spielberg!

However, all the actors perform brilliantly! Daniel Craig as Sakharine, Jamie Bell as Tintin, and Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock, each actor has performed to perfection.

Rest assured watching The Adventures Of Tintin is a visual delight! The CGI and real-life avatarization is simply terrific. From bullets to swords, from ships to cars to scooters to planes, The Adventures Of Tintin is a perfect blend of newness and vintages! The chase sequence in the movie is commendable! And with a pinch of humour added to the movie, The Adventures Of Tintin is definitely a onetime watch.

We give the The Adventures Of Tintin half-a-star extra for the visual spectacle it offered.

Final verdict: 3.5 stars out of 5.

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Aarakshan

Aarakshan - Movie Review
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Manoj Bajpayee, Deepika Padukone, Prateik Babbar, Shabana Azmi,Tanvi Azmi, Hema Malini,Chetan Pandit, Mukesh Tiwari, Yashpal Sharma, Darshan Jariwala, Saurabh Shukla, Vinay Apte, Anita Kanwar, S. M. Zaheer, Aanchal MunjalDirector: Prakash JhaMusic: Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani, Loy MendoncaLyrics: Prasoon JoshiCinematography: Sachin Kumar KrishnanEditing: Santosh MandalArt Direction: Jayant DeshmukhScreenplay: Prakash Jha ,Anjum RajabaliAction Direction: Prem SharmaChoreography: Jayesh PradhanCostume: Priyanka Mundada

Aarakshan. Prakash Jha’s latest film Aarakshan, which has raked up a lot of controversy, is a study in affectations. The hyperventilating characters in it move about spouting dialogue-heavy harangues armed with words like siddhant, anushasan, nishtha and a variety of other such chaste Hindi terms that a crash course in a roadside Hindi tutorial centre might help you cotton on to. And if you can endure this copious stream of filminess, you might as well resign to the fact that the film has no darned point to make. The film’s title is a misnomer. Aarakshan is not actually about Aarakshan. It’s…um…more of a muddle that no more than superficially touches upon topical issues like the commercialization of education and, of course, a bit of caste-based reservation as well.

All the hype and hoopla surrounding the movie seems much ado about nothing once you have sat through this 2-hr-45-minute long boring lecture on the ills of education system. And you walk out feeling none the wiser. A bit short-changed perhaps.

So we see Amitabh Bachchan playing a college principal as principled as there ever was. Not for him the sycophancy for the neta log trying to get their underperforming kin admitted in the prestigious Shakuntala Thakaral Mahavidyalaya he heads. Not for him the craven surrender when his principles are challenged. At home, his daughter (Deepika Padukone) and wife (Tanvi Azmi) stoically support the uptight idealist, save for minor squeaks of protest. At college, a wily professor (Manoj Bajpai) wants to take over as the principal and make an easy buck by opening private coaching centres throughout the state.

Jha proffers to present the two sides of the Aarakshan debate through the characters of a genius dalit teacher (Saif Ali Khan) and a rich student (Prateik Babbar), who are friends until the honourable Supreme Court flips open the Pandora’s box by passing an order supporting 27 percent reservation for backward classes in educational institutions.

Thereafter, we are subjected to long arguments both in favour of and against the reservation as writer Arjum Rajabali has a field day in unleashing the most turgid brand of dialoguebaazi, buttressed by heavy background score, to drive home the point that grave issues are under discussion on screen. Point taken! But why pray does Prakash Jha abandon the issue of reservation half way and turn the film into an indictment of the commercialization of education? And why does Jha make Amitabh Bachchan deliver his dialogues like he was recording a social message for the ministry of education?

Almost every actor in the movie is made to play the character and say the lines they can’t relate to. Hence the affectation. So when Saif Ali Khan rants about the ‘uthal puthal’ in samaaj due to reservation and how suppressed his own dalit samaaj has been over the years, you try hard to believe him, but only in vain. When Prateik Babbar whines about losing what’s rightfully his to someone who comes under quota, you are at pains to empathize with the unfortunate chap. Likewise, Deepika Padukone’s glib about her righteous father sounds every word as affected as the old man’s blusters about principles and righteousness. In fact, Jha manages the feat of making a talented actor like Manoj Bajpai look like a caricature.

Aarakshan offers no deep insight into the subject it claims to deal with. The arguments presented are facile, at best. But the most shocking is cavalier disregard with which Jha stunts the film’s main issue of reservation and puts the movie on a different plotline altogether, turning it into a muddle.

In short, Aarakshan is painfully pointless, boring and not a wee bit enlightening. One would rather go fly a kite than to reserve a seat for this movie.

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

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I Am Kalam

Cast: Harsh Mayar, Hussan Saad, Gulshan Grover, Beatrice Ordeix,Meena Mir

Director: Nila Madhab Panda

Music Director: Abhishek Ray, Papon,Madhuparna,Susmit Bose

Where truth is stranger than fiction, art would obviously imitate life. The truth of former Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam’s struggle through poverty -- we’re told he worked as a newspaper boy to fund his studies -- could ignite many an impressionable mind. The protagonist Chhotu of director Nila Madhab Panda’s directorial debut I Am Kalam is such a kid, stricken by poverty and many odds but carrying an unflagging desire to learn and be a ‘bada aadmi’ one day.

Chhotu (Harsh Mayar) is a poor precocious kid who works at a roadside dhaba in a dusty Rajasthan town to fend for his mother and sibling. He is quick-witted and has something to learn from everyone, be it picking up halting French from the tourists at the dhaba or learning English from a rich, lonely boy Ranvijay Singh (Husaan Saad), a kunwar from a nominally royal family. As Chhotu’s mother tells the genial dhaba owner Bhati (Gulshan Grover), “Chhotu ka dimag rail se bhi tez chale hai.”

If anything was needed to this tinderbox of potentiality, it’s the spark of inspiration. That comes from a republic day program on President Kalam in which Chhotu learns of the hardships the ‘missile man’ faced in his struggling days.

Thereafter, Chhotu dreams of becoming like Kalam and even takes on the name of Kalam. Thanks to his friendships with the kid kunwar and a French tourist (Beatrice Ordeix), Chhotu sets forth on the path of learning, but faces odds in the shape of a jealous co-worker (Pitobash Ghosh) and a hateful royalty that even labels him a thief.

I Am Kalam is not the usual triumph of the human spirit kind of story with a preachy sermon to boot. The film has an unassuming non-seriousness to it, despite the protagonist kid being buffeted by the blows of poverty. The smile on Chhotu’s face never fades and the sprightly demeanour never limps. A ray of hope glimmers all through the movie and yet director Nila Madhab Panda never panders to the stereotypes like a glorious triumphant moment for Chhotu in the end. No. Things are kept pretty much within the realm of reality. I Am Kalam is a story you believe in.

Kudos to child actor Harsh Mayar (winner of National Award) for breathing life into the character and the film. From the sidelines Gulshan Grover, Husaan Saad and Beatrice Ordeix chip in commendable performances.

All in all, I Am Kalam is a film that fills you with inspiration. Do watch it.

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

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Gandhi To Hitler Movie Review

Cast: Neha Dhupia,Raghuveer Yadav,Aman Verma,Lucky Vakharia,Nassar Abdulla,Avijit Dutt,Nikita Anand,Nalin Singh Director: Rakesh Ranjan Producer: Dr. Anil Kumar Sharma Banner: Amrapali Media Vision Pvt Ltd Music: Arvind ,Lyton Background Music: Sanjoy Chowdhary Sound: Vaidy Nathan Lyrics: Dr. Pallavi Mishra Cinematography: Fuwad Khan Editing: Shree Narayan Singh Screenplay: Rakesh Ranjan Story/Writer: Rakesh Ranjan,Nalin Singh Costume: Ruchi Pugalia

Movie Review of Gandhi To Hitler. This Friday’s release Gandhi To Hitler demands an unconditional suspension of belief. So if a you see an actor whose every facial twitch reminds you of some dreamy Mungerilal now dressed up as the World War 2 monstrosity, Adolf Hitler, try not to wince. And if you spot a Russian or French soldier awfully tanned like some louts from apna Verar, try not to laugh. For all its claim to document the contrast of two ideologies and for all its attempt to tout itself as “A Masterpiece on World Peace” (the film’s tagline), Gandhi To Hitler is painfully farcical and downright ludicrous.

The intention of director Rakesh Ranjan Kumar is to underscore the futility of war by comparing and contrasting Mahatma Gandhi’s peaceful ways to the genocidal streak of the megalomaniacal Fuhrer. The plot is based on two letters written by Gandhi to Hitler, trying to impress upon the latter the importance of non-violence in a bid to prevent the war.

We are transported to the underground bunker in the bombed-out Germany where Hitler (Raghuvir Yadav), his well-coiffured ladylove Eva Braun (Neha Dhupia) and a bunch of loyal orderlies like Joseph Goebbels (Nalin Singh) and the Reich minister Albert Speer (Nasir Abdullah) are fuming, fretting and counting their last sparse blessings before giving up the ghost.

The action keeps shifting from inside the bunker to a few Indian soldiers in the warzone in Germany and to a relatively peaceful milieu in the British occupied India where Gandhi ji is heard preaching peace and non violence in congregations. Another contrasting angle is thrown in the form of a track involving the Azad Hind Fauj and its founder Subhash Chandra Bose advocating blood-for-ajadi among lanky foot soldiers. And spliced in between all this clutter is the actual footage of World War 2.

The script is a disaster, equally matched by shoddy performances by the actors, the otherwise tolerable Raghuvir Yadav included. But the most deplorable is the decision to cast Indian actors as the Germans, Russians and French. If this was Rakesh Ranjan Kumar’s idea of experimenting with truth, it falls flat on its face. To put mildly, it gives the film a farcical look and one wonders if the director should have gone the whole hog and rather cast a foreigner to play Gandhi.

In short, Gandhi To Hitler is best avoided.

Rating: 1 star out of 5

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Bubble Gum Movie Review

Cast: Sohail Lakhani,Apurva Arora,Sachin Khedekar,Tanvi Azmi
Director: Sanjivan Lal
Producer: Sushma Kaul
Banner: Koncept Infotenment
Music: Hanif Sheikh,Bapi,Tutul
Sound: Manas Chaudhary
Lyrics: Prashant Pandey
Cinematography: Anshul Chobey
Editing: Suresh Pai
Story/Writer: Sanjivan Lal
Choreography: James Anthony,Longines Fernandes,Aadil Shaikh

Right at the interval, the director came at the press show stating that his film Bubble Gum isn't a children film meant for kids. It's a film that will appeal to people of all age groups. However, the point remains that with no publicity or any sorts and no face value to the product, his message may fade away in no time. After repeated big budget, big star cast films gracing the cinema halls week on week comes this week that has only the small budget films making it to the theatres. One such among the others is Bubble Gum. Now whether this small film has content enough to pull the masses or not remains to be seen.

Set in the times of 1980s in Jamshedpur when there was no computer, internet chatting, long telephonic conversations, mobile, Bubble Gum is the story of Vedant (Sohail Lakhani), a boy who finding it difficult to deal with his teens. He falls head over heels for a colony girl Jenny (Apoorva Arora) but he also has his rival Ratan (Suraj Singh) who too has the hots for the same girl. During this time Vedant's brother Vidhur (Delzad Hiravali) comes from his hostel to spend the holidays with his family. Vidhur is a deaf and mute teenager who tries really hard to build a bond with his unruly brother but Vedant considers Vidhur a liability and object of ridicule more than his brother. How the bond between the two brother increases and how Vedant wins over Jenny is what forms the rest of the story.

Bubble Gum definitely isn't a children film. It talks of the times and challenges we all have gone through in our lives. The days when a small clash with 

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Khap Movie Review

Cast: Om Puri,Govind Namdeo,Manoj Pahwa,Uvika Chaudhary,Mohnish Behl,Anuradha Patel
Director: Ajai Sinha
Producer: Sangita Sinha, Siddhant Sinha
Banner: Ananda Film & Telecommunications Pvt. Ltd
Music: Annujj Kappoo
Sound: Rajendra Hegde
Lyrics: Yogesh,Nida Fazli,Kumaar,Panchhi Jalonvi
Cinematography: Lokesh Bhalla
Editing: Sanjay Sankla
Story/Writer: Ajai Sinha,Ishan Trivedi,Vinod Ranganath,Vijay Verma,Ashok Lal
Action Direction: Baboo Khanna
Choreography: Pony Verma,Habiba Rehman

The thing with issue-based films is that the director needs to learn the art of tightrope-walk through a potential minefield of obvious clichés and commercial trappings. A tilt too much to artistic adherence could earn the film a tag of docu drama and consequently scare away the movie buffs, and a kowtow to commercial formula may make the issue facile and trivial. That’s precisely the problem with director Ajai Sinha’s film Khap, made with good intentions but poor sensitivity.

The film, as you all must know by now, deals with the burning issue of honour killings in villages whenever young girls and boys marry within the same gotra. What’s murder for the modern world is, however, purgation for the Khaps of the villages still steeped in age-old customs and social mores.

Om Puri plays the one such authoritarian Khap of a village. His son (Mohnish Bahl) didn’t approve of his dad’s regressive mindset and separated years ago to pursue social activism.

At the start itself, director Ajai Sinha lays out the cards with a gruesome honour killing of a couple trying to elope. Then we are treated to an internet romance between a couple (Uvika Chaudhary and Sartaj) who fall in love, only to find out that they hail from the same clan. To make matters worse, the girl is the daughter of the same headstrong Khap (Om Puri) who is dead against same gotra marriage. How will this Khap react when chickens come home to roost?

The treatment given by director Ajai Sinha to the subject is facile at best. Weaving a threadbare plot from newspaper headlines and peppering it with the routine songs and a candyfloss love story robs the film of the gravity that it might have had if in the hands of an adept director like a Kashyap or Bhardwaj. On top of it, the director also tries to absolve the Khaps with a long monologue (courtesy Alok Nath) about keeping the gene pool clean by banning same gotra marriages.

The songs are absolutely unwanted and performance strictly tolerable.

Khap, in a nutshell, trivializes a serious issue with its formulaic treatment.

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Singham

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Kajal Aggarwal, Prakash Raj, Ashok Saraf
Sachin Khedekar, Sonali Kulkarni, Anant Jog, Vijay Patkar, 
Jayant Sawarkar, Ashok Samarth, Kishore Nandlaskar, Ravindra Berde, Hemu Adhikari, Agasthya Dhanorkar, Suchitra Bandekar, Suhasini Deshpande, Meghna Vaidya, Pradeep WelankarDirector: Rohit ShettyMusic: Ajay Gogavale, Atul GogavaleSound: Rakesh RanjanCinematography: DudleyEditing: Steven H. BernardArt Direction: Narendra RahurikarScreenplay: Yunus SajawalDialogue: Farhad, Sajid (1)Action Direction: Jai Singh NijjarChoreography: Ganesh Acharya
Half way through director Rohit Shetty’s Singham, it strikes you why Indian films haven’t had many superheroes a la Superman, Batman and Spiderman. We don’t need them. Our regular heroes do the needful. The likes of Rajinikanth, Salman Khan-- and now add Ajay Devgan to the list -- are adept at superhuman feats like flicking a cigarette in the air and lighting it with a bullet (of all things), or bashing up a truckload of baddies without getting as much as a scratch on their goggles. Needless to say that all these stunts are punctuated by gravity-defying leaps and hops so incredible as to leave both the trampoline manufacturers and physicists alike in a tizzy. The bottom line is: we proudly anoint brute force at the altar of credulity. And director Rohit Shetty’s movieSingham, starring Ajay Devgan, is a typical example of it.

Normally, expecting sense, sensibility and subtlety from a Rohit Shetty film is to make yourself a butt of his jokes, but with Singham -- an action flick where the hero is dead serious while the villain leaves you doubled-up with laughs -- you do expect a tittle of the three S. All you get instead is a mix of style, spunk and savagery, attractively packaged in a palimpsest bearing Dabangg traces.

The protagonist Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgan) is the cop, the jury and the executioner all rolled into one brawny body. On the beat through the dusty alleys of the sleepy village Shivgad, he imparts justice as he deems fit. He’s honest and fearless. A showdown with a dreaded Goan ganglord Jaykant Shikre (Prakash Raj) puts Singham on Shikre’s hitlist. What follows is Singham’s transfer from Shivgad to Goa, Shikre’s home turf, where Shikre, in his own words, is a shikari out to hunt down Singham. Will Singham cop out against the all powerful enemy or will he grab the bull by the horns?

The movie pretty much follows the good-versus-bad template to a T, with long ‘conscience-invoking’ monologues thrown in to add some corn to the otherwise spunky affair. There’s also a nod to vigilante justice where cops take turns to kick a corrupt politician’s butt, and a long corny monologue by Devgn before the fag end makes you wonder if Shetty was switching from action to comedy.

Ah! There’s also a tepid love story between Singham and a Goan girl Kavya (Kajal Aggarwal), who tragically enjoys lesser footage than even the old and cynic constable (Ashok Saraf). And then there’s also a divine justice angle given through a sidetrack about an honest cop who committed suicide after being falsely implicated by the evil Shikre.

Which brings us to perhaps the only rave of this review. Prakash Raj. Never since Amrish Puri’s dramatics as the bald Mogambo has one enjoyed villainy so much as in the badmen played by Prakash Raj, be it in Wanted or Bbuddah - Hoga Terra Baap or Singham. It’s villainy with a comic streak and kudos to Prakash for pulling it off repeatedly.

More than anything, Singham is a collage of Devgn’s brawns. The swarthy star does stunts galore and takes off his shirt on at least two occasions (but don’t rejoice, ladies, for unlike Salman in Dabangg this cop wears a vest). The stunts have Rohit Shetty written all over them. The car crashes and car topples are aplenty but nothing beats one stunt where Devgan steps out of a skidding car to shoot at a baddie. 

All in all, Singham is a brash celebration of brute force. If you wanna watch Ajay Devgn decimating a dozen fellows singlehandedly without ruining even the crease of his trousers, Singham is the film for you. If you get goose pimples by the sight of cars flying like wingless aircrafts, Singham is the film for you. And though Ajay Devgn is surely good as Singham, Prakash Raj is the real Kingham.

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Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara

Cast: Hrithik Roshan,Farhan Akhtar,Abhay Deol,Katrina Kaif,Kalki Koechlin,Ariadna CabrolDirector: Zoya AkhtarProducer: Ritesh Sidhwani,Farhan AkhtarBanner: Excel EntertainmentMusic: Shankar-Ehsaan-LoyBackground Music: Ehsaan Noorani, Loy Mendonca,Shankar MahadevanSound: Baylon FonsecaLyrics: Javed AkhtarCinematography: Carlos CatalanEditing: Chandan AroraScreenplay: Reema Kagti, Zoya AkhtarDialogue: Farhan AkhtarStory/Writer: Reema Kagti, Zoya AkhtarChoreography: Bosco Martis, Caesar Gonsalves, Vaibhavi MerchantCostume: Arjun Bhasin

Movie review of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. You only live once! The martini sipping British spy may grin at it and the reincarnation theorists may deride it, but Zoya Akhtar’s film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara hammers home the message of celebrating the lust for life, the joie de vivre, of seizing the day, seizing the moment and living totally in here-now. Yes, here-now, for one is always incomplete without the other.

The character that exemplifies this more than anyone else is that of Arjun (Hrithik Roshan), a stilted financial broker, a true-blue number-cruncher obsessed with making money. He’s uptight, upwardly mobile, cocky, and smug, but quite a heartthrob. His lifeplan is simple: slog till 40 and retire after that with a big bank balance. He’s shaken out of this idyll by the vivacious diving instructor Laila (Katrina Kaif). In one of the well executed scenes in the film, Laila tells Arjun before his maiden deep-sea dive: “your life is going to change”. Change it does. For when he comes out of the heavenly waterworld, he is speechless. The tears in his eyes say it all, complemented quite well with the incisive poetry of Javed Akhtar ascribed in the film to the character of Imraan (Farhan Akhtar), Arjun’s friend, a copy writer and a closet poet with his own personal demons to deal with. 

The equation between Arjun and Imraan is a bit strained, thanks to a love triangle gone kaput four years ago. Now, in the chaffing between the two, it’s the chill dude Kabir (Abhay Deol) who’s willy-nilly sandwiched.

The trio had made a pact in their college days that they would go on a vacation where each one would choose an adventure sport which the other two would unquestionably participate in. So just two months ahead of Kabir’s wedding to Natasha (Kalki Koechlin), the trio hit the road in Spain. It’s a trip that will change their lives forever.

More than a road movie, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is a coming-of-age tale of three friends. And being that, it comes precariously close to slipping into theDil Chahta Hai template now and then, but Zoya Akhtar infuses the film with fresh strokes aplenty rather than just giving us an old mannequin in a spanking new tee. There are many moments in the film that make you sit up and take note. The deep sea dive, the freefall, the running with the bulls, and Imraan’s poetry in the backdrop, accompanied with slow-motion postcard shots (Carlos Catalan) of Spain make ZNMD a heady cocktail one would love to say bottoms up to.

What jars in this otherwise ripsnorting ride is the needless de tour to the Tomatino festival and a flamenco number that make the movie seem like a montage for the Spanish travel industry.

Barring this and a passionless smooch between Katrina and Hrithik, the film pretty much gets everything right. Katrina is surprisingly expressive in her role, but it’s Hrithik Roshan and Farhan Akhtar who dominate the proceedings with their crackling performances. Hrithik’s Arjun has haughty airs about him in the first half, gradually replaced by an epiphanic humility after he falls in love with Laila and life. Abhay Deol is decidedly comfortable and restrained as the indecisive Kabir, while Kalki is perfect as his suspicious and tetchy fiancée.

Farhan’s mettle as an actor shines through in the scene when he’s faced with Naseeruddin Shah, who makes a cameo appearance. One of my favourite scenes is when Farhan is in bed with a Spanish girl (Ariadna Cabrol) and he tells her the truth he’s been hiding from his friends, knowing well that she can’t understand a darned word of Hindi. What’s important is for the character to get it out of his system. It’s these subtle, thought-provoking master strokes that make Zoya Akhtar a director to look forward to. 

Bowing out, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is a salutation to love, life and friendship. It’s a film you must watch at least once, if not dobara. 

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