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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