Review: Dhobi Ghat

Posted on January 25, 2011January 25, 2011 by bach

An art film, to me, falls into either of two categories. One kind strikes audience with a brilliant sigh, making us wonder how a complex thought can be so simply put (E.g. Black Swan). The other kind is a folder of scribbles thrown at you, which does not make any sense even if you arrange in any order. Dhobi Ghat belongs to second category. It’s a high profile, big banner, “star” cast, much anticipated commercial-art movie which makes you feel you are reading few torn pages of someone else’s dairy. Probably, that’s the reason wise say you shouldn’t read someone else’s dairy. It’s so freaking boring!

Dhobi Ghat is not a traditional Bollywood commercial-art movie; hence my comments are also not regular ones. Movie is attributed with fine acting and brilliant direction. Bummer – it is pointless and boring. It neither does the justice to the time spent in cinema nor to the pop-corn bought. (Just a thought: Movie like this is the reason why Akshay Kumar in industry, to bring pointless but not boring movies). Dhobi Ghat revolves around a modern art painter Arun (Amir Khan) obsessed with video letters of Yasmin. At the same time NRI investment banker Shai (Monika Dogra) stalks him while successfully manage to get herself obsessed by Munna (Prateik) the Dhobi, whom she meets on her clichéd poverty trip. Arun changes houses! That’s all – I dint miss anything to explain on the plot!

All newcomers (all of them except Amir) have done nice job, justice to their roles, while Amir still struggles with “new age” acting – the natural one. Amir acting still stuck in mid 90s standard of great acting, I feel he was weakest link in acting department. Kiran Rao’s direction is great, even without considering this is her first presentation. Actually this is a relief! Since for a long time now Farah Khan was taking all the sympathy votes for being the only female Bollywood mainstream director. Now Farah can retire and Kiran can take her place with an understanding that her first movie is a mistake and she won’t be making a pointless movie again.

After Dhobi Ghat, I went into depression for a while and was actually looking for an Akshay Kumar kind of movie to undo this effect. We don’t run out of options do we? I chose Vijay’s Kaavalan over “Yamla Pagla Diwana”. As anticipated it was crapy one and boom! I am back to this world again, Thanks to Vadivelu!. Anyways, here are some options; if you would like undo the hangover after watching Dhobi Ghat (I used all three):

Kaavalan: Vijay is a kick boxer, student, body guard, dancer, comedian, singer, honest but innocent, most eligible bachelor as usual! Basically he is almost all the things I dreamed I would become when I was 12.

Black Swan: Amazingly brilliant movie. Watch it yourself, I am running out of words to explain it.

127 Hours: Another brilliant masterpiece by Danny Boyle. It surely will bring you goose bumps (as “The way back” did). Again, I am running out of words to explain the movie. One note on AR Rahman though! One more evidence to show he copies tunes, from his own work! Or, do we call it reuse? Some part of this movie has background tune of Raavan (Behene De to be specific.). Probably he thought the crowd that watched Raavan and watching 127 Hours are mutually exclusive. He is obviously wrong isn’t it?

Tees Maar Khan (aka Sheela Ki Jawani)

Posted on December 25, 2010 by bach

If Farah Khan thinks she can make a stupid movie with a fantastic item number and make it a biggest blockbuster, she probably is right. It works for Indian audience, and me. Tees Maar Khan was a houseful show in the middle of the week; probably it will remain so for rest of the holidays, unless a miracle happens. Her logic was simple, it’s feeling freezing out here and all we need is a racy raunchy number for this winter! 😉

Sheela Ki Jawani is totally fantastic! It has the same effect as some of the legendary items songs we had in this industry. I remember boys hostels going crazy over Babuji zara Dheere chalo, because there was a Bijli standing there, now it must be crazier since it is matter of Sheela’s Jawani! Whole movie can be tolerated to see this dance number. One more thing – the lyrics – semi-X rated “What’s my name…Ooh… Say my name”. 😉

The rest of the movie is plain simple stupid, it made little sense as any other Akshay Kumar movie and this can be easily counted as worst movie of 2010. It’s almost obvious that the movie was made for a bunch of 8 year olds, who giggle for anything jumping and running on the screen. They don’t need much explanation, do they? It’s like any cartoon network show; Tom loses his face for something Jerry does, and in the next scene Tom is alright and chasing Jerry again! There is little or no explanation why things are happening in the way they are happening. Those three stooges resemble penguins in the movie in Madagascar. I can go on, but in summary movie is a complete cartoon show – a bad one!

Plot was lifted from a disastrous Hollywood movie “After the Fox”. An international criminal plotting to rob a train filled with antiques, and does it by fooling an entire village. From an international thief, who apparently escaped every time he was caught; you would expect a lot of wit and skills. You would expect to see another Ocean’s eleven or Italian job, but no! There is nothing more than a Govinda from early 90s. Nothing in a Genius thief film leaves anything to your imagination – nothing smart.

Movie moves with a millions of technical mistakes, but there is no point complaining about it. It’s like any other holy book, filled with impossible stuff which cannot be questioned. If you need one example, the whole village scene was shot in a single camera – 200 actors in close up! And superstar Athish Kapoor does not find this odd!

Director Farah Khan is up against all those Indian or western movies with Indians those wanting to earn an Oscar (references to Amir Khan and Anil Kapoor). This movie looks like a campaign against them, like someone attending a social cause, in facebook. Every part of the movie tries to humiliate Oscar wannabes, or those who already got them. One more thing is, Bollywood’s idea of Oscar is to show poor villagers story (slumdog, Peepli) plus historical story (Lagaan). At end of the movie some European girls (new obsession of Bollywood) distribute fake Oscars to all camera-shy crew of this movie, including spot boys and light boys. Finally Farah arrives on stage and gets a real one and rubs it on buttock! BTW, have you heard the story about Fox and sour grapes?

Akshay Kumar is at his usual worst. I beg these directors to give him action role which he hasn’t done in decades. He is over used as henpecked coward, wetting his pants and running away from a headless ghost (Yes, you guessed it right – Sleepy Hollow.) Akshay Khanna with his usual irritating over acting, natural choice I would say. Only tolerable actor was Katrina Kaif, but her role itself was to overact! She is a wannabe-actor and a foxy bimbette, also Tees Mar Khan’s (aka Tabrez Mirza Khan) love interest. There is nothing much to discuss on acting department.

Good

Sheela ki Jawani
Just two hours of non-sense, not three.

Bad

All departments.
All the technical mistakes (a million of them)

And Ugly

Director’s of Idea of Oscars.
Cheep humour. Taking crap behind the bushes (literally) etc.

Talking about references, there is a guest appearance by Chunky Pandey who is presented as irresponsible narcissist, which I heard about him in real life as well. There is one more scene where Anil Kapoor dances on stage like a child, which also seems to be true. Come to Salman Khan, who gives a guest appearance in Tees Mar Khan’s (international criminal) Mohalla for a dance on a casual invite over a phone call, Now does this have any relevance in real life ? Just looking for some significance, symbolism etc. that’s all.

My advice – Please avoid. Watch Sheela ki Jawani on YouTube.

My take on Guzarish

Posted on November 23, 2010November 23, 2010 by bach

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movies are like epic poems. “Khamoshi” was a poem, “Hum dil de chuke sanam” was a masterpiece, “Devdas” was an epic and “Black” was all of them. Then, he got tired of presenting poems. Now he presents only drafts – unfinished ones. Guzarish is one among them; it seems that he dint put too many thoughts into it to make it perfect. Started well though!

Quick question, does “major milestone” translate to “bada meel ka paththar” in Hindi? I dint keep myself updated with Hindi, then! Anyways, back to review.

Guzarish falls short of telling a convincing story, tries to give a wrong message in between, then turns weird and finally ends like a Karan Johar movie – making everyone in the hall cry. Fortunately there are several clues in the movie shows it had a great idea behind it before while it was written and Bhansali lost it later point.

Plot is very simple. Flashback is picked from (Oh, sorry… inspired by) a Hollywood flick – “The Prestige”. A jealous illusionist (in Bollywood a magician) gets the apparatuses bugged and boom! Mr. Ethan Mascarenhas (Hrithik Roshan) is crippled for rest of his life. Ethan takes this as a challenge and starts a radio show from his bedroom, and he becomes popular once again. After a decade of doing this, he decides give up his life and files a petition against Union of India for an approval on mercy killing, which gets rejected as it is unconstitutional.

This is how Goan maids look like., any questions ?

Guzarish

The movie ends with an indication that his maid (Aishwarya Rai) will assist him to do when court rejected. Now, this story went wrong for two major reasons

Movie does not attend the reason why Ethan wants a mercy killing. Nowhere in three hours Bhansali shows Ethan is suffering or it is getting worse. Finally it looks like Ethan is asking for mercy killing Euthanasia (Referred as Ethanasia) because he got bored!!
Court does not attend the argument “Why grant Euthanasia only to him?”. They start to discuss it, but later they forget! I really don’t think “Because he chooses for himself” is a justifiable reason. This shakes the foundation of the movie.

All other areas (direction, acting etc) were comparatively good; they are in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s standards. I acknowledge that he is one of very few directors who don’t believe in overacting to bring drama, nor Masala. While I am thankful for that, it is frustrating to see some of the details are missed out.

Hrithik was good; BTW, did I mention that I brought him out of my “No watch list” after Kites? This movie could look good in his resume. Sofia (Aishwarya Rai) simply exists in this movie which any actor could have filled in. If you read the plot again, you see Sofia the maid (Aishwarya) does not have anything significant to contribute to the story. In-fact, she is one of the week points of the movie. If I were Bhansali I would have filled someone not so famous, like he did for that doctor or lawyer.

Now, list of flaws:

Why the movie gives old feeling? I initially thought the story itself is picturised in old age, at least 40 years. But no, they talk about SMS etc. Confusing! Is there a place in Goa where people live just like they did in colonial era?
The maid seems to be a financially poor girl with drunken husband, but appearance makes her look like a princess – couple of centuries of old. She has an heir style of German village girl and wears veils like a secret cult. Total confusion.
You can observe the difference between how Hollywood and Bollywood takes on exact same things differently. In Prestige he is an illusionist and here Ethan is Magician! In 90 minutes movie Hollywood does not forget to show a glimpse of magic apparatuses – they ensure whatever audience see is a result of smart equipment and quick movement. But Bollywood does not care – It just happens like any paranormal activity! They had 180 minute, just to remind you.
Konkani was dubious. In Hum dil de chuke sanam, there was some Guajarati and in Devdas, Bengali. In Guzarish Bhansali forgot about Konkani. There were couple of words here and there; they sounded more like Marathi than Konkani.
Songs weren’t great! There was one dance – A Goan would have been nice. Instead it was a Spanish..ish dance! Aishwarya treats it as metal rock! My point is Sofia does not look like a person who does mock rock in a pub, she is a serious character – If you observe she talks less than Man Mohan Singh.
Ash wears longest skirts in the world (already in Guinness records!) and she rides bicycle back home! It’s long since I’ve been to Goa, but it is hard to believe skirts keep getting longer there as days go. Nothing wrong with the concept, just that it is funny to imagine a 15^th century European skirt driving early 20^th century Hero bicycle.
What’s about Karan Johar ending please? For 15 minutes Ethan says thank you note. “Last but not least” and “Thank you one and all”.

Looks like Bollywood is rearranging its resources. Best chocolate hero Vivek Oberoy (remember Sathiya?) does action super hero roles (Remember Prince?), Martial art specialist Akshay Kumar does henpecked roles and now Best dancer in Bollywood plays handicapped! Salman and Shah Rukh..err what are they good at again ?

Beware of Hisss

Posted on October 25, 2010October 26, 2010 by bach

Hisss was presented as revolutionary horror and (in quotes)”bold”. Well it’s not! It’s a B-grade soft-core (in quotes) “pornographic” disaster. If you need more explanation; it is pathetic, pointless, terrible and crappy in every department including that much celebrated Khan dude. It did not look like the movie had a director or a script. Every damned person was (over)acting on his own, no wonder its official director Jennifer lynch disowned herself from Hisss.

I don’t rate B-grade movies. This post is not a review but a warning to my friends: Please don’t be misguided by the promo.

If you ignore my words and watch it, I will remove you from my facebook connections and unfollow you from twitter 🙂

Enthiran – the robot

Posted on October 9, 2010October 9, 2010 by bach

It wasn’t horrible. Not bad for an attempt from Indian cinema trying to match Hollywood standards. I enjoyed it, well done. At the same time I wish the movie could have been better if director did not worry about audience “understandability factor”. Some compromises were silly.

It looks like Indian cinema waited too long, with jealousy, to make a movie Hollywood always bragged about. Enthiran the robot try to attempt all of them in single shot. If you club all of the action scenes of this movie together and observe you can see Terminator, Mummy, Mask, Anaconda, iRobot etc etc. You can even name specific scenes which are picked, and where they are picked from. Good news is there is nothing taken from The Matrix, unlike all Bollywood action movies from last one decade did.

On the whole, while watching the movie, you could read through director’s mind. Let’s make biggest budget movie in India, then let’s add biggest star in India. Let him be present in almost all frames of the movie. To make it easy, let’s put him in double role, or hundred more. The aggregate of five minutes where he is not present on the screen, let’s put the most popular actress in India even if her presence does not matter. Hire some expensive graphic designer from west and ask them to repeat the designs. Find locations for songs, where no other Indian movies are shot, a great wonder may be! etc etc. Watch it yourself (yes, I recommend), if all these taken out of the movie – it’s an average average plot.

Few good things about the movie…

Graphics: never been tried in Indian cinema in such a detail with so much clarity. Stills falls way below perfection. For example, there is a scene one day old Enthiran tosses an infant to play with him, looked like old jungle book cartoon.
Technicality: Very good progress as compared to same industry which produced movies about hacking systems with “Windows media player”. Nothing much silly. Just fine except few.
Rajanikanth: he was good. He looked natural and not much “style factor”. I have few things to criticise, but that would be Blasphemy. Overall, no complaints.
Aishwarya Rai, she was good. No overacting and no under acting. Looks like she found some weight(see image below).

Few bad things:

Music, Not even half of Rahman’s level. Songs are crappy, plain simple stupid. Kilimanjaro, for the record, is my third most irritating song. (The other two being “Kajrare” and “Aa ante amalapura”). These songs make itching sensation at back of my brain.
They sing and dance Kilimanjaro on the top of Machu-pitchu Mountains! These two are half globe away from each other! Makes me wonder where is costume from – Papua New Guinea?
Robot should be designed to take optimal path. But this one acts plain stupid path. I mean Anaconda – Really? Can a robot fly? If yes, then why does it walk on rest of the scenes?
Costume: Robot costume could have been improved a lot. In some scenes (a song) it looks like Flintstones costume(see image below ). Back to Kilimanjaro song, Rajani was wearing a doormat!
Is cycling shorts in fashion again? Must be for conservative crowd! Miniskirts are beyond our cultural limits, but it is acceptable if it is accompanied by cycling shorts.
“DOT”?!? Is a “dot” after a strong statement same as PERIOD? Probably because “period” already has some other meaning in Indian English.

image via a forum

As I said earlier, it’s worth watching movie. I would watch it again, but not same crowd please. The cinema I watched was filled with some absolute crazy dudes. They had no idea what’s going on in the movie. For example, maximum applause (and whistles) winning scene in the movie is Robot Rajani harassing Ash! I don’t think movie fails to deliver the message it was originally intended to… but for some whatever Rajani does is fun. DOT.