Slumdog Millionaire

This is the first – and probably going to be the only - English movie that made me wish I had seen the dubbed Hindi version instead !! Almost completely shot in the underbelly of Mumbai - and with almost exclusively hindi dialogues in the first half, the english dialogues jarr a little when they make their appearance in the second half. However, the setback is momentary and you are soon immersed back in the engrossing tale of Jamal Malik (played by a British NRI Dev Patel).

The opening sequence of the movie shows an 18-year-old Jamal being interrogated by Irfan Khan (playing a police inspector) and Saurabh Shukla (the constable). In the questioning, we come to know that Jamal has been on Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) and is just one question away from the Rs. 20 million jackpot. However, he has been accused of cheating on the show – how else can a Slumdog know answers to questions that have stumped doctors, engineers, lawyers etc ?

And as Jamal begins explaining his answers one by one, we get a window into his past, right from his childhood days – and see how unlikely events in his life give him the answers to the questions. To say Jamal had an interesting life would be to put it mildly – and thankfully Danny Boyle tends to portray most of it in a positive light. I agree the crap scene cant be called positive, but I think it’s the only blot. There aren’t any scenes where the kids are in deep anguish – and lets face it, an 8-year-old homeless orphan in India (even enterprising ones like Salim/Jamal) is going to have some very sad days in his life. Organized crime, pedophiles, the police – the list of oppressors is too long . With so much furore about the movie already, I can imagine what brickbats would have been thrown if they showed the actual misery these children undergo throughout their childhood.

Jamal is very sweet natured and innocent, especially in his childhood years – and shows native intelligence in his grown-up avatar. Salim is Jamal’s elder brother - more worldly and street-smart, while Latika is an orphan girl from the same slum as theirs. All the three characters are played adorably by two sets of children – once when they are 7-8 years old, and again when they are in their early teens. I cant stress enough how well the kids have performed. The fact that they are real-life slum children with no prior camera exposure, makes their performance even more wonderful.

Danny Boyle extracts commendable performances from the entire cast – the lead trio, as well as seasoned actors like Irfan Khan and Anil Kapoor. Irfan Khan plays the role of a cynical but impartial cop perfectly and Anil Kapoor brings the right amount of energy into his role. As far as characters go, according to me, the standout character in the movie was Salim. Jamal is the good sibling, who grows up to become an apprentice at a call center – and the one who is one tv in KBC. Yet in terms of character, Salim with his limited screen presence, outshines him. Salim is a go-getter who is not troubled by morality of things – and is fearless. He doesn’t flinch from stealing from his own brother – as long as there is profit to be made. Yet under everything else, his affection for his younger brother is still there.

Though critics in India have cried themselves hoarse about Slumdog showing India in a negative light – I just dont get it ! Its not like the creators of Slumdog invented slums, forced begging and all the other “objectionable” things shown in the movie. All these things are widely prevalent in India – so what are we complaining about ? Infact we should applaud the commendable skill with which he has fashioned a hopeful and happy story based in these conditions. The entire world is appreciating the movie for what it is – and we should join them.

However, is it worth the best picture Oscar ?

Answer – NO !

While its no doubt a very good movie – it totally misses out on the “wow” moments. And in my humble opinion, an Oscar winning movie should have atleast a couple of “Wow” moments. [hint – watch The Dark Knight to understand “Wow” moments :) ]


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Raaz : The Mystery Continues

Does anyone else wonder when Kangana Ranaut will do a non-suicidal, non-alcoholic or essentially a non-psycho role (case in point – Gangster, Woh Lamhe, Life in a Metro, Fashion) ?? Well if any of you do, then Raaz 2 is your answer – yes, she finally ditches her self-destructive personae and takes on a normal personality – albeit a frightened one. And well, she does try to take her life in this movie as well, but she is not to be blamed for that one …

Kangana Ranaut is Nandita, a top notch model (very Fashionesque) – who is trying to balance her professional and personal life – her boyfriend is Yash (Adhyayan Suman). He anchors a successful TV show called Andhavishwas, where he debunks superstitions and supernatural myths. However, the opening scene of the movie is set far away from them – in a small town in Himachal called Kalindi – where a frightened-out-of-his-wits foreigner runs inside a temple, only to find the priest mutilating himself to death, claiming the end is near …

The opening scene sets a very good precedent for what is to come - as the suspense is crisp throughout the first half – you are on the edge of your seat for most of it. The director almost announces his intentions with dark foreboding music, every time something evil happens - yet such is his mastery over the camera that we flinch every time something does happen. He shows good imagination, using regular urban locations for his scares, and keeping the gore to a minimum.

Kangana does both the frightened and the possessed scenes very well – but the same cant be said about (her real life boyfriend) Adhyayan Suman. He comes across as too raw - and cant dance to save his life. Emraan Hashmi plays Prithvi, a painter who can paint events of Nandita's life before they happen – and he helps her in finding out the truth. He sports an intense look in the movie – and almost adds to the scares of the first half …

If you have noticed the emphasis on the word first half until now, you know what to expect in the second half. The second half of the movie completely goes to the dogs once you know the identity of the spirit and its intentions. I cant reveal more than that, but for crying out loud, is that the best motive you could come up with, Mohit Suri ? Really ? The story has quite a few twists and turns in the second half, but they don’t do the movie much good. And a very BIG loophole is the scene at the beginning of the movie when Yash is recording on camera, a group of Aghoris doing their thing by a river bank. Once you watch the full movie, you will understand …
The songs are quite good but atleast a couple of them are not needed - they break the flow of the movie. But inspite of its shortcomings, Raaz 2 is still a good entertainer, just for the scares.


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Changeling

When I went to watch Changeling, apart from the good reviews, I was intrigued by the name itself – what does it mean? After the movie, I wasn’t any wiser - the word isnt used anywhere in the movie. Wikipedia it was then – and according to Wikipedia, a Changeling is fairytale creature – child of elves, trolls etc – who is left behind in place of a human child. The changeling will assume the identity of the human kid and feed off the mother …..

I couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate name for the movie. Changeling follows the travails of a single mother Christine Collins (played by Angelina Jolie) whose only son Walter is kidnapped – and miraculously traced by the police after 5 months. Only, the boy who returns is not her son. Set in the 1920’s in Los Angeles, a time when the police force is much-maligned, and the return of Walter Collins has provided some desperately needed good publicity, the LAPD refuses to admit it made a mistake. Curiously the boy too insists that he is Walter Collins ….

Christine cant accept the fact that the police have stopped looking for Walter. But the LAPD will have none of it – they claim she is delusional and refusing to indentify her own kid. Faced by an apathetic police, she finds help in the form of Rev Briegleb (John Malkovich), a crusader priest who wants to weed out corruption in the LAPD. Together they set out to prove that the boy is not Walter (this is the 1920’s – photographs, dental records etc weren’t common).

But if you have figured that Changeling is a movie about one man/woman fighting against the entire system, you are mistaken. Midway into the story, a twist is introduced – which transforms the movie completely. And according to me, it is this that elevates Changeling into a very good movie. The director integrates all the plots fluidly and the story remains engrossing till the end.

Angelina Jolie plays Christine Collins very well – emoting with her eyes about the anguish of a mother - and the uncertainty when faced with extraordinary situations. But I felt she physically looked a little too shrunken in the movie – dark circles under her eyes and bones visibile everywhere - the kind you are after a serious illness. John Malkovich plays the no-nonsense serious guy effortlessly – and in the story, actually he is the one doing all the hard work – Christine being just a face.
The period look of the movie is one of its highlights – there are actually old trams running around the streets – don’t know how they manage that. And the only jarring part of the movie are the corrupt police activities – they appear to be out of a bad 1970’s hindi movie :)

Given that the incidents depicted in the movie actually happened in real life in 1928, the tale becomes even more interesting. To sum up - Angelina Jolie shows her acting chops and Clint Eastwood delivers another solid show – definitely do watch. I


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Chandni Chowk to China

The first mega-budget movie of the year – starring Akshay Kumar & Deepika Padukone - promos everywhere. So what are you expecting from the movie ?

You are probably expecting an action-comedy movie, with Ranvir Shorey adding to the comedy department …. and a sizzling romance between Akshay & Deepika. But what you get is something very different – a love story ….. between Akshay & Mithun Chakraborty !!!

But before you get your hopes up, its nowhere as funny as Dostana! It’s instead a weepy, sad romance … doomed for separation.
Ok, so Mithun plays the father figure. But Akshay definitely gets loads of emotional screentime with Mithun and zero with his leading lady. With Deepika, this is what you get ....

[After working on his forearms for two weeks with something called Iron Forearm technique … which actually resembles the roti making action]
Akshay (standing with Deepika in his arms) : I have Iron Forearms now. Jaldi hi mere paas honge Iron Legs, Iron Chest, Iron Stomach, … (pauses and looks down towards you-know-what) … aur ek Iron …
Deepika (coyly covering her face) : Bas
Akshay : Ab mujhe mat roko. Mera poora body Lohe ka ho gaya hai ...
Deepika (fluttering her eyelids) : Oh, mere Iron man …

Want more ? He calls her lovingly as his ‘aloo paratha’ – infact CC2C had more than its share of potatoes !! There is a Ganesha shaped aloo in his hand almost throughout the movie. Deepika is his aloo paratha. And then in the climax, he begins to see aloos in his enemies …

Honestly, I cant decide what exactly to say about the story. It’s a combination of some four movies. Let me list them – Singh is Kinng, Kung Fu Panda, Chaalbaaz and a ‘Ajay Devgan’ movie called Jigar :) Add the 4 movies up cleverly and you have the entire story …. the resemblance to Singh is Kinng is especially striking, probably because it wasn’t released too far back. The same country bumpkin (Akshay Kumar) going international with his (comparatively) smarter sidekick, falling in love at first sight with extremely pretty ladies, songs at historical locations (Pyramids in Egypt/Great Wall in China) … you will feel déjà vu throughout the movie.

I am not going to say anything more on the story, except that its EXTREMELY BORING and humourless in the first half. Till intermission, it seems like its going to be the biggest flop of 2009. Thankfully, it picks up significantly in the second half of the movie. The sequences with the hindi-speaking-beggar and the kung-fu training are the best part of the movie. Akshay Kumar is right in his element here. Deepika looks ravishing throughout the movie – she looks especially cute in the Chinese silk dresses. And the make-up artists have done a commendable job in differentiating the twins – Meow Meow (the Chinese twin) actually looks almost Oriental ! Deepika doesn’t have much of role(s) to act, so she is ok as far as acting is concerned. But I thought she was looking the best so far in this movie – almost lighting up the screen with her smile.

Ranvir Shorey was a disappointment though – his acting was quite flat, even in the opening sequences. Mention must also be made of the soundtrack of the movie – Kailash Kher and partners manage to provide a most lament-filled soundtrack – the hindi word ‘rondu’ being apt. Except the title track, which is quite sprightly and appears early in the movie, the rest of the soundtrack REALLY makes you weep … in frustration. Quite disappointing. And didn’t wait around for the rap song at the end, so cant comment on that one.

Now the most important question – how does the movie fare on the whole ? Does it disappoint like Singh is Kinng? Well ….. not as much as Singh is Kinng, but disappointing nevertheless. As I have highlighted in the beginning, CC2C is expected to be an action-comedy. Instead, you will find a whole lot of sentimental melodrama (unhelpfully accompanied by Kailash Kher in the background) …. and it is a complete downer. Nikhil Advani has lost the plot midway into a movie yet again.

However, given that we are talking about Akshay Kumar and the droll and boring Singh is Kinng became a superhit, I wouldn’t be surprised if CC2C also did good business - especially since it’s a notch or two better than that sardar caper.


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Australia

After being delayed by more than a week, I thought I would chuck the ‘Australia’ review. But then I find that its still playing in most of the multiplexes in its second week, so here goes ...

If you are the type who get spellbound at magnificent footage on the huge cinema screen - in movies such as the Gladiator - you are going to like Australia. Attempted on a similar scale and scope, it features some breathtakingly beautiful scenes from the Land of Down Under. However, those of you who caught the word ‘attempted’ in the previous sentence would have guessed it right - there isn’t much to the movie other than beautiful camerawork.

Australia is Baz Luhrmann’s attempt at an epic movie ... combining love, adventure, travel, World War II, family values, racial equality and everything else you can think of. In reality it seems like a movie in two parts where the first part is a complete movie by itself and the second half is a mix of a little of everything else.

The story starts off pretty simply. Nicole Kidman plays Sarah Ashley, an English aristocrat who comes to Australia to dispose off her deceased husband’s cattle ranch, only to land in the middle of rivalry with local rancher King Carney. She then decides to undertake her husband’s last wish and herd 1,500 head of cattle to Darwin to fulfill an Army contract. She hires for help The Drover (Hugh Jackman), a freewheeling Australian cowboy sort of. Along with them comes the narrator of the movie, a half Aborginal child Nullah.

However this accounts for only the first half of the movie. The story then meanders into love, ruthless business rivalry, racism, family ties, blood ties, Japanese invasion of Australia ...

The chemistry between Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman is good in the first half, when Lady Sarah Ashley is trying to come to terms with the Australian outback. However, Nicole Kidman is quite ordinary in the second half, especially in the emotional scenes. Hugh Jackman is cool as ever, acting the macho guy throughout the movie. And Nullah does exceedingly well too.

However the movie is completely let down by its unending storyline. I could hear groans of people all around me waiting for it to end. And the predictable nature of the story meant that the outcome of the movie was very obvious an hour before it actually ends – and the screenplay did nothing to make the intervening hour any interesting. The Japanese bombing of Darwin town looked quite CGIed and honestly, after ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘Pearl Harbour’ the ability of explosions to ‘wow’ us is quite limited now.

Interestingly, after you watch the movie, the strongest impression left on you isn’t Nicole Kidman’s bad acting, but the rampant racism prevalent in Australia at that time. We know about the oppression on blacks in the United States - partly because of reformists like Martin Luther King – but it was an eye opener for me as far as oppression on Aborigines is concerned.

Since I am a sucker for the visual grandeur of cinema, I am giving it an extra 0.5 star solely for the camerawork. If you too enjoy the big screen cinema experience, you can watch Australia. Otherwise you are ok without it.


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The President is Coming

There are a lot of people who are ready to do ‘anything’ for 2 minutes of fame ... and I get a feeling that in our over-populated country, this sentiment is growing stronger day by day. So if the grand prize is spending two minutes with the most powerful man in the free world as the face of ‘the young India’, what would YOU do ?

‘The President is Coming’ is about a reality TV competition to choose one young Indian to shake George W. Bush’s hand on his India visit (The opening screen of the movie tells you in bold letters that is a fictitious account, lest you take it seriously :). The Mumbai consulate entrusts this onerous job on a two-woman-PR-agency – admirably played by Shivani Tanksale and Shernaz Patel. They proceed to shortlist 6 wacko individuals (each convinced of his/her superiority) and lock them up in a room for an 18 hour-long competition ... and what you get is a perfect comedy – or well ... almost !!

Let me read out the contenders

• Maya Roy is a young author (played by Konkona Sen Sharma) who dreams of winning the Booker Prize one day ...
• Ajay Karlekar is a MBA-turned-social-worker who is also in the fascist Shiv Sena mold ...
• Kapil Dev Dholakia is your Gujarati stock broker who just dreams of the stock markets ...
• Archana Kapoor is a super-rich Delhite bimbo who runs a lipstick business and whose ‘daddy’ is among the five richest Indians ...
• Rohit Seth is a accent-trainer for Gurgaon BPOs ...
• Ramesh S is the geek working in Microsoft, who dreams about his H-1B visa ...

They sound very caricaturish, don’t they ? Well they are that and much more. I cant remember having laughed so hard in a movie since ... Dostana I guess. The characters, while staying true to their caricature roots, indulge in such ridiculous sequences that you just cant help bursting out with laughter. And no, its not the ‘Welcome’ kind of stupid jokes - just the characters making incessant fun of the stereotypes they each represent. The fascist social worker ranting about divorced women, the geek about sexual fantasies etc … And the less said about the sanity of the actual competition, the better.

The only thing I can reveal about this part of the movie is that its shot completely in a documentary-cum-reality-show kind of way and the movie is much better because of it. And the fact that after the intermission, the movie sorta loses its humour as it begins eliminating the contenders one by one. But its not so bad as the movie itself is just 1 hour 45 min long. And the only thing you are going to come out of the movie with is chuckling about one of the gags. My favorite one was the one about the Kotak broker ... :)

So my recommendation - definitely dont miss it!


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Outsourced

If you haven’t heard about this movie, don’t be surprised – it had almost zero publicity. (Australia atleast had a few big hoardings around Mumbai). These few weeks are lean times as far as movie releases are concerned – there is nothing substantial hitting the screens between 25th Dec (Ghajini) and 23rd Jan (Chandni Chowk to China). So be ready for some small-budget-movie fun – some of them are quite good.

This one almost gets there, but trips at the last 100 m.

The name of the movie is a giveaway as far as the story is concerned. It begins with call centre manager Todd Anderson being told by his boss that his entire department has been outsourced – and worse, he has to goto India to train the team there! As expected, Todd struggles against the culture shocks, including his name - and spicy food - when he lands in India. For some inexplicable reason, he is called Mr. Toad by all and sundry in the movie. And his work is based in an imaginary Mumbai suburb called Gharapuri (Wikipedia tells me that Gharapuri is actually another name for Elephanta Island).

But inspite of pandering to quite a few clichés - including a ridiculous cow that keeps wandering into the callcenter - Outsourced is very wittily written and doesn’t allow these clichés to put you off from this movie. And it uses the clichés rather well – eliciting frequent guffaws from the audience. Considering that this was intended for American audiences, I consider it quite an achievement for the makers that it appeals to us Indians equally well.

The going is pretty good – till the love angle kicks in. Ayesha Dharker plays Asha, one of the call center employees – who Todd falls in love with in the most cheesiest of sequences. In Hotel Kamasutra, no less !! I personally don’t like Ayesha Dharker’s looks at all and it doesn’t help that her role in the second half is written quite stupidly – you can make out that this portion was written completely with an American viewpoint.

After this fall, the movie loses its way a little and stumbles around, before the final showdown in front of Todd’s boss. That part of the movie feels like a sports movie, where a coach starts off with a really bad team, but improves them drastically and they make it to the finals – and they are just one game away from glory !!

So should you watch this movie or not? I would say yes - even though I am awarding it only a 2.5 star. Because its a warm-hearted movie, with plenty of funny sequences that linger in your head. And because it includes a negative 0.5 star for the Hotel Kamasutra sequence !!


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