Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey

For me, Kheley Hum Jee Jaan Se will probably be the last time I am going to invest time and money in a Ashutosh Gowariker movie. It marks a very sad decline for someone regarded as one of India’s finest directors not too many years back. While length had always been his weakness, his story telling has now become a joke. What started off in the laborious Jodhaa Akbar has reached the nadir in this movie – the story and screenplay lack any drama, any sense of cinema or emotional highs and lows.

The story of the Chittagong uprising of 1930, a forgotten chapter of our freedom struggle – when revolutionaries under Surya Sen tried to make an example out of Chittagong. They decided to rid Chittagong of all Britishers by taking out five key targets in one audacious night – the telegraph office, the police lines armory, the railway tracks, the European Club and the British Army Cantonment. And if you watch the movie, you will realize how agonizingly close they came to rewriting history of British India.

And I do have to concede - even with his failings as a moviemaker, Ashutosh Gowarker has to be applauded for bringing this forgotten story to light. Because of it, I have a new sense of respect for all those who gave up so much for the fight to free this country. But ironically, I got it not from the movie but only from the end credits - where the photos of all the people who were involved in the Chittagong uprising makes the events of the movie spine-chillingly real. The biggest emotional surge for me came towards the end of the credits when I read the name of some Bengali gentleman who is still living in Bangladesh ! Alive, 80 years after the event !

Kheley Hum Jee Jaan Sey is in two distinct parts. The first part shows all the planning that went into the raids and how the group of rebels got together. The second half shows the actual raid and the aftermath of the raids as the British ruthlessly hunted down every one of the conspirators. The planners of the raid were Surya Sen and couple of his friends. Together they trained and inducted into his plans some 50 odd teenagers, mostly students, for the attack.

Did Surya Sen misuse his position as a teacher to whitewash impressionable minds into the rebellion? The movie doesn’t even consider the question relevant – everything is clearly black and white and Masterda Surya Sen never did anything wrong.

In the first half, we are introduced to innumerable number of characters, without any depth or detail on any of them. Even Abhishek Bachhan as Surya Sen seems unreal. He is always straight-faced and speaks only in a measured tone. He has always the right things to say, his shirt is always crisp white and he composure remains unruffled in most situations. Though his actions seem to suggest there is a fire in his belly, one sees no other visible signs of it anywhere. Deepika, with her size-zero, looks completely out of place in the movie – and quite frankly I didn’t think this movie needed a leading lady or any romatic angle.

The bad characterization is compounded by the absolute lack of any drama in the screenplay. I have seen documentaries with more emotional highs and lows than this movie. Emotional scenes are wretchedly handled, everything happens with an unreal sense of detachment – as if each actor was gnawing away with doubt about the lines he/she was spouting on the screen. Some actions of a lot of characters are completely unexplained – and things fall into place for the revolutionaries in remarkably convenient ways till the night of the actual assault.

Such a white-washed version of history is a little hard to digest for any intelligent audience – ironically the very same audience this movie is trying to entice. The characters fail to make any connection with the audience because they do not show much more depth than cardboard cutouts. The movie also drags on for the mandatory 3 hours of an Ashutosh Gowariker production. And frankly, the entire second half dedicated to the pursuit and capture of the revolutionaries was quite depressing – it could have been given much less screentime. All it did was to serve as a vehicle to showcase melodramatic deaths of some of the characters. Instead of focusing on their lives


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Action Replayy

Atrocious. Boring. A mindfuck
That is the most concise way I can describe Action Replayy. Horrendous writing, fucked-up characterizations, bad music, terrible art design and without a shred of evidence of even a single functional brain anywhere in the crew of this movie ! I am hard pressed to find one charitable thing to say about this movie – except for Aishwarya Rai’s looks. She has been looking better than ever nowadays and this movie is no exception. Can anybody guess by looking at her that she is 38 years old ?

Back to the movie, Bunty (newcomer Aditya Roy Kapoor), uses a convenient mad scientist angle to travel back in time to see if he could make his perennially-squabbling parents like each other a little more. When he lands in 1975, he realizes that he would have to man up his wimp of a father Kishan before he can take on his intimidating mother Mala and all can be well in his current world.

This story by itself could have been an interesting movie. But in the hands of Vipul Shah, it results in a horrible, pathetic piece of moviemaking which I think is unparalleled in my limited movie history. The only movie that I would consider worse than this would be Drona. From inane story elements to Aishwarya’s clothes (which look anything but the 70s) to terrible locations (what is with showing CST exterior as a location for every alternate shot) to bad music/picturization (Zor Ka Jhatka is a good song though) to the desperate lack of humour, it is a mindfuck

I have no beef against nonsensical – look this week’s other release Golmaal 3 – it is an enjoyable movie. But this is not even funny. The way Bunty goes about coaching his dad a-la Hitch, the director would have you believe it is serious. But then concepts like son singing in 4 different voices while dad lip syncs and gyrates to the songs make your clasp your head in despair. The dialogues are equally wince inducing. And you will finish watching the movie without coming across a single exciting turn in the script which will perk up your interest.

I think I have vented my feelings enough. If you still feel like you want to watch this movie, do it at your own peril. You have been warned!


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The American

The American is the one movie which might make even a hardcore George Clooney fan doubt his mania for a while – because George Clooney not only stars as lead, but also produces this maddeningly dull movie. So you cant blame anyone else for making Clooney look bad – he did this to himself.

The movie is about an American hitman who is on the run from some enemies (identified only as “the Swedes”) and is also looking to retire. When his remote Swedish countryside hideout is busted, he flees to Italy and looks up an old friend/boss, who arranges for him to lay low in a small hilly town of Castel del Monte. In exchange for that, he has to make a custom-made rifle for another assassin to use. However he meets some interesting people in that small Italian town and gets involved with them without wanting to.

The plot is quite common – In Bruges is a movie with a pretty similar subject. But while In Bruges was enormously entertaining, The American is like a version of it with all the quirkiness and humour stripped out. This movie has no comic relief and the only scene where the heroine drops her clothes has been chopped off by the censors !!

The reason why most of you would loathe this movie is its dryness. It is extremely slow paced and agonizingly dull without any color or vivacity. The dialogues in the movie are minimal and quite a bit of the footage is just of Clooney going about town – walking, drinking coffee etc. We are forced to watch the same footage of Clooney driving from Castel del Monte to a nearby town to make phonecalls multiple times – without any sound of the car engine or brakes or anything else – just silence. There are similar other shots of many such activities – where the natural sound has been completely filtered out for unnatural silence

It seems like a desperate attempt to be stylish. But it falls flat on its face

The other big failing of the movie is the complete lack of explanations – like who was after Clooney and why? Or what was his relation with the guy on the phone? Or what made him choose the Italian girl while rejecting the Swedish one ? It is quite ok for a movie to leave some questions unanswered. But to not answer any question at all was highly unsatisfying. You can conjecture, but you would never know for sure.

All in all, a complete avoid for everyone, movie enthusiasts included. Don’t quite understand what got it the 6.8 rating on IMDB


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Road, Movie

Never thought I would do this to an Abhay Deol movie – but what the fuck is Road, Movie ?? Unintelligible grammar in the name aside, Road, Movie is one of those terrible art movies that don’t have make any friggin sense whichever way you look at it ! This movie actually gives ‘film festival’ movies a bad name. Because of it, people are going to be wary of the next ‘film festival’ movie that comes along – and movies like the fabulous Road to Sangam will suffer.
(But just to show that I will not be cowed down :) , I will try this weekend’s other ‘film festival’ release Thanks Maa)

The only other thing you will come out of the movie apart from a ‘wtf’ face, is the stark beauty of Kutch landscape. While the Rajasthan landscape has sand dunes etc, nothing impacts you like scene of white land stretching off to the horizon in all directions. The movie has added Kutch to my list of places-to-visit-soon.

The movie itself is difficult to categorize. It IS a road movie, in the sense that the movie is about a trip that the protagonists undertake, but to what end no one knows. Is it a movie about the water bandits in the desert instead ? Or is it about coming-of-age of the main character Vishnu ?

But all these questions will feel meaningless after you see the showdown sequence between Abhay Deol and the water bandits. Till now I am scratching my head about how to interpret the scene. The village fair in Kutch gives you warnings that things are not going to be linear from now on, but after this scene, there really isn’t anything to say in favour of the movie. Even the dependable Abhay Deol hasn’t given his best to the movie – he has just one grimace expression for most of the movie. The child artist Mohammed Faisal does well though and the other two performances are reasonable.

The moronic screenplay makes any acting heroics of the lead characters irrelevant (not that there were any) and that’s where I want to end this review. Avoid this movie at all costs – don’t watch it even on TV. The rating is solely because of the nice visuals in the movie.


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Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince

After numerous helpful suggestions and mentions in previous posts, the missus finally makes her official debut on the blog ...


Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince happens to be my favorite book of the series and I just had to catch this movie on the first day. And was I disappointed or what! I still can’t believe how the scriptwriters managed to screw up the plot when they had one of the best-selling books ever as the basis for the screenplay! Really, there’s only so much that great cinematography and good acting can do for a movie. What’s really important is the story and when you screw that up there’s nothing much you can do.

I knew before I went to watch it, that the movie deviated quite a bit from the book, but I was still not prepared for what they had actually done. In all the Harry Potter movies some parts from the book are cut and granted that the film makers have the creative liberty to alter certain things. But that is not why this movie is bad. Its because they somehow managed to take a really engrossing tale and make it BORING and POINTLESS!

Coming to the actual story in the movie, you know something is wrong when in the first scene itself as Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is sitting thinking about the dark terror being spread by Lord Voldemort’s supporters and he sees a pretty waitress and decides to ask her out! In an attempt to make the characters seem real and human (ok, as human as wizards can get), the film makers just lost it completely.

It seemed like everything that was important to take the main story forward, like Harry’s increasing involvement with the Half Blood Prince’s book and his insight into Voldemort’s early life, were all just secondary happenstance to the several budding romances between the teenage protagonists. The Ron-Lavender love story is funny for a while but it takes just much too unwanted space in the movie. And even Prof. Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) seemed to be more interested in discussing Harry’s love interests rather than Lord Voldemort with Harry. They miss out so many crucial points that you can’t figure out what’s happening if you haven’t read the book. Around me I could constantly hear those who had read the book whispering to their companions what was happening.

The pace does improve somewhat in the second half, and the scene in the dark cave when Harry & Dumbledore retrieve one of the “Horcruxes” is especially riveting and the highpoint of the movie. And just when I started thinking “finally something is happening”, the movie just ended in the next 5 minutes with what is arguably the most anti-climatic finishes ever!! I still can’t believe how big a letdown the ending was!

Performance-wise all the actors are competent, with Daniel Radcliffe putting in his best performance so far. And Helena Carter appears in a great cameo as Bellatrix Lestrange (btw she has done a similar scary & weird role before in Sweeney Todd). The Harry Potter movies usually have brilliant special effects and picturization and this installment is also not lacking in that aspect. But like I said before they are not enough to redeem the movie.

If you aren’t a Harry potter fan, stay as far away as possible from this movie because you’ll just come out confused and bored. If you are in the mood for some teenage high school romance, you are better off watching High School Musical or reading Archies Double Digest. And if you have read the books and are a Harry Potter fan like me, I guess you will want to watch it irrespective of what the reviews say, so go ahead, but you have been warned - There’s no magic in this movie, dark or otherwise.


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Watchmen

Every once in a while ... the entire universe is out to con you :) !!

Seriously !! When IMDB tells you that a superhero movie made by Zack Snyder (the maker of the ubercool 300) is rated at 8.0 by the users and newspaper reviews give it a thumbs up, you just cant wait for the weekend to come - atleast I couldnt !

And after the long wait, when the movie begins with an awesome hand-to-hand combat in the graphic style of 300, you possibly couldnt have asked for anything more !! But that joy starts getting replaced with confusion and then boredom and finally irritation - at the ridiculousness of it all. Even 300 was ridiculous, agreed. But it had the coolness which made up for it - which Watchmen has precious little of.

Set in an imaginary 1985 when the Cold War is still on, a group of ex-superheroes who were disbanded/retired from public life get stirred when one of them, The Comedian, gets murdered in the opening scene of Watchmen. The masked Rorschach decides to try and uncover the secret of the Comedian's death - with the suspicion that maybe someone was trying to targeting 'the masks' ...
His investigation and the subsequent events reveal that there exists a plan allright, but the identity of the orchestrator and the final motive is much more than what he had imagined.

The story weaves back and forth between the past and present as each of the superheroes are introduced and we are told about them in detail. The most striking characters are the dead Comedian and the blue Dr. Manhattan - who has some amazing superpowers. However, even though the characters are more gray than, lets say, a Spiderman - but they are as exciting as a potato !! While the Hulk or even the Ironman werent great superhero movies, but atleast they got you rooting for them !! This has to the most boring bunch of superheroes ever !

I can go on and on, but I will try to summarize what is wrong with this movie. Watchmen is a movie for the REAL movie connoisseur - the ones who can give a 6 hour lecture on the significance of the .... green pants of the Joker in The Dark Knight. I am not even sure there was a green pant, but you get the drift. People who will go gaga over how dark the movie setting is, which is a reflection of how flawed each superhero character is - how Rorschach is a borderline psychopath and how The Comedian, even though a despicable human being, understood humanity more than anybody else etc. If you are the kind who raves about these things, then the movie is for you.If you are a regular bloke (like me), then you wont get jackshit out of the movie :)


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Phoonk

(Watched it two weeks back but didnt get around to post a review)

One of the most over-hyped and unworthy releases of the year. Billed as a horror movie - it generated countless laughs as the audience found the directors desperate attempts for scaring rather silly. The trick of focusing on inanimate objects was used WAY too many times to elicit any other reaction other than derision.
Barring one genuinely scary scene with a mirror, there was nothing remotely scary in the movie. The actors do their role well, but with such a weak script - its not their fault

And the ending was just too zany - in short, nothing good in this movie ... go watch The Ring agian for some real horror :)

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The Mummy : Tomb of The Dragon Emperor

Lets say it wasnt the best movie of the Mummy trilogy. Actually thats being too polite - the movie sucked ! It has Brendan Fraser playing a dad to a 25 year old son (who is too cocky to be likeable - unlike the sidekicks in the Crystal Skull or Die Hard 4) - and lets face it, Brendan Fraser hardly looks 40 - how can he have a 25 year old son ? And as wifey points out Brendan was himself too self assured - he didnt have any of the goofiness that made him so endearing in the earlier movies or in Bedazzled.

The only laughs of the movie come from Brendan's brother-in-law Jonathan - and some of the mummy soldier antics in the final war. Rest of the movie is just trash - with no semblance of any sense or entertainment.

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