India Masala

Tezz: Slow and unsteady

Film-maker Ram Gopal Varma, in a recent chat, said films are like products which have to be manufactured and treated accordingly. I’m sure Priyadarshan agrees. He certainly seems to make his films like assembly line products — all style, no substance.

“Tezz“, similar to the Japanese movie “The Bullet Train”, is supposed to be a high-speed action thriller about a bomb on a long-distance train. Ajay Devgn plays Aakash Rana, an illegal immigrant in London who is deported to India, along with his co-workers after he is found working without a permit.

Anyone else would’ve found a better way to reclaim their life but Aakash hits upon the idea of planting a bomb on a train and asking for ransom, so that he can take revenge on a government which wants to deport “hardworking people” (notwithstanding minor details like whether they have a valid work visa or not).

He enlists the help of his co-workers and fellow illegal immigrants Megha (Sameera Reddy) and Adil (Zayed Khan). As the train races from London towards its destination and Aakash makes the ransom call, he realises he is up against two Indian officials (how all the top UK law enforcement officials are Indian is a mystery to me).

Anil Kapoor is in his “24” avatar as a police officer out to get the bomber while Boman Irani uses the same two-and-a-half expressions he has had since “Munnabhai MBBS” in his role as the railway security officer.

The one actor truly wasted in this movie is Malayalam superstar Mohanlal, saddled with a two-bit role and some atrocious dialogue, as a police officer on board the ill-fated train.

Director Priyadarshan isn’t bothered by plot holes the size of craters and dialogue and situations that are inane to say the least. But that wasn’t my problem with the film.

Rascals: Too much torture

David Dhawan must really hate us. Or maybe he wants to exact revenge on his audience. That must be why he subjected us to this three-hour monstrosity that is called “Rascals”.

At their best, David Dhawan comedies can be a little raunchy, but fun. This one is very raunchy, packed to the brim with provocative shots of women in bikinis and heaving bosoms, but there is no sign of fun. This is the kind of film that makes you wish it wasn’t your job to review movies week after week.

Dhawan hasn’t even bothered with a coherent script –- it’s almost as if everyone connected with the film landed up on sets and asked themselves, “now what juvenile gag can we come up with today?”

Starring in these gags are Sanjay Dutt and Ajay Devgn, playing conmen who are called Chetan and Bhagat respectively. They spend most of the film trying to outdo each other in wooing rich heiress Khushi (Kangna Ranaut) while in Bangkok, where they’ve arrived hoping to avoid the wrath of a man they have duped.

That is all there is to the story. There are incredibly offensive jokes involving the visually impaired, refugees in Somalia and a scene where Sanjay Dutt pretends to be an “Art of Giving” teacher, exhorting people to donate to the poor, showcasing pictures of destitute people, all in an attempt to get Khushi’s attention. It’s wrong on so many levels that I lost count mid-way.

Of course, as if this wasn’t enough, there are lines like “choli saja ke rakhna” and “tum kab tak lachaari ka lollipop chuste rahoge” thrown at the already suffering audience. Performances are not worth mentioning –- everyone hams it to the nth degree. Dhawan packs in gags after gags and just when you think it’s over and you can finally leave, there comes another one.

This is the cinematic equivalent of torture. Avoid at all costs.

Singham: Ham, beef and not much else

Rohit Shetty’s “Singham”,  a remake of a Tamil film, is a cop movie that is perhaps meant as a tribute to the 80s “angry young man” and the theme of the lone, honest police officer taking on the rotting system.

Ajay Devgn plays that honest cop — Bajirao Singham, a police inspector in a remote village in Goa who maintains peace and calm in the village by using his goodwill with the villagers. When he is transferred to “Goa city” (I always thought it was a state) after crossing paths with a don-turned-politician, Singham is confronted with a corrupt system, cynical co-workers and threats from the politician.

Singham decides that brute force is the only way he can counter those threats. He delivers a long, impassioned and utterly hilarious (unintentionally) speech to his fellow police officers. Singham convinces them the only way to confront the problem is to kill the politician and make it look like an accident. So much for ethics and transparency.

Director Shetty thinks it is OK for police officers to take turns kicking the backside of a minister (this is an actual scene) or coerce people into changing their statements, so long as the end seems to justify the means.

In one scene, a character even imitates Amitabh Bachchan’s character in “Zanjeer”, but given the amount of hamming, over-the-top acting and pedestrian dialogues this film is brimming over with, the scene seems almost farcical.

I almost felt Shetty thought to himself, “hey, if I can make over-the-top, nonsensical comedies like ‘Golmaal’ work, maybe I should try the same formula in a cop film”. Perhaps that is why in the climax scene, he has the entire police force of “Goa city” standing in the politician’s living room, discussing how to kill him, and even making jokes about it, while the politician himself cowers in fear.

It would be funny if it were not so cringeworthy.

Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji: Excruciatingly boring

There are many things wrong with Madhur Bhandarkar’s “Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji”, but the worst part is that nobody seems to have even bothered to rise above mediocrity in this excuse of a film.

Bhandarkar veers away from his “slice of life” style of cinema and moves to comedy, but it has the same clichés, the same dumbed-down dialogues, and strangely enough for a comedy, very crass humour that is more offensive than funny.

Ajay Devgan plays Naren, an executive who is in the middle of a divorce and attracted to his secretary, who is half his age and exhibits entirely inappropriate behaviour (like asking her boss when he lost his virginity).

Naren lives with two roommates – Milind (Omi Vaidya), a meek poet, and Abhay (Emraan Hashmi), a Casanova, who actually checks out girls at funerals and romances a mother-daughter duo at the same time.

The film follows the three on their quest for love, but the journey is unbelievably dull and tedious and there are no funny moments. I could have spent the entire time asleep and I still wouldn’t have missed much.

Bhandarkar resorts to double entendre homosexual jokes, and there are no gags or funny incidents. The guys spend two and a half out of the three hour-long film wooing the girls, and Bhandarkar drags the end interminably. He could have cut this film by an hour and it would still have been considered a long film.

At the end of it, you just want to bolt for the exit door. This one did absolutely nothing for me – avoid.

Golmaal 3: Thrice as painful

If you’ve seen the earlier two “Golmaal” films, you have a fair inkling of what the third one is about. These are custom-made films, tailored to the “festive mood” when filmmakers think audiences will laugh at anything and pay any amount of money if you promise them a fun-filled entertaining film.

If that means you have the customary toilet humour, so be it. If that means you have to fit in a criminal, a bumbling police officer and five songs in a two-hour film, so be it. And if it means replacing good writing with slapstick, crass humour, who cares? As long as you can disguise swear words ingeniously, get a dog to bite a man’s backside and bring in some emotion towards the end. The laughs will come because people are in a festive mood – at least that’s the formula.

Director Rohit Shetty doesn’t waver from this formula. As a result, there really isn’t much of a story to tell. Basically, five unemployed men live with their parents and do nothing constructive all day except play pranks on each other.

There are all kind of gags to support this “laugh all you can” package that the film offers viewers. Most of them involve some form of slapstick or toilet humour. I cannot think of a single scene that has clever writing or a genuine comic moment.

I don’t understand the logic of leave-your-brain-behind movies. I take my brain everywhere I go, including to Rohit Shetty’s films. And let me tell you, my brain didn’t like this one. In fact, thanks to this film, even the festive feeling is gone. Stay away from “Golmaal 3”.

Once Upon A Time in Mumbai: Blast into the past

Milan Luthria’s “Once Upon A Time in Mumbai” is a mostly-gripping, but dumbed-down mafia thriller that focuses on two men who dominated the Mumbai underworld for the most part of the seventies and eighties.

Despite denials from the makers of the film, it is easy to see that the story is based on underworld don Haji Mastan and his one-time protégé Dawood Ibrahim.

Luthria takes us back to the era of handlebar moustaches, bell bottomed pants and the Mumbai of the 70′s, which, if you live in South Mumbai, doesn’t seem vastly different from what it is now.

Ajay Devgan plays smuggler Sultan Mirza, who is like a modern day Robin Hood who, we are told, controls all of Mumbai. He gives hundreds of rupees to beggars, takes care of his men and smuggles “only things that the government doesn’t permit, not things that my conscience doesn’t allow”.

In order to stop his illegal activities, an upcoming police officer (Randeep Hooda) uses the old trick of using one criminal against the other, allowing a young upstart, Shoaib (Emraan Hashmi), to infiltrate Mirza’s gang and gain his confidence, sure that Shoaib’s own ambition of ruling Mumbai will ensure a clash between the two.

As he tells a fellow police officer, “When two trains are on opposite sides of the same track, there is bound to be a clash, but I only want the track clean, I don’t care about the trains.”

This is just one of the many dialogues that make the film worth a watch. Written by Rajesh Arora, the film is littered with clever gems which will make you laugh and sit up and take note.

London Dreams: Falls short of promise

One of my favourite films from 2008 was Abhishek Kapoor’s ‘Rock On’, the story of four rock band members who have a bitter fall out only to regroup years later.

It was a coming of age story that managed to stay in my heart for a while.

Vipul Shah’s ‘London Dreams’ has a similar storyline and a much larger scale and tone. Unfortunately, what it has in terms of budget and scale, it lacks in terms of heart.

The story revolves around two friends – Manjeet (Salman Khan) and Arjun (Ajay Devgan) – who grow up in Punjab’s Bhatinda.

Even as a child, Arjun is driven by an all consuming passion to make it big in music.

He dreams of having a concert at the Wembley stadium in London and works with single minded dedication towards that goal.

Manjeet on the other hand, has no ambition in life and prefers idling away time spying on girls to learning music.

All the Best: Adding that Diwali sparkle

Watching three films in the space of 18 hours isn’t easy, especially when the first two are films like “Blue” and “Main Aur Mrs Khanna“.

When I settled into my seat to watch Rohit Shetty’s “All the Best”, I was really hoping for some laughs. Thankfully, I got my share of them.

This film starring Ajay Devgn, Sanjay Dutt, Fardeen Khan and Bipasha Basu doesn’t pretend to be anything but a madcap entertainer and because of that, delivers on most counts.

The jokes aren’t too highbrow, there are plenty of them and all the actors seem to be having fun doing the film, which comes across on screen.

I was especially struck by the difference in Sanjay Dutt, who puts in such a lacklustre performance in “Blue”, but seems to be enjoying himself in this film.

The story itself isn’t much. Prem (Ajay Devgn) and Veer (Fardeen) are friends who live in Goa and benefit from Veer’s elder brother Dharam (Sanjay Dutt), a millionaire in Africa who sends him “pocket money” every month.

Dharam thinks Veer is married to Vidya (Mugdha Godse), when in fact he isn’t.