You hear the words Rajkumar Santoshi and comedy in one sentence and you immediately think — “Andaz Apna Apna”.

Fifteen years later, Santoshi is back with another comic caper, this time starring Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif.  But if you are expecting another “Andaz Apna Apna”, you will be sorely disappointed.

This film has almost nothing going for it and if it weren’t for some funny moments in the first half and the brilliant comic timing of Ranbir Kapoor, it would have sunk into oblivion.

Ranbir plays Prem Shankar Sharma, a loveable but good-for-nothing young man who runs something called a “Happy Club” (the purpose of this club is unclear).

He meets Jenny (Katrina Kaif), falls in love and spends the film’s first half wooing her. This is the half that is funny in parts and will make you laugh.
Unfortunately, it is all downhill from there.

Jenny, it turns out, is in love with Rahul (Upen Patel with an atrocious accent) but cannot marry him because Rahul’s father is a politician afraid of losing ‘Hindu’ votes if his son marries a Christian. Our filmmakers are inventing newer obstacles in the path of love.

So Prem puts aside his “prem” and sets about helping Jenny get hers. The second half has some funny moments, like the scene between Prem’s parents, but otherwise the script wears thin.

“Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani” has some really shoddy editing and awkward dialogues. Upen Patel’s accent makes it hard to understand anything he says, and even when you do understand, he delivers emotional dialogues in such a deadpan manner you wonder whether he understood them in the first place.

Katrina Kaif is pleasing on the eye and manages some comic expressions but the real star is Ranbir Kapoor. He has such a screen presence and brilliant comic timing you cannot look away from the screen even during the most inane scenes.

It is the mark of a star to be able to stand out among mediocrity and indeed Kapoor is the only reason anyone should watch this film. This is really his story.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I rented a DVD of Frank Darabont’s “The Shawshank Redemption” last weekend, watching this landmark film for the umpteenth time. So when I went in to watch “Jail”, expectations were high.

Obviously, Madhur Bhandarkar’s “Jail” is not a patch on Andy and Red’s story but it doesn’t even qualify as a gripping entertainer, mainly because of a sloppy script and characters who might as well have been caricatures.

“Jail” follows Bhandarkar’s unique formula of putting the spotlight on a particular milieu (like fashion, page 3, bar girls and corporates) and exposing the “truth”.

In this case, he attempts to depict India’s justice and prison system, the corruption that prevails and the thousands who are trapped within.

Neil Nitin Mukesh plays Parag Dixit, a young, successful executive who becomes an unwitting participant in a narcotics case and is arrested. He is sent to judicial custody, despite pleas that he is innocent and begins life as an undertrial in jail.

Manoj Bajpai plays Nawab, a prisoner who befriends Parag and tries to guide him in an overcrowded, under managed jail. Most of the film is a string of incidents, with half- baked comments on the jail system, the judicial process and half-a-dozen social evils.

None of them sound convincing because Bhandarkar doesn’t make an attempt to keep the characters real.

The dialogue is over the top with examples like “the first night in jail is like the night of a bride’s wedding — no matter how much you try, you can never sleep.”

Also, none of the actors bring any conviction to their roles. Manoj Bajpai’s character could have been developed more, but he is stuck with a role that involves looking serious and serving the jailor tea.

Neil Nitin Mukesh is the real failure in this film because he brings zero conviction and believability to his role. He is awkward, lacks any real expressions and is unable to carry this film.

“Jail” is one sentence you want to avoid.

Sujoy Ghosh’s ‘Aladin’, a film that attempts to give a twist to the classic fairy tale, starts off well enough.

The protagonist is Aladin Chatterjee, an unassuming young man (Riteish Deshmukh), who is orphaned at a young age.

His name is his nemesis as he is constantly being bullied into rubbing lamps by his friends. In the course of time Aladin falls in love with Jasmine, the college beauty, but is too shy to take the romance any further.

All that changes when he is given a lamp as a birthday gift. This lamp is indeed magic and a genie appears when he rubs it.

Unlike the lore of Baghdad, Aladin Chatterjee’s genie is ‘Genius’ (Amitabh Bachchan) and calls the master of the lamp “bro”.

Genius tells Aladin that he can grant him three wishes but things have to move quickly because he is close to retirement.

In the meanwhile the ‘Ringmaster’ (Sanjay Dutt) is looking for the lamp. So far so good.

Ghosh decides to concentrate on the romance of Jasmine and Aladin and inserts songs and dream sequences that have no bearing on the narration.

The special effects in the film provide the backbone to what could have been a thrilling, magical ride, but Ghosh loses control mid way and delays the confrontation and resolution for so long that you lose interest.

The film wavers in the second half and some gaping holes in the script are exposed.

I watched the film with children and while most of them enjoyed the first half, their restlessness was telling during the second.

Of the cast, Deshmukh impresses but newcomer Jacqueline Fernandes does not. Amitabh Bachchan as Genius is delightful for the most part but Sanjay Dutt doesn’t quite manage to put fear in your heart as the villain.

This could have been quite a magical ride, but ultimately it turns out to be rather unbearable.

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.

After his father’s death, Arjun goes to London with his uncle and tries to make it as a singer.

On a visit to his hometown, Arjun hears Manjeet sing and decides to take him back to London and make him a part of his band.

The inevitable (in films) soon happens, and it is clear that Manjeet is a better singer than Arjun.

Angered by Manjeet’s success, Arjun vows to get his fame back.

The film is replete with sweeping scenes of rock concerts and is shot all over Europe. Shah tries to lend an epic, grand feel to his film, but is not supported either by the script or the performances. The music also doesn’t stay with you.

Ajay Devgn tries hard to make his character work, but doesn’t fit naturally into the role of a rock star as the protagonists of ‘Rock On’ did.

There is a certain charm in Salman Khan’s performance with the occasional humorous scenes thrown in. Unfortunately they are not nearly enough to salvage the film.

Watch it if you are a die hard Salman Khan fan.

When a friend went to buy movie tickets for Vishal Bhardwaj’s “Kaminey”, she felt uncomfortable.

She had never before used the word — Hindi slang for ’scoundrels’ — and was embarrassed to utter it at the ticket counter.

The film, set in Mumbai streets, is a crime thriller about petty desires that turn two brothers against each other.

Director Bhardwaj says the title, though unusual, is apt. He went ahead with “Kaminey” after his mentor, filmmaker and lyricist Gulzar, approved it.

Bhardwaj, speaking during a panel discussion at the Osian’s-Cinefan Film Festival in New Delhi, revealed that he took inspiration for the title from Gulzar’s “Ijaazat“.

In a scene from the 1987 classic, actor Naseeruddin Shah uses the word as a term of endearment for his wife (Rekha) after she makes a cup of tea for him.

Bhardwaj said this usage of “kaminey” as a romantic expression stuck in his subconscious and changed his perception of the word as used in everyday language.

Not everyone was convinced.

A schoolteacher said she was concerned by the number of children using the slang word after Bollywood gave it legitimacy. She urged filmmakers to be more responsible.

But would “Kaminey” have retained its charm under a different name? And would that name have taken away the essence of the crime thriller.

Should Bollywood filmmakers have the artistic freedom to use slang words in the names of their films? Why or why not?

The other day a colleague asked me why I never seemed to like any film these days. I thought about it and wondered the same myself. Don’t they make good films any more?

Two hours after watching Prem Soni’s “Main Aur Mrs Khanna”, you realise the answer to that question is a resounding NO.

I don’t know whether this is a particularly bad year for Bollywood or whether the industry is just going through a phase but this is certainly not the kind of film you expect as a big Diwali release.

Kareena Kapoor plays Raina Khanna, a troubled wife whose husband Sameer (Salman Khan) is in the middle of a bad spell in his career.

This leads to trouble in the marriage because as he puts it, “financial stability is at the heart of every happy marriage.” Really? Whatever happened to respect, trust and love?

Sameer decides to move cities, from Melbourne to Singapore, and Raina reluctantly agrees. At the airport, Sameer tells her she isn’t coming with him to Singapore. The reasons for this move aren’t elaborated — he merely tells her he wants to save their marriage.

Raina decides to stay on in Melbourne and gets a job at the airport duty-free shop. Bappi Lahiri puts in an appearance as the shop owner and the less said about his role, the better.

She also meets Aakash (Sohail Khan) a goofy waiter at the airport café who lends a shoulder for her to cry on.

I wish the director had concentrated a little more on the problems between Sameer and Raina and their conflicts. Instead we get a mindless romance that goes nowhere. There are so many holes in the script that Bappi Lahiri could have passed through them.

For instance how can Raina, a salesgirl at a shop, afford a mansion and wear designer clothes? Many things are left unexplained and the direction is extremely haphazard.

Preity Zinta is wasted in a mindless cameo that makes you wonder what made her accept it. None of the performances make the cut and even Kareena Kapoor and Salman Khan don’t make an impact. Avoid this film at all costs.

When a film is pitched as a big-budget, big-ticket film and is a Diwali release to boot, expectations do shoot up.

Anthony D’Souza’s “Blue”, starring Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Lara Dutta and Zayed Khan is supposed to be India’s first “underwater” film, has music by A.R. Rahman and is said to have a budget of 800 million rupees.

But, as someone said after the screening, maybe they spent so much money on shooting the underwater scenes they forgot to pay someone to write a good enough story.

“Blue” falls in the same trap as most Bollywood big-budget films have in recent times (’Kambakkht Ishq’ being a prime example) — it can’t see the wood for the trees and pays too much attention to superficial stuff while neglecting basics like story and screenplay.

Akshay Kumar plays Aarav Malhotra, the owner of a shipping company who wants to get hold of a “treasure” lying deep in the sea in a sunken ship named ‘Lady in Blue’.

He wants his friend and employee Sagar (Sanjay Dutt, looking supremely unfit and out of place) to help him in his quest, because he “knows the sea like the back of his hand”.

After initially refusing, Sagar and his brother join Aarav on an underwater adventure.

Even as I write this, I realise how flimsy the storyline sounds so you can imagine how flimsy it looks on screen.

And if you thought last week’s release “Acid Factory” had bad acting, what would you say about the performances in “Blue”?

The entire cast sleepwalks through their roles and none of them is remotely convincing.

Sanjay Dutt in particular is desperately in need of a trainer — both for his acting and to get into shape. (To top it all, he is made to wear a lycra scuba suit in the last half-an-hour of the film).

Even Rahman’s music is lacklustre. But “Blue” does have some interestingly shot underwater scenes and good bike chases. There are also some item songs, lots of beaches and bikinis and skin show.

Besides, it is Diwali and who cares about serious stuff like story and screenplay when you have bikes and bikinis?

Most films have one distinguishing characteristic — maybe the music, the animation, perhaps the running time or a huge budget.

Suparn Varma’s “Acid Factory”, which releases in cinemas this week has a unique feature — that of having the biggest ensemble of bad actors on a single screen.
 
Fardeen Khan, Aftab Shivdasani, Dino Morea, Dia Mirza, Danny Denzongpa and even the usually dependable Manoj Bajpai put in such atrociously bad performances that you wonder how they got away with it.
 
In spite of an interesting storyline and a reasonable screen time, you are never hooked to the events on screen, and even during the climax of the film, I was tempted to whip out my mobile and recheck my messages for the day — they would have provided far more entertainment.
 
Fardeen Khan plays Romeo, a cop who has “applied for an undercover assignment” (didn’t know that happened) to uncover dreaded don Kaiser (Irrfan Khan).

Five weeks later, he finds himself in an abandoned acid factory with four other men and no memory of the events that brought him there.
 
The film is told in flashback but the story is told so shoddily and the performances, as I said before, are so unconvincing that you cannot wait for this ordeal to be over and to bolt out of the theatre.
 
The worst of the lot is Gulshan Grover, who plays the dumbest policeman in celluloid history, and every time Irrfan Khan outsmarts him, he goes about saying “very smart” to a bewildered foreign extra.
 
If you want to save yourself heartburn in the middle of the festival season, do yourself a favour and avoid this disaster.

Bollywood has always survived on the formula — the elusive secret to making a successful film that combines elaborate sets, melodrama and of course, dancing around trees. Then multiplexes arrived and we were told it was the era of niche films, ones that didn’t go by the formula.

Films like “Wake Up Sid” are well on their way to becoming a meeting point between the old and the new, and becoming a whole different genre of films — the formula multiplex film.

Now that the multiplex audience in India is such an important part of the movie going public, there are a lot of films being made with them in mind and most are now beginning to stick to a formula.

Have an urban hero (preferably young) confused about life, throw in some college scenes, smart dialogues and a disco scene or two.

Make the aesthetics such that they appeal to the yuppie audience and there you have it — the formula to make a multiplex film.

Let me also add a disclaimer here. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to make a formula film. After all, many of Bollywood’s biggest hits have followed the formula but they have also had that something extra. “Wake Up Sid”, starring Ranbir Kapoor and Konkona Sen Sharma doesn’t always pass that test.

Kapoor plays Siddharth Mehra, a spoilt rich brat who has no aim in life except — do nothing. He meets Aisha (Konkona Sen Sharma), elder to him and in search of “independence” in Mumbai. The two soon strike up a friendship.
When Sid fails in his exams and his father decides to crack the whip, our protagonist decides he is better off living on his own. He lands up at Aisha’s house, hoping to make it in the real world, but soon realizes he isn’t equipped for it at all.

As a coming-of-age film, this one has its moments and first-time director Ayan Mukherji manages to inject the film with a lot of moments that make you smile. However there are also times when you feel the film could rise above the average but doesn’t.

Of the cast, Ranbir Kapoor is excellent, really getting into the character, bewildered expressions and all. Konkona Sen Sharma is also efficient but doesn’t dazzle as she usually does. Special mention of Shikha Talsania as Sid’s friend Laxmi for a spirited performance.

“Wake Up Sid” isn’t necessarily a memorable film, nor is it an original one. But it is good for a one-time watch over the weekend, which is a lot more than what Bollywood has dished out over the past few weeks, so I would say go for this one.

Ashutosh Gowariker’s “What’s Your Raashee” is supposed to be a light, romantic comedy about the search for a perfect bride.

It stars Priyanka Chopra in twelve different avatars, playing a girl from each zodiac sign and Harman Baweja as Yogesh Patel, the eligible groom who has to choose one of those girls.

When I heard the premise, I must admit I was intrigued. It sounded interesting, and given Gowariker’s reputation, I went in expecting a good film.

Almost four hours, numerous songs and twelve mini-stories later, I came out with a headache.

Patel, who lives and works in Chicago, is tricked by his parents into coming down to India and getting married.

Given that he doesn’t have much time, Patel decides to see twelve girls only, each one from a different zodiac sign.

Of course, as you know, Priyanka Chopra plays each girl, albeit in a different avatar.

So there is Anjali, the awkward, simple girl who tries to speak English and smoke so as to impress her NRI suitor.

There is Vishakha, the ditsy heiress, and Pooja, the do-good doctor, all of whom are supposed to represent different facets.

Helping Patel in his search is his uncle, played by Darshan Jariwala (in an ugly wig and even uglier shirts). There is a mindless side track involving Jariwala and his wife and an astrologer-cum detective, just one of the many things weighing down the film.

The same story had been told by Ketan Mehta in his serial “Mr Yogi” many years ago and the reason that venture was a success was because it was divided into parts.

Watching “What’s Your Raashee” is like watching 13 episodes of a serial back-to-back and not a particularly engaging one at that. At some point, all the stories merge into one and you stop caring about who gets married to whom.

Instead you just want the credits to roll and make a bolt for it.

Three-and-a-half hours is a lot of time and if you want me to invest that much time in your film, there better be something worthwhile.

Unfortunately, there isn’t. Each character seems like a caricature and instead of providing us with some insights, all we see are superficial traits.

Oh, and a lot of songs.

When a film has as many as 14 songs, they better be good. But they aren’t. Instead they hamper the pace of an already flagging storyline and make you ache for that door even more.

The film has its moments, but those are lost in the haze of a clumsy screenplay and a story that just doesn’t move forward.

Of the cast, Harman Baweja makes a sincere effort, but doesn’t succeed very often. Priyanka Chopra should be commended for trying out such a different project but the fact is the screenplay fails her.

None of the characters are meaty enough to be memorable. Instead of giving them a song each, Gowariker should have put in more work in telling us their stories.

In the end, “What’s Your Raashee” begins to grate on your nerves. This isn’t an easy watch by any means. Go for it if you must.