India Masala
Bollywood and culture in an emerging India
Vicky Donor: Sperm donation can be funny
You have to hand it to Shoojit Sircar and Juhi Chaturvedi – the duo have made a Bollywood film about a topic like sperm donation without a double entendre. This also speaks volumes about Chaturvedi’s skill (she wrote story, screenplay and dialogue), because ‘Vicky Donor” is hands down the funniest film of the year so far.
Sircar and Chaturvedi, both from the advertising world, address issues such as sperm donation, infertility, stereotyping and even the aching loneliness that sets in after a spouse dies young, with such light-hearted humour and panache that you cannot help but applaud their effort.
Ayushmann Khurrana plays Vicky Arora, a rather dashing young man who lives in a “refugee colony” (referring to refugees who came in from Pakistan during the Partition and set up homes) in New Delhi. He’s unemployed and lives with his rather sprightly grandmother and widowed mother (played to high-pitched perfection by Dolly Ahluwalia), who runs a beauty parlour and nags her son to get a real job.
But he’s too busy admiring himself in the mirror, going pub-hopping and playing cricket to notice. He only takes note when a middle-aged gentleman starts following him around. The gentleman, it turns out, is Baldev Chaddha (Annu Kapoor), an infertility expert who is on the lookout for quality sperm. Convinced that a hot-blooded young Punjabi male would be ideal for his clients, Doctor Chadha tries to convince Vicky this could be a viable profession, but Vicky laughs it off.
After much persuasion, he agrees to make the donation, and when the remuneration turns out to be better than expected, Vicky continues but doesn’t tell anyone. Things change when he falls in love with a shy banker Ashima (Yami Gautam). He doesn’t have the heart to tell her what he does for fear that she won’t accept it.
Chaturvedi’s dialogue is sprinkled liberally with “Delhi” words and slang, and if you’ve lived in the city, you will find yourself laughing out loud. A word of warning though – there’s a lot of Punjabi spoken, and if you aren’t familiar with the language, you might find yourself a bit lost.
The characters, especially Vicky and Ashima’s family, and their stereotypes (Bengalis only eat fish and North Indians don’t remove the price tags from their clothes) are identifiable.
Housefull 2: Twice the torture
Reviewing a movie like Sajid Khan’s “Housefull 2” is a futile exercise. In fact, I don’t think the makers of this film made it for creative purposes — this is a money-making venture, and going by the number of people who came to watch it at 9: 15 a.m. on Good Friday morning, I would say it’s well on its way to becoming a successful one.
Khan doesn’t take off from where the first “Housefull” left off — this is a whole other story. But he does keep the toilet humour, over-the-top acting and noise pollution that characterised the 2010 film. Instead of laughing gas at the Buckingham Palace, he adds a fake Prince Charles who attends a wedding at the end and persuades one of the characters to stop shooting people in the name of “the queen and the country”.
This time there are four heroes, four heroines and four fathers — all trying to find the right partner for their children. Rishi Kapoor and Randhir Kapoor play brothers who are always at loggerheads and compete to see who will find the richest groom for their daughter.
They zoom in on one groom — Jolly (Riteish Deshmukh), the son of the richest Indian in Britain but he’s in love with someone else. By some contrived twist that must have made sense to director Sajid Khan, he ends up convincing both fathers that his friends Sunny (Akshay Kumar) and Max (John Abraham) are Jolly. To cut a long story short, there are four Jollys in the film, out of which three are fake, causing much confusion among the brides and their fathers.
Try as I might, I cannot make sense of the story beyond this. After a while, for the sake of your sanity, you would do well to just go with the flow and not keep track of the plot.
Of the cast, everyone goes completely overboard, except for Johnny Lever, who plays the confused Maharashtrian secretary to Mithun Chakraborty with his trademark flair. There are some funny moments in the film, but they are few and far between — there is just too much toilet humour and the bad jokes completely overshadow them.
If you liked the first “Housefull“, you’ll like this one too. If you like good cinema, avoid this one.
Ladies vs Ricky Bahl: One-time fun
You cannot help but feel that Maneesh Sharma’s “Ladies vs Ricky Bahl” is a mash-up of past Yash Raj films like “Badmaash Company”, “Bunty Aur Babli” and even “Bachna Ae Haseeno”.
The story is one you’ve seen before — a smart-talking con man takes off with suitcases of money after tricking three very gullible women.
When the women decide to exact revenge, they hire the equally smart-talking Ishika (played by Anushka Sharma), to trap Ricky, whose name they don’t even know. The trio find him in Goa and unleash Ishika on him — posing as a rich heiress out to open a restaurant.
Ishika lures Ricky with the promise of a 5 million dollar investment and he agrees to make an initial investment in her venture — not knowing the money is actually going to the three girls he had conned.
The film has a nice, breezy pace and the first half, which chronicles how Ricky cons the three girls, is snappy and interesting. Parineeti Chopra, who plays the spoilt, outspoken Delhi girl Dimple sparkles throughout the film and has some of the best lines. Dipannita Sharma as the no-nonsense Reva and Aditi Sharma as the demure Lucknow girl are memorable and it is the scenes between these three, as they banter while planning revenge, which are the high points of the film.
Sharma manages to keep the tone light and the length isn’t too draining on your nerves but the film never rises beyond these two points. Ranveer’s character is just shown as a con man, with no back story and no reasoning about why he is the way he is. The ending of “Ladies vs Ricky Bahl”, without giving too much away, is too neatly tied up and very predictable.
I wish Sharma had been a bit more adventurous with this film, given he was riding on the success of his last film “Band Baaja Baaraat”.
Anushka Sharma: Ranveer Singh Is Like A Shah Rukh Khan
On the whole, Ranveer Singh acts with effortless ease and plays the conman very ably. Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl is a fair entertainer which will fetch returns for the producers and the distributors.
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.
What a bad movie , i wasted my rs 40 , sanjay dutt should pay me to his movie ,so bad comedy , ghisey pitay comedy dialogs ,faltu comedy ,mujhey ghussa aa raha hai , many of them were waiting movie to end , but it never ends .many people where angry there in theater , i regret so much,even if i watched this movie for rs 40 i still feel i wasted so much money on this , time and my brain because of these torture they should pay us rs 400 to watch these movie , some where spitting on screen and some one was going to p i s s on the screen because of the torture that movie gave but others stopped him ,i have better stayed at home and watched tara tark mehta or other comedy serial better then spending so much money , or have spend time with friends ,or see force or shaib biwi or gangster
Delhi Belly: You need to have the stomach for it
Abhinay Deo’s “Delhi Belly” isn’t your average Bollywood film. For one, it can hardly be called a Bollywood film, because the primary language isn’t Hindi, it’s English. Like most Bollywood films, this is also not a “family film”.
All those cuss words and toilet humour would be tough to endure with your parents or kids sitting next to you — with friends, it might be funny though.
And there is plenty of toilet humour and cuss words. The story, about three room-mates caught in the middle of a cross-fire thanks to a misunderstanding involving a cache of diamonds and a stool sample, is peppered with plenty of smart one-liners, spoken in the language of the demographic we call new India.
Imran Khan plays Tashi, a journalist who lives with two friends in the most run-down, filthiest room you could imagine with two room-mates — Arup, a cartoonist and Nitin, a freelance photographer, whose desire to eat some tandoori chicken off the street leads to a bad case of the Delhi Belly and sets the chain of events in motion.
As a result, a chunk of the film involves shots of Nitin (Kunaal Roy Kapur) straining himself on a toilet accompanied by all kinds of sounds. I don’t know why this toilet humour should be funny if we find the same kind of toilet humour in an Anees Baazmee film repelling. After a while it gets to you.
That apart, the script is a strong one, and writer Akshat Varma manages to keep you engaged in his story. There is a sub-plot of a romance between Tashi and a spunky journalist played by actress Poorna Jagannathan, which is interesting.
To narrate any more of the story would be unfair to the film. This is more about the journey than the destination. There are several memorable characters in the film, including the trio’s landlord, and Vijay Raaz, who plays the crook hunting down the trio.
Double Dhamaal: Twice the agony
Indra Kumar’s “Double Dhamaal” is a sequel to the 2007 comedy “Dhamaal” and tells the story of four men whose plans to make a quick buck are foiled by their arch nemesis.
The story takes off from where the four, after having donated all the money they won to charity, are back to being jobless and penniless. But when they come across their arch nemesis Kabir Nayak (Sanjay Dutt) and see that he’s rich and successful, they decide to feed off his wealth. Riteish Deshmukh, Ashish Chowdhry, Arshad Warsi and Jaaved Jaafery play the roles of the four friends.
What they don’t know is Kabir is out to double-cross them. He convinces them he has found crude oil in Mumbai, asks them to get investors and then runs away with the money to Macau.
The four friends follow him there and decide to exact revenge.
This is, needless to say, a brainless comedy — one that has plenty of toilet humour, raunchy songs and gags that the filmmakers definitely thought were hilarious — like a kissing scene between two gorillas and people using real blood as ketchup with their fries.
If you liked the first film, you will be disappointed by the second. There are some funny moments but they are so fleeting, you are likely to miss them if you don’t pay attention, which is more than likely, because the film doesn’t manage to hold it for too long.
Movies like this make me wonder whatever happened to real humour. Do we need to have balls flying at private parts to make people laugh? Of course, given that everyone around me (at a 9 a.m. show) was laughing like crazy, means the answer is yes. I don’t know whether this is a telling comment on the audience or the people who make these movies. Or both.
Ready or not, here comes mindless cinema
I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned this before, but there really should be a template created just for the kind of cinema Anees Bazmee’s “Ready” represents, because having to find something to say about a film that seems like the exact replica of ten other films you have seen recently, is a very tough job.
There is always a rich hero, an airhead of a heroine, long-haired, weird looking villains who make sporadic appearances and brandish guns, bumbling aunts and uncles and loads of toilet humour. You can also call it mass cinema, formula films or the oft-used “leave-your-brains-behind-cinema.”
The rich hero in this case is Salman Khan, of course, who plays Prem, the scion of a rich family full of goofy uncles and aunts, all of whom want him to get married. They arrange to get him married to a girl of their choice, but thanks to a misunderstanding, he ends up falling in love with Sanjana, an orphan who has run away from her tyrannical uncles.
Sanjana’s uncles, we are told, want to get her married to a groom of their choice, so that they can lay their hands on her massive wealth. Prem, we are also told can buy them off “like that”, but “unless there are obstacles in the path of love, there is no fun.”
So Bazmee devotes the entire second half to creating these obstacles and resolving them in convoluted manners. To his credit, the first half does present a few funny moments, but that’s about it.
Of course, you don’t notice anyone else in the film but Salman Khan. He owns it, good or bad. He fights the hero with a rose, pays tribute to his earlier hits like “Dabangg” and “Hum Aapke Hain Kaun” and saunters onto screen as though it is his living room.
This is a star who is confident in his success, and that is the only reason you should even think of watching “Ready”.
How do these pseudo intellectuals start calling themselves film critics now?
I saw the movie, it was awesome, hilarious – and the entire theatre was laughing throughout the movie
I think some people need to come off their self created high pedestal and understand what people like
Teen Thay Bhai: No brotherly love
At one point in director Mrighdeep Singh Lamba’s movie “Teen Thay Bhai”, one of the protagonists wakes up in a police van, looks around blearily and asks his brothers, “Where are these police constipators taking us?”
Of course, he meant constables. At that point, you will know or at least I did, that this film is beyond redemption.
Shreyas Talpade plays the offender, Fancy Gill, a small-time Punjabi actor who, along with his two elder brothers is forced to spend a couple of days in a deserted mountain home every year, as part of a condition in their grandfather’s will. Of course, the trio cannot stand each other and fight and claw their way through those two days, even tying up each other with rope and stuffing their faces down chimneys.
Om Puri and Deepak Dobriyal play the other two brothers — Chixi and Happy — and the film is essentially nothing but a long-drawn-out, unfunny and ridiculous film that gets more and more ridiculous as the script wears out and the director resorts to gags and toilet humour to save the day.
Eventually, the brothers end up getting arrested for possession of narcotics, beating up a police officer, escaping from jail, getting entangled with a group of foreigners who feed them paranthas and chasing random men around snowy slopes. By this time I had lost track.
There really isn’t much more to say about this excuse of a film — except that Deepak Dobriyal is the only one who seems to be trying to make something out of his role as a meek dentist.
Avoid.
No, Thank You
I’m going to keep this one short because there’s really not much I can say about Anees Bazmee’s “Thank You” that I haven’t already said about films of this genre – in other words, the “leave your brains at home” films that we seem to churn out with alarming regularity.
This one seems to be a re-hash of Bazmee’s earlier “No Entry”, which at least had a couple of nice songs and some funny moments. This one has nothing but offensive dialogue, bad jokes and even worse acting.
Akshay Kumar plays Kishen, a modern day love doctor who spies on philandering husbands and helps their wives take “revenge” on them. The film runs on the premise that men are sure to stray, but, like the men in the movie, if they catch their wives even pretending to have an affair, they can take the high moral ground and lecture them on the sanctity of marriage.
Bobby Deol plays one of those men, Raj, while Irrfan Khan and Suneil Shetty play his friends. All three are having affairs with various women and get away with it by throwing flimsy excuses at their wives, which the women gladly gobble up. That is, until Kishen comes into the picture, ensures that their wives exact revenge on them and leave the men pining.
Of course, the fact that he’s been caught cheating several times and doesn’t even seem to regret it doesn’t stop Bobby Deol’s character from delivering a five minute monologue to his wife Sanjana (Sonam Kapoor) on how she’s hasn’t respected their marriage by flirting with Kishen. “At least I did it on the sly, but you are doing it openly”, he tells her. Who can argue with such sound logic?
Of the cast, only Irrfan Khan looks remotely comfortable in his role, while everyone else is rank bad. Special mention to Sonam Kapoor who looks lovely but cannot emote genuinely in a single scene – especially for a woman who is supposed to be going through the heartbreak of infidelity.
If you liked “No Problem” “Housefull” and “Kambakkhth Ishq”, then this might be the film for you. Everyone else, run far away from any theatre showing this film.
It’s sad that we are innundated on a weekly basis with such movies. It’s almost like the ‘family’ movies of the 1980s which had tacky sets, bad dialogues and even worse makeup for actors, who played weirdly moralistic characters. The only thing that seems to have improved are the sets and makeup despite all the funds Bollywood has access to.
Yamla Pagla Deewana: For Deol fans only
There is some charm in watching Sunny Deol on screen — whether it’s an emotional hug with his father or a fight scene where he holds up the entire floor of a building with one hand.
You realise his value even more when you see him alongside his brother Bobby Deol in “Yamla Pagla Deewana”. While Sunny is assured and warm, Bobby is awkward and bumbling his way through his role.
As for their father Dharmendra, he is a pale shadow of his former dashing self. Of course, the charm is there but making him dance alongside skimpily dressed women in item numbers doesn’t help.
Dharmendra plays Dharam Singh, a philandering conman who leaves his wife behind in Canada and runs away with his younger son to India.
Thirty years later, his elder son Paramveer comes to Banaras in search of his father and brother Gajodhar. When his father refuses to acknowledge him, he joins them in their con jobs, hoping to win him over.
When the girl Gajodhar loves is taken away to her hometown in Punjab by her dominating brothers, Paramveer devises a plan to get her married off to his brother.
Though intended to be funny, these situations are far from comic most of the time, and the laughs are few and far between. The Deol chemistry is spoilt by Bobby’s acting and the shoddy script and the fact that Dharmendra isn’t even there for a large part of the second half.
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The Wall
