SPIDER-MAN:FAR FROM HOME

Lulu: Do you see that guy? He plays Spiderman. His name is Tom Holland.

Skip: That’s not his name.

Lulu: What’s his name?

Skip: Peter Parker.

Lulu: Oh yeah, that’s right.

We had quite an adventure on our way to the film. On Skip’s advice, I left home an hour early even though the GPS indicated a distance of 28 minutes ( I measure distance in time). We sailed past traffic signals and reached Lido Mall 20 minutes early. I made a mental note to use that spare time to help Skip revise for his dictation test, use the restroom, buy popcorn and click a few pictures of the poster.

Near the mall entrance, we joined the long queue of cars, waiting to get in. When we were 2 cars away from getting in, we were told that parking was full and that we would have to wait. I took a deep breath and looked at Skip. Skip is great at giving advice in moments such as this.

He excitedly said, “Look”. I looked around and thought a spot had opened up and then realised that Skip was pointing at his pants. Skip had forgotten to zip his pants. He was pointing at his underwear that was peaking out. “My underwear looks like Spiderman’s suit”.

I turned around and decided to park at the mall close to Lido’s only to be stuck in a massive queue inside the parking lot there. It was 4.20 and the cars were moving at a ‘snail on a freshly tarred road’s’ pace when I heard Skip say “Look” again. He found a spot that the cars ahead of us had missed.

We reached the theatre 10 minutes late, huffing and panting, only to be told that the movie hadn’t begun yet! (Shugu, Archie – I missed the national anthem).

Here’s the plot in brief lest I give away any spoilers like you know who (let’s just call him Parker) though I wouldn’t mind Marvel sending Cumberbatch to keep us quiet.

PLOT: Peter is going to Europe on a science field trip with his classmates and he has a Plan – to proclaim his love to MJ atop the Eiffel Tower. Things don’t go as planned. Earth is attacked by the Elementals and as luck would have it, Europe is the target. Enter Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) a superhero from Earth 833 in the Multiverse who takes on these Elementals. Peter is summoned by Nick Fury to assist Mysterio. With Iron Man and most of the Avengers gone, who shall step into Tony Stark’s shoes and have full access to the Stark Industries’ database and weapon supply. Will Peter step up or would Mysterio step in? After all, with great power comes great responsibility.

If you are a Marvel fan, irrespective of reviews, you ought to watch the film.

The movie is a blend of teenage romance, comedy and some great psychedelic action sequences. This film seems different from other Marvel films as it doesn’t merely focus on saving mankind. Peter wants to be a normal kid on a vacation and is not interested in destroying monsters or taking over the Stark Industries. This film feels more real where the superhero and the villain are not from outer space (Did I just leak a spoiler?)

Gyllenhaal and Holland are the scene stealers no doubt but the others in the film provide great comic relief. Peter’s friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and Happy (Jon Favreau ) have more screen space this time and are hilarious. I’ve been a big fan of Samuel L Jackson and continue to remain so. MJ is not shown as a damsel in distress and even manages to strike down a drone.

The fast paced sequences alternating between the real and illusory worlds will leave your head spinning. The CGI effects are great and had me comparing them to the bull fighting scene in Kalank (that’s the movie I’m currently watching on Prime). I wish I had watched this film in IMAX.

Do not walk out of the theatre post the mid-credit scene. Wait for the post credit scene as well.

Teju, thank you for the tickets J

Look what I found at my office parking spot : Butterfly Girl

Manikarnika- Kangana Run-out!

Image Source - IMDb

Happy New Year folks!

Have you been sticking to your resolutions! I have: p

After a 3 month sabbatical, Bob and I are back with our reviews. We thought we’d start out with a film review. Please follow our blog and also follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We have loads of recipes, product reviews, book reviews, DIYs lined up!

Kangana Ranaut had been on quite a roll and deservedly so. I loved her roles in Queen, Tanu weds Manu Returns and Simran. I hadn’t even seen the trailers of Manikarnika and I was excited to watch this film. I like historical films provided they stick to the plot and keep the film as close to real life events and that would also mean not over-romanticising situations/events. I was also curious to see how the film would turn out knowing that Kangana was one of the Directors of the film.

I was disappointed!

PLOT: The film is based on the life of Rani Laxmi Bai.

Manikarnika is a young woman, full of spunk. Jhansi is beset not only by the British forces but also by enemies from within the walls of the palace. Sadashiv Rao, a rival prince has his eyes on the throne. A minister of Jhansi spots ‘Manu’ hunting a tiger and impressed by her courage, he chooses her to wed the King of Jhansi. Unlike her husband, ‘Manu’ refuses to be cowed into submission by the British Officers. At the same time, she wins the affection of the people of Jhansi by standing up for their rights.

Post the death of her husband and son under mysterious circumstances, Laxmi Bai succeeds as the Queen of Jhansi. Taking advantage of this situation, the British ask the  Queen to leave the palace. She finds support from the locals and gathers an army to take back the palace and defend Jhansi from the clutches of the British Empire. What follows is the battle between Jhansi led by Rani Laxmi Bai and the British troops led by Hugh Rose.

I was probably expecting too much from this film and hence came out of the hall disappointed.

Let’s not take away Kangana’s acting skills. I wouldn’t call this, one of her best works, but she was good. Other actors had negligible scenes in the film. One would have expected more screen space for actors portraying pivotal roles such as those of Sadashiv Rao (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) and Jhalkari Bai(Ankita Lokhande). The senior members of the cast -Suresh Oberoi as Bajirao (in whose palace Laxmi Bai has been brought up), Danny Denzongpa as Laxmi Bai’s trusted army general, Kulbhushan Kharbanda as a minister of Jhansi too have a ‘blink and you’ll miss them’ role in the film. However minor a role, apart from the actors playing the British Officers, the rest have done a good job. The Britishers’ speech sounded forced and rehearsed unlike the ones who acted in Lagaan.

 Here is what ruined the film:

1.     I am a fan of Kanagana Ranaut and I understand she’s the protagonist of the film (well, the film IS named after her character) so don’t get me wrong when I say this – she’s made the film all about herself! I really do think that scenes of other actors have been deleted from the final cut. Am I nitpicking? If you felt the same, please do leave a comment below.

2.     It’s a historical film! Why do we need the lead to be all dolled up, sporting a different hairstyle in each scene? Wasn’t it enough that all close-ups of Kangana were airbrushed!

3.  Every visual scene needn’t be vocally explained to the audience by a loud proclamation. When we see a person lying on the floor in a pool of blood, we know he’s dead. Don’t announce it. We are not watching CID!

4.    What’s with the random song and dance sequence! And we have the Queen joining in too. Let’s keep it real, people!

5.   Enough with the tight shots and sweeping shots already! We don’t need to see Kangana and her palace from all angles.

6. The dialogues felt very 1990’s. Kangana’s dialogues in the second half when she’s proclaiming her love for her country and encouraging her subjects to follow suit, while well delivered, is not moving enough. I wasn’t left teary eyed!

7.    There’s no correlation between some of the scenes. For eg: when Jhalkari Bai’s calf is taken away by the British officers from her house (which is nowhere in the vicinity of the palace), the next scene has Laxmi Bai barging into the Officers’ mess to get the calf back.

I hear the film is doing well and receiving accolades but I wouldn’t recommend watching this in the theatres. The film would have been much better with another Director/s and scriptwriter.

Clearly, Kangana’s association with the name Krish has never gone down well.  

Look what I found on the Just Cricket, Cricket Academy grounds :) 

INCREDIBLES 2

I love superhero movies and I have watched quite a few lately -new releases and the one’s I’ve been catching up on television. When PV announced last week that Incredibles 2 would release this week, I quickly saved it as a reminder on my phone. Skip and I LOVED Incredibles 1.

After gulping down a doughnut each, Skip and I ran towards the theatre and plonked down on the seats to watch this eagerly awaited film.

PLOT: The film begins with the Incredible family and Frozone trying to capture the Underminer. Underminer escapes and the Superheroes’ attempts at trying to save the City from the Underminer ends up in them wrecking the place. As a result of which they are arrested by the police and the Project for the Superheroes that was initiated in the first film is scrapped and Supers continue to be declared illegal.

The Incredibles get called by Winston Deavor who runs Devtech with his tech genius sister, Evelyn. They have come up with a plan to legalise the Supers and they recruit Mamma Incredible to help them bring their plan to fruition. (Much to Pappa Incredible’s annoyance).

The movie runs parallel, covering the lives of Mamma Incredible who is on a mission to portray to the world, the real and heroic efforts put in by Superheroes in saving the lives of people. She is constantly challenged by Screenslaver, a mysterious villain who controls the minds of people by hypnotising them. While Mamma is basking in the glory of her reclaimed fame, Pappa Incredible is going ballistic at home trying to control a moody teenager, a high-powered pre-teen and a cookie loving baby that is just discovering its superpowers.

Who is the mysterious Screenslaver? Will Mamma Incredible bring him to justice? Will the Supers be legalised?

Sequels very rarely match up to their predecessors and this one didn’t either, the reason being that the sequel loses out on the grounds of absence of novelty and  inadvertent comparison running through the minds of the viewers.  

I ought to make it clear that I did enjoy this movie and would definitely recommend watching it but please do not go with high expectations.

The first one was funnier and with more action and adventure. Baby Incredible did manage to evoke some laughter out of the audience and one was looking forward to seeing his super powers being used against the villains. I was disappointed that it was grossly under-used during the climax.

While Pappa is left to tend to the children, Mamma is out there “kicking ass”. She gets to wear the superhero costume, ride an electric bike, stop a speeding train and fight the super villain and party at night. While he’s at home trying to figure out complex math problems and get a baby to stay asleep. While this may make one remark that the “hero” of the film is clearly Mamma Incredible, I beg to differ. Pappa Incredible is also the hero in his own rights and you’d agree if you’ve been in his shoes!

This was the kind of movie where you step out of the theatre with nothing to discuss about. (No bricks or bouquets to toss).  

RACE 3- ALLAH DUHAAI HAIN!!!

As I sat to watch this movie, I exclaimed “This movie better be good!”Bob and I loved the first two instalments of Race. In fact, we watched Race 1 together in college. While some critics may have dismissed these movies as no-brainers, well, I liked them and my choice is my business and none of your business! (I’m taking a page out of Race 3 scriptwriter’s book!)

45 minutes into the movie and for the first time, since I’ve started writing movie reviews, I was contemplating on whether I should even write one for this movie!

But then some things have got to be done and I’ve just got to inform our readers as to why they can skip watching this movie (though Archie says she’ll still watch it in the theatre. She’s a die-hard Salman fan, so she can’t be thinking straight).

PLOT: (Some readers believe my narrative of the plot discloses too many details, so I’ll try and keep it brief). This film too, like its predecessors, has an ensemble cast.  Characters involved – Rich, old illegal arms dealer (Anil Kapoor), his step son (Salman Khan), his twins (Daisy Shah and Saqib Saleem), the family’s Man Friday (Bobby Deol) and the eye candy (Jacqueline Fernandez).

Illegal arms dealer has been wrongly driven out of his country and his sole aim is to return to his native village with a clean chit and to do this he needs to indulge in more criminal activity such as stealing a ‘hard disk’ that has illegally recorded sleazy videos of politicians and then blackmailing these politicians. To help him with this task, he has his children who are all trained fighters and have each others’ backs on the field. But all is not well at home. The twins want the step son out of the way as their father favours him over them. Step son has brief affair with eye candy and then they break up only to have her return back to his life after few days/months/years (we don’t know). Man Friday oscillates in his loyalty towards step son and twins.

Will illegal arms dealer return to his village? Will arm candy and step son have a ‘happily ever after’? Whom does Man Friday finally stand up for? Who will survive- the twins or the step son?

Oh Salman, you’ve ruined this movie and turned into a big-budget Dabangg!

The film begins with each character being introduced by a voice over and that is when things begin to go downhill. When you have someone do a voice over in the film, that person ought to have a great voice and not sound like a railway announcement.

The USP of the Race series has always been the action packed scenes, the larger than life stunt sequences and the twists in the plot. Race 3 has all of this but fails to impress due to poor acting, even worse direction, abysmal script and unrealistic scenes. I am fine with one person taking down an entire truckload of trained militia by himself but how in God’s name does Salman manage to jump off a high rise building in a wingsuit, manoeuvre through buildings across town (while still flying) and land into the warehouse where his siblings are fighting? I have never been a big fan of Salman’s movies but this one really annoyed me as I went to the theatre with high expectations.

Salman looks like a stocky potato and lacks the panache that Saif Ali Khan had in the previous movies.

I feel terrible saying this but Daisy Shah is really annoying. Despite her cool stunt moves and her brilliant aerial dance, she has failed at trying to pass off as an uber cool, 25 year old scheming daredevil.  

Jacqueline is just being umm.... Jacqueline in the movie. (Chittiyan kalaiyan veh)

However, feminists rejoice. For a change, this film has action scenes with women in them, that do not involve name calling and hair pulling. *eye roll*

Would you believe this, I have nothing bad to say about Bobby Deol!

(Oh, I forgot to mention the other twin. Yeah, he has some scenes too.)

Anil Kapoor was definitely the saving grace and the good news is that the way the film ended, it would appear that Anil Kapoor shall make a comeback and thankfully not Salman Khan!

I sometimes still croon the songs from Race 1. The songs in this movie are unremarkable and the lyrics are so lame (tried thinking of a more professional word than lame, but lame describes it the best) especially the song “Selfish” and what do you know! The lyrics to the song have been penned by Salman!

Did I mention the script? LAME.

Remo, please stick to being a choreographer.

P.S: Remo D’Souza is the Director of the movie.

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RAID- PLOT DOESN'T REMAIN UNIFORM

Image Source - IMDb

In the morning, I stepped into the car and didn’t even bother stifling that yawn. It was one of those harsh, sunny days when you feel like you have cotton balls stuffed in your head and your eyelids feel droopy and heavy and you are too bored to even check WhatsApp. That’s when I got a call from Archie, “are you free today? Check WhatsApp yo!”

I love such days J

And that’s how Shugu, Archie and I ended up going for Raid.

Raid is the story of an IRS (Indian Revenue Service) officer, Amay Patnaik (Ajay Devgn) who conducts a raid at the local MP, Rameshwar Singh a.k.a Tauji’s (Saurabh Shukla) house. This movie is set in 1981 and is inspired from real-life raids that were conducted by the IRS in the 80s.

The movie begins by showcasing Amay to be an upright officer, who is currently posted in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh after a series of transfers, which, as per Hindi Cinema norms, is a clear sign of the Officer’s honesty. Amay receives an anonymous tip about Rameshwar Singh’s disproportionate assets and about black money being hoarded in his palatial ‘White House’. Rameshwar Singh, respectfully known to all as Tauji, is the local MP who is influential and powerful. Upon receiving this tip, Amay prepares for a clandestine raid and despite initial resistance from his team, proceeds to take upon Tauji and his family comprising of Tauji’s mother, his four brothers and their wives.

Tauji and his family are stunned that a “lowly Government Officer” dare enter their house to conduct a raid and taint their family’s name with such an allegation. Tauji challenges him to find even one extra note that is unaccounted for. Amay and his team conduct an exhaustive search but find nothing and almost give up until Amay’s smart thinking (with a little help from Tauji’s loose lipped mother and a map given by the anonymous tipper) reveals all that is hidden in the house.

Amay lets Tauji step out of the house confident that no amount of influence will stop him from continuing with his search. While Tauji is running from pillar to post (he even manages a meeting with the then PM who bears a stark resemblance to Indira Gandhi), unable to get any of his highly placed friends to stop the raid, Amay continues digging information and wealth from the house.

A dejected Tauji returns home only to learn that the anonymous tipper is someone from the house. In the meantime, Tauji garners the support of the localities to rid himself of these IRS officers and the Officers are trapped inside the house. Will Tauji learn the identity of the traitor? Will Amay and his team escape the clutches of Tauji ?

Ajay Devgn seems very comfortable in these roles as he has often portrayed similar roles of the no-nonsense, sincere officer. Saurabh Shukla, as usual is brilliant and always a pleasure to watch. I wish I could say something about Ileana but she has hardly any role in the movie. A few songs are randomly thrown in the movie, I suppose for the benefit of Ileana. The other actors in the movie have also performed their bit, well. The set up in the 80s is created well, with minute attention to detail such as the actors’ clothes as well as recreating the houses in the 80’s set up.

Here is why I didn’t like the movie: The movie started well with some scenes that got the audience to laugh out loud and also cheer in support of the hero and instead of maintaining that pace, things just went downhill and then just like that there was a glimmer of hope with a scene that created a sense of expectancy and then that fizzled out just as quickly.  The movie was a roller coaster ride that sadly left me with a headache (or it could just be the heat).

The whole movie is just one very, very long scene – of Amay and his team rummaging about Tauji’s house in search of black money. The writer seems to have lost interest in the second half of the movie and the dialogues in the second half are lacklustre.

There is a scene where the Indira Gandhi lookalike tries to help out Tauji by asking Amay to back off and then again she’s shown praising Amay saying India is in need of such Officers. Good way to please all political parties.

The movie starts with a bang and ends with a whimper.