BADLA

Image Source - IMDb

Plans were made to watch Badla and Archie excitedly messaged on the Whatsapp group that the movie Badla was an adaptation of a Spanish film, The Invisible Guest and announced that she would be watching it before Badla. The five of us sat in the movie hall with our thinking caps on whilst Archie just had a smirk on. She knew how the movie ended and was eager to see if we’d discern the plot.

Archie informs that besides the gender reversal of roles and the extra tadka offered by Bollywood filmmakers, Badla is an exact frame to frame adaptation of the original.

I was excited to watch the film more so for the Amitabh- Taapsee collaboration after Pink. Also, I happen to enjoy whodunits.

PLOT: Naina Sethi (Taapsee Pannu) is accused of murdering her lover, Arjun (Tony Luke) and is on house arrest. News of her arrest and murder is making the headlines as Naina has recently won a prestigious business award. Naina’s only hope of getting an acquittal is Badal Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan), a meticulous lawyer engaged by Naina’s lawyer Jimmy (Manav Kaul).

Badal comes to Naina’s apartment to extract information and deconstruct the entire murder scenario in an attempt to find a loophole in her case. The entire movie revolves around Naina presenting her version of the events and Badal questioning and challenging the same in order to be able to recreate and present a distorted set of facts that could set Naina free.

Naina’s story opens up a Pandora’s box that involves another crime.

Did Naina kill Arjun? Is Naina involved in this other crime? Does Badal succeed in getting Naina an acquittal?

The film is directed by Sujoy Ghosh (of Kahaani fame) and produced by Red Chillies Entertainment.

Needless to say, Amitabh and Taapsee are a treat to watch. The film also had Amrita Singh in it, playing a distraught mother and this was a surprise entry as I didn’t recall seeing her in the trailer. She’s the woman behind the camera in the poster. Tony Luke who plays Taapsee’s lover makes his debut in Hindi cinema and it’s refreshing to see an actor with a strong “South Indian” accent who isn’t in the film to merely serve as a comic relief and doesn’t dress in a lungi sipping lassi from a coconut. Sadly, Manav Kaul has only a minor role in the movie. 

If you liked Kahaani (the first one), you will like this film too. Typical to most thrillers, this film is fast paced and has a gripping storyline. Shot in Glasgow, the movie will have you enjoying the panoramic views only to be jolted out of your seat half way through that. Whilst some critics have labelled the film predictable (this could be true if you are one of those ardent fans of Agatha Christie and you’ve learnt from her books to suspect even the imperceptible commuter at the station with the scarf and big sunglasses who sneaks out of the train only after giving a furtive glance and a half-smile), be rest assured, there are many red herrings thrown in that will have you constantly second guessing Naina and Badal’s next move.

Despite being an adaptation, the writers have succeeding in infusing Hindu mythology into the storyline with Amitabh Bachchan quoting the Mahabharata. The dialogues are catchy, the kind that make you want to repeat them while walking out of the hall. :D

Would it be a spoiler if I were to say that the name of the movie is a spoiler in itself?

Archie and I have decided to mimick movie posters or rather mimick the expressions of the actors on the posters. We started off with the Gully Boy poster. We scoured the length of the floor only to find a teensy poster of Badla. You can find our pictures on our Insta page.  If you like our posts, please follow us on Insta and FB.

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 :) 

Andhadhun

What is life? It depends on the liver.

Image Source - IMDb

The film stars Ayushmann Khurrana, Tabu and Radhika Apte. With a star cast such as this, a trailer that keeps you at your wit’s end and generous reviews being splashed about, it was no wonder I went to watch this movie with high expectations.

Ever since I’ve started reviewing movies for the blog, I’ve been watching them with a critical eye, nitpicking at flaws and delving too much into the intricacies of filmmaking and scriptwriting. I sometimes miss those good old days of having a monosyllabic opinion. If I were to do that, I’d go, “Hmm... Interesting”. That’s how I felt when I stepped out of the theatre.

Andhadhun (not to be confused with Andhadhund meaning excessive, rash) is inspired by L’Accordeur (The Piano Tuner), a French Short Film.

PLOT (Probably the briefest plot on our blog): The film is about a blind piano player whose sole aim is to make money to be able to relocate to London and play the piano there. However, he unwillingly gets entangled in a murder. What follows are his frantic attempts at trying to escape the murderers that ends up with unearthing of secrets and major plot twists.

Any more revelation of the plot and it would have spoilers!

It goes without saying that the actors have done their jobs well.

I liked Tabu the best in the movie. She’s a brilliant actress.  It’s lovely to see her don roles that befit her age and personality and not being merely typecast into a role one would “expect” her to play.

Sadly, Radhika Apte didn’t have much of a role in the movie.

Ayushmann, Manav Vij (who looks like a beefed up Aamir Khan) and Anil Dhawan were good too.

Piano music makes up for most of the background music, the tenor oscillating with the mood of the protagonist (Ayushmann Khurrana). Such a background score comprising of one instrument rather than an orchestra, often brings a sense of realism to the scene and I like it that way.  

The USP of the movie is definitely the twists in the plot. I applaud the makers of the trailer who have craftily inserted scenes that reveal only so much that would make you want to watch the film, only to be then given a jolt within the first 15 minutes.

There were some brilliant moments that made us go “aaah,we didn’t expect that”, in fact one of the scenes towards the end almost had me clapping. (Yes, I’m the kind who claps in excitement).

The movie ends in a cliffhanger and it is left to the audience to interpret it in the manner he or she chooses to. Some suspect a sequel in the making, but I doubt that but then again I have been proven wrong in the past ( Black Panther, ahem...)

This is not your typical Bollywood film. No wait, I take that back. We have seen such a massive shift from the earlier norm of boy meets girl, saves her from the villain and the audience is invited to witness their happily ever after moment. But this film moves a step ahead. It is free from undying love, untainted protagonist, item numbers (Am I allowed to use the word ‘Item’? Or is that being sexist?)...

Here come the brickbats:

There is too much of an attempt to keep the audience occupied with twists that at times it becomes a little too hotchpotch and in that process the Director/scriptwriter loses sense of the rational that has the audience questioning “As if that could happen in real life”.

I wouldn’t ask you not to watch it in the theatres. Go if you must, but remember seeing is not always believing ;)

Here’s a fun fact, I read online - Sriram Raghavan, who is the Director of this film featured a blind girl playing the piano in the song Raabta in his film Agent Vinod.

STREE- PET MEIN DARD HOGA

Image Source - IMDB

An invite to view wedding photos graduated to a sleep over and culminated with a late night movie. That is how I ended up watching Stree with a crazy bunch of girls.

When I had first watched the teasers of this film, I was eagerly awaiting its release, but somehow the trailers didn’t look impressive enough. But the plan had been made and we all proceeded to Rex Theatre.

 Those from Karnataka, may be well aware of the urban legend that had people scrawling “Naale Ba (come tomorrow)” on the walls of their homes. The writing on the walls apparently warded off the evil spirit who turned back on seeing the instruction to return the next day and then the next and the next...... . This movie as stated in its poster is “based on this ridiculously true phenomenon”.

PLOT: A small village in India is haunted by an angry spirit (Stree) who returns every year during the time of a festival to abduct the men at night, leaving their clothes behind. To protect themselves from her, the villagers have “O Stree, kal aana (Oh woman, come tomorrow)” written on their walls.

Vicky (Rajkummar Rao), a non believer of this myth is the local tailor who falls in love with a mysterious woman (Shraddha Kapoor) who comes to the village once a year during the period of The Festival. The woman requests Vicky to stitch a special lehenga for her and in the process, also requests him to collect a random selection of items like the hair from a white cat, eyeball of a lizard, nail from a rooster’s claw etc. (I may have gotten some of these items wrong). Strange things begin to happen after Vicky meets this woman, whose name he doesn’t even know. Vicky’s friends suspect this woman to be Stree. Vicky’s friend gets abducted and Vicky too has begun to have his suspicions on this elusive woman.

Vicky, with the help of his friends, takes it upon himself to find his missing friend and to protect his village from Stree.

Is this mysterious woman, Stree herself? Why does Stree haunt this village and abduct only the men? Will Vicky be able to save his village from Stree? Will the villagers have to continue writing on their walls?

Archie, there you go. I haven’t divulged too many details in the plot else it would end up with spoilers.

The genre of this movie is Horror-Comedy. We forced T to watch this movie with us saying it would be comical and not scary. The film is scary (not for the faint hearted) but these scenes are almost always followed by a comical scene that slows down your fast beating heart.

Rajkummar is his usual brilliant self and is supported by a wonderful cast of actors. The dialogues are hilarious (though I would presume, at times a bit difficult for the non-Hindi speaking folks to follow). If not jumping from our seats in fright, the scenes have us rolling in laughter. Probably the first in this genre of Bollywood films that combined Horror with Comedy and I applaud the Director (Amar Kaushik) for not reducing the film to a mere slapstick comedy in an attempt to appeal to the masses. (Know any other Bollywood films that fall in this genre? Please mention them in the comments section below). Speaking of which, Archie felt the presence of the “Item Number” unnecessary but Shugu and I thought otherwise.

The film is also a satire on the Indian society and its treatment of women and manages to convey a social message without coming across as preachy.

The ending was a bit disappointing as I felt the movie ended on a cliff-hanger. Aali and I wracked our brains and came up with an alternate ending that would have been perfect but I now read that a sequel is in the making. If that is the case, the ending makes sense.

Do watch this film even if you don’t like watching Horror films!

ALL THAT GLITTERS, AIN’T GOLD!

Image Source - IMDb

When I watched the teasers for Gold, I couldn’t wait to watch the movie. It had two of my favourite genre for movies –sports and Indian Independence period drama and it had Akshay Kumar who has been churning up some good films. The story is a fictional account based on real events of India winning the gold medal in Hockey at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.

We are a patriotic lot. We have completed 72 years of Independence and yet feel strongly about our past. While I don’t believe that reparations by Britain to its former colonies is the solution, I do believe that apologies are in order and mere condemnation of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as a ‘deeply shameful act’ by a former British Prime Minister would not absolve them of their actions past . My heart swells with pride when I see our national flag being hoisted but are we reduced to merely this – to be seated in a theatre and revel in seeing our flag unfurl above the nation that plundered and pillaged us for 200 years?

 We love sports. Our Hockey players may not be considered cool enough to clinch major Fairness Cream endorsements, but we did believe for the longest time that it was our national game until Sports Ministry of India confirmed otherwise. Look how well Chak De did at the Box Office. It’s the only movie I’ve watched twice in a theatre.

Let’s not forget Akshay Kumar! We like him too!

PLOT: The movie begins with the ‘British’ India team winning the gold medal in the 1936 Olympics held at Germany only to have Britain’s flag hoisted with their national anthem being played in the background. The manager of the team Tapan Das (Akshay Kumar) vows to win the next medal with the Indian flag being hoisted. He has a strong team led by Samrat (Kunal Kapoor). However, due to the ongoing World War, Olympics is cancelled the consecutive years which sends Tapan on a downward spiral. The players have gone their separate ways and Tapan is a penniless alcoholic now.  

The year is 1946. India is on the verge of gaining independence and Olympics is to be held in London in 1948. Tapan mends his ways and sets about to bring the old team together but he faces hurdles on the way. Samrat has retired from the game and instructs Tapan to make Imtiaz Ali Shah (Vineet Kumar Singh) the captain. Along with Imtiaz, Tapan recruits new members – Himmat Singh (Sunny Kaushal) and Raghubir Pratap Singh (Amit Sadh) both from different ends of the social spectrum, but equally brilliant centre forwards.

Partition takes place, taking along with it most players from the team.  The three firangs in the team have been asked to get back to Australia. The team is low on funds. Morale is low and egos are high amongst the team members. Tapas faces opposition from his colleagues.

India wins the gold.

The movie begins with Akshay Kumar narrating the story and that’s when my left eyebrow went up. Akshay Kumar is a Bengali in the film and apart from the stereotypical references and exclamations in Bengali, he was quite unbelievable as a Bengali Dada.  He’d remember to pronounce the As as Os during the scenes but while narrating would slip into his impeccable Hindi accent.  The entire movie, I wondered why they’d gotten Akshay for this role besides the obvious reason of having a blockbuster star feature on the movie poster, until the final 30 minutes when Akshay is required to give a morale boosting speech to the team members that ultimately leads them to win the match and earn crores for the film. You may think I am nitpicking. Oh yes, I am! And this why-

We have evolved as an audience and gone are the days when we expected our films to be the quintessential Bollywood masala film with tragedy, comedy, drama, romance, action etc squeezed into one storyline. This movie had an excellent story to work on, a brilliant cast- a sure short winner (come on, you can’t go wrong with a movie that ends with India winning the medal and the entire audience standing to our national anthem) but what they did was get a big star who inadvertently managed to hog the limelight from the other actors/characters, throw in some cheesy slapstick comedy, have a romantic number thrown in (!!!) and make it a commercial film. What should have been a serious period drama film, focusing more on the struggles faced by the players with the imminent freedom, the partition, lack of funds, lack of unity, the pressure of beating their invaders on their home ground has ended up in a comical representation of historical events.   

Kunal Kapoor, Mouni Roy, Vineet Kumar had hardly any role to play in this film. Thankfully, Amit Sadh and Sunny Kaushal have been given their due.

Amit Sadh was good, but Sunny Kaushal was better. What a brilliant actor Sunny is! His portrayal of Himmat Singh, a short tempered Sardarji was spot on. I actually believed they’d gotten a Sardarji to play that role until I started writing this post and checked out the names of actors.

The saving grace was the final half hour of the movie. And, of course Sunny Kaushal.  

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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