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 :) 

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.