Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji
Known to look at reality through the lens of a voyeur, Madhur Bhandarkar continues to play with his stereotypical ‘middle class’ outlook about the world around. With a tale of three men caught in a cobweb of love and longing, this time he has acquired a comic tone but the pitch remains the same – strident with his stamp of in-your-face realism. He designs it remarkably well when he has some hard facts, some newspaper headlines to bank upon, but in a fictional world, a nuanced approach is expected.
To his credit, Madhur has aspired to carve a harsher take on the matters of heart. It is not as simplistic as an average Bollywood candy floss but not as wholesome as a Madhur Bhandarkar film either.
In an attempt to reach out to a larger audience Madhur has joined hands with the likes of Sanjay Chhel for dialogues, who gave his best in the company of Govinda and David Dhawan. Here this obtuse company jars and the film falls between two stools, sorry, schools of film making. Or are we mistaken because David Dhawan has yet to show his serious side!
The screenplay is built on an interesting premise with a few life-like characters giving it solid support but an uneven treatment and at times crass tone makes it a brittle experiment. It is somewhat salvaged by some credible performances by Ajay Devgn, Omi Vaidya and Tisca Chopra otherwise it could have been a ham masterpiece.
After a hackneyed start, interspersed with gay jokes that have run out of steam, the track between Naren and his bubbly intern June (Shahzahn Padamsee looks the part but overdoes it) hooks you into the male bastion, where Naren and his two paying guests are at different stages of figuring out love. Ajay Devgn is a revelation as a banker going through the mid-life crises.
In a role which reminds one of Amol Palekar and Sanjeev Kumar, he has imbibed the self-consciousness of going out with a girl, who was three when he lost his innocence, pretty well. The way he looks at himself in the rear view mirror of the car, the way he gives in to the dance lessons with June and the way he sings “Koi Hota Jisko Apna” in a discotheque rings a bell of authenticity.
Omi Vaidya as the virgin boy looking for true love endears with his innocent approach. When he is used by a selfish, ambitious wannabe actress (Shraddha Das disappoints), it has a tinge of reality but it’s too long to hold your interest as Madhur uses predictable devices to prove the opportunist nature of the girl. Plus, Omi’s juvenile poetry doesn’t go with the mood of the film.
Similarly, the track of gym trainer Abhay (Emraan Hashmi is his usual self as the commitment phobic playboy), the Casanova, who renders his services to a much-married former Miss India (Tisca Chopra) before he falls head over heels for his step daughter (Shruti Haasan is in form as the no-nonsense girl) is worth exploring and for a few moments the treatment takes you by surprise but eventually it turns out to be inconsistent, unsubstantiated and rather contrived primarily because Madhur sticks to stereotypes.
If it’s the new age girl she won’t bring morality to bedroom. Goan girl has to be frivolous…. Tisca looks too dignified to indulge in toy boys and the character graph doesn’t do justice to her talent. Bad, for Madhur is known for his well fleshed out female characters.
Also, this time Madhur’s trademark side characters, a distinctive feature of his cinema; don’t add any freshness to the film except for the scene where a waiter (Manoj Joshi) offers an unsolicited ‘Bollywoodish’ advice to Omi when his love walks out on him.
In the end it turns out to be a mildly entertaining film that sporadically brings smiles if you keep your expectations in check.
127 Hours
Life has meaning only in the struggle. Who knows it better than Danny Boyle, the auteur celebrates struggle like no other. Adapted from Aron Ralston’s memoirs “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”, it’s about a young mountain climber (James Franco) who finds himself trapped in a remote canyon in Utah. For five days, with one of his arms pinned down by a boulder, he wriggles about in pain in a crevice and tries hard to pull away. Nothing works.
When he runs out of water, he relies on his urine, when he runs out of patience he applies his sense of humour and when he runs out of his painful present he finds refuge in his eventful past – the moments spent with his girlfriend and his parents. We spend almost 70 minutes with Franco in a crevice but there is never a dull moment.
From the word go we are splashed with an adrenaline rush encompassing the celluloid. With cameras mounted at strategic places on the undulated landscape and A.R. Rahman pulsating beats rising at the right moments we become one with Aaron’s highs and his lows. Such is the magic of Boyle’s imaginative storytelling and Franco’s performance.
Franco has invested almost everything into making this character his own. No wonder both are in race for the Academy Award and so is our Rahman. Eventually, Aaron uses a blunt made-in-china knife to chop off part of his arm. It’s somewhat predictable but still heart wrenching and the way Boyle has gone about it, the dismembering doesn’t conjure up sympathy for Franco but comes across as an act of taking pride in being alive, at any cost.
Excellent cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak complement Boyle’s layered storytelling and for a large part it works as a documentary decked up with realistic drama but at times it does give an effect of pornography of pain, where a smart mind is using the colour of blood and sound of nerves to manipulate a real life struggle as avant garde cinema. That’s why it’s uplifting, life affirming but not something I can give my arm for!
Burlesque
First things first. Musicals ought to have good music and this one gets first class marks for it. But then a musical is something more than a video album of a talented pop artist. The songs should germinate from an engaging premise. Here it emanates from a dated plot with lines that make you squirm with their vapidity.
You forget the trite treatment and terrible dialogues the moment gorgeous Christina Aguilera takes stage but every time your joys are short lived for director Steve Antin is adamant on telling a story which you could finish much before he does.
Inspired by hits like “Cabaret”, this one follows the life of a small town girl Ali (Christina) with a big voice. She lends at Los Angeles and applies for a job at Burlesque, a lounge, which is on its last legs and is run by a fading star Tess played by Cher.
As expected after ignoring her talent for some time, Cher takes her under her wings and makes her the star of the lounge. As expected she faces competition from a cribbing alcoholic colleague (Kirsten Bell). As expected she falls in love with a co-worker (Cam Gigandet). As expected a triangle emerges when a rich man aiming to buy the lounge comes into the fray…too familiar a territory to tread all over again!
Still musical set pieces – there are ten of them – with girls in skimpy outfits bring some life to the proceedings and Aguilera gives her all to make it work. But everybody around her is going through the motions for the screenplay wants them to repeat themselves. It lacks the sheer energy which the genre demands.
Cher looks jaded and the usually dependable Stanley Tucci as the right hand man of Tess is doing something similar to what he did in “The Devil Wears Prada.” The scenes between the two have potential but it is never exploited.
Similarly the love angle between Ali and Jack is mired by predictability and lines which have lost their sting. A little fine tuning could have turned this into a no-brainer entertainer but as of now it is nothing more than a mockery of a musical!
