MILENGE MILENGE
Waiting in the wings for five years, this one behaves exactly the way a canned product left in the open does. Mush has gone musty and the adrenaline rush has gathered rust. A lot has changed in the interim. Kareena Kapoor has lost puppy fat and has become a fashion diva. Shahid Kapoor has proved that he is much more than just a cute boy and Bollywood has moved beyond soppy melodramas where with every emotional twist in the tale the decibel level of hey hey and ha ha in the background grows. And when the change reminds of the past we have closed, the exercise becomes futile. It is like going back to those pale diary pages and finding a dried flower in between. It gives moments of joy – we do get to see the spark of two people madly in love – but it can’t hold you for hours.
The good old diary plays an important part here. Remember the times when the hero used to steal the heroine’s diary to know all her secret wishes and the heroine used to believe, blinking those false eye lashes, that destiny has found a boy for her. When she discovered the truth, she used to take it as the ultimate act of cheating and parted ways. Meanwhile, the boy while trying to be her man actually embodied those traits. And what were those traits – a teetotaller boy who doesn’t tell lies!
We thought our fate has changed as far as Bollywood plots are concerned but Satish Kaushik is in no hurry to turn a fresh leaf. Kaushik has proved in the past that he can make exaggeration work within a time tested formula. His heroine is not career-oriented woman but a girl who wants to get married and have kids. His script is peppered with a well meaning Muslim shop owner and a Parsi land lady. At times even the background music changes according to the religion of the character! Originality is not his forte but Kaushik knows how to play with characters, who wear their emotions on their sleeves and still get a standing ovation in the theatres of the hinterland.
But here he loses the plot, as he rips off “Serendipity”. Unlike the original, here the itch of separation doesn’t play out effectively as Kaushik escapes the detailing with a single line cliché – three years later. If the two were so desperate to be together, then why play the cumbersome destiny game. In the age of communication the logic of prolonged separation – when the two realise their true feelings – doesn’t hold and the emotion is not allowed to grow. Himesh Reshammiya’s dated track doesn’t help and jaded visuals of Bangkok with a blonde-haired Kareena Kapoor in dated costumes mar the scenery.
It could find a place in the personal library of two erstwhile friends but it can’t be on your menu for the week.
RED ALERT – THE WAR WITHIN
Of late, Bollywood is increasingly getting inspired by news stories. Ananth Mahadevan is the latest to draw from the newspaper cuttings. Unfortunately, the end product is just that. A string of newspaper cuttings! Inspired by a true story, he has raised a topical issue. Naxal issue deserves screen space but for that you need to dig into editorials and smell realities on the ground and beneath.
Unfortunately, apart from intentions, Mahadevan has little going for him. Rape in custody, schools being used as base for security forces, children getting killed in crossfire; the film just offers some snapshots of the problem. There is no credible storyline to link the clippings. It doesn’t add anything to what we already know and the solution it offers in the climax is utopian, rather laughable. Mahadevan doesn’t dare to come out of the politically correct line of an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind. We don’t get a tangible feel of the complexity of the situation which Narasimha (Suniel Shetty) describes in one dialogue – on both sides we have our own people.
Set in the jungles of Andhra Pradesh, right from the first frame when a well endowed Shetty is shown pulling a rickshaw in a crisp white vest and lungi we get a sense of the charade we are getting into. Shetty is earnest as the simpleton villager who gets sucked into the turmoil but we don’t get any such feeling. We remain largely detached from the happenings on the screen.
Shetty, on his part, disappoints in conveying the transition from a naïve villager concerned about the education of his kids to a man who is forced to take sides. Sameera Reddy as the victim of police excess looks the part but seldom gives the impression that she is feeling what she has gone through. In a single scene appearance Naseeruddin Shah shows how to perform what is not written in lines. The usual suspects for such scripts – Ashish Vidyarthi, Seema Biswas and Ayesha Dharkar shine in small parts but with little meat to bite into they remain dangling in a rough terrain.
An undercooked preparation on a burning issue!
KNIGHT AND DAY
This is one of those ventures which don’t expect you to carry your mind to the theatre. Just sit back with a pack of popcorn and let the stars take over the cruise control. No pun intended! Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are trying to hang on to the stardom and director James Mangold has given them enough space to show their sparks and skills to woo back their audience. Yes there is relentless action, of course it peters down to silliness, but unlike most wannabe summer blockbusters this one doesn’t make you cringe. Primarily because Mangold shows no pretensions in turning a feeble plot – where a secret agent has to protect a miraculous battery and its inventor from his corrupt officers and a ganglord – into something meant to be taken seriously.
The film is nicely anchored by a boisterous tone which keeps us in good humour. From the very first set piece where Tom maims more than half-a-dozen men in a moving plane in a time span Diaz takes to freshen up in the washroom, Mangold has smartly played with the charisma that his lead actors bring to the table. Both have given a spirited performance to make this action comedy rise above the predictability. Diaz knows how to make a dumb character dignified and silly situations pleasantly engaging. Tom is not new to this territory and is pretty bullish in the arena. Together they literally fly past the potholes in the script. The support cast is caricaturish and after a point our mind does begin to give signals of being conned but Mangold ushers us to the exit door just before the gum loses its bite.
THE LAST AIRBENDER
M. Night Shyamalan is fast losing his ability to bend Eastern spiritualism into vivid celluloid frames that cross over cultures. Once again his thought is in place but the exposition is incredulous giving weight to the perception that the man should stick to screen writing and let somebody else helm the affairs.
Based on a successful Nickelodeon animated TV series, the live-action feature film neither engages nor entertains. Set in a world where human civilisation is divided into four nations according to elements – Water, Earth, Air and Fire, it is an excruciatingly dull enterprise where you keep tossing in the seat waiting for some drama, an iota of humour or at least some powerful lines. But it simply doesn’t appeal to any of the senses! Talking about the elements of the story, the fire folks want to control other elements. There’s something about an avatar, who is presented like a young Tibetan monk, the only person who can control all the elements and maintain harmony. He has disappeared. Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) and sister, Katara (Nicola Peltz) find a child, Aang (Noah Ringer) frozen in the ice. They think he may be the avatar, the last airbender, who can bring peace to all the lands and stop the fire benders led by the Fire King (Cliff Curtis) and his son (Dev Patel).
Shyamalan disappoints on all counts. The elements lose their appeal in live action. The fury of water and fire is hardly felt. We know Shyamalan is raising a voice against materialism, we get the hint about the Buddhist philosophy of power without blood shed, we know his target audience are teenagers but such serious ‘signs’ don’t help establish a fantasy adventure. It demands a concoction of vigour and action, something Shyamalan has not mastered. Arched eyebrows and flared nostrils don’t convey much when the dialogues are pedestrian and the actors don’t feel the scenery.
