Review: Super Nani

Cast: Rekha (Bharti Bhatia), Sharman Joshi (Manorath), Randhir Kapoor (Mr. Bhatia), Shweta Kumar, Anupam Kher, Rajesh Kumar (Suketu)

Genre: Drama (family)

Direction: Indra Kumar

Production: Indra Kumar, Ashok Thakeria

Written By: Vipul Mehta (based on Gujarati play Baa Ae Maari Boundary)

Music: Harshit Saxena, Sanjeev-Darshan

Release Date: 31^st October, 2014

Language: Hindi

Duration: 2 hours 14 minutes

Super Nani, a film by Indra Kumar, is an attempt to project women empowerment, but fizzles out with over-the-top acting, poor script / screenplay. There was no dearth of good star cast in this movie. Rekha, Randhir, Anupam kher also seem to follow poor script in an awful manner.

Bharti Bhatia (Rekha) is the typical Indian mother who takes care of every one in the house, but her situation is not better than the doormat, who is constantly reminded by the business tycoon husband to focus on her domain only i.e. in kitchen. Son Rajesh Kumar, daughter-in-law and the daughter also keep humiliating Bharti. Bharti has been blessed with tremendous amount of patience and so she keeps tolerating all the humiliations.

Then enters her grandson Mann (Sharman Joshy) into the scene from New York who attempts to speak Hindi, even though grammatically incorrect. Mann loves his granny a lot. Mann realizes very soon that her Nani’s place in the household is not better than a housemaid. He tries to make his Nani come out of her cocoon and explore herself. Nani goes through the great makeover to be a woman of substance. She enters into modeling world and soon becomes a role model for all the women of our country.

Rest of the story is all about how she takes sweet revenge in her own manner to teach her son, daughter-in-law, daughter and husband.

Rekha as usual, looks stunning in this movie, but a talent like her is completely wasted. Even Randhir Kapoor, Anupam Kher are not utilized in the movie. Sharmaan Joshi, an American- born Desi boy, ends up messing up with grammar while speaking Hindi, also is not impressive in the movie, although otherwise he is a treat to be watched on screen. Sharmaan’s love interest in the movie is played by Shweta Kumar (Indra Kumar’s daughter) don’t have much to do in the movie.

The thought behind this movie could have been definitely to reflect upon our value system, the issues a mother / housewife face in our society. But the movie turned out to be preaching saga. Loads of melodrama in the movie. If we keep the script / screenplay aside for a while, intention of presenting the concept of values, sensitivity towards elders, respect towards women etc. is good. In our Indian Society, it still happens that women are supposed to forgo their dreams and take care of husband and children. A housewife, mother has to work for 24 X 7 X 365 days, that too without salary. But still, at the end of the day, she gets only brickbats from her so called loved ones, who have no qualms in ridiculing her all the time.

Super Nani fails to impress irrespective of the most gorgeous Rekha in it and its other wonderful star cast.

Rating: 1.5 /5

Review: Roar - Tigers of the Sundarbans

Cast: Abhinav Shukla, Himarsha Venkatsamy, Anchit Kaur, SUbrat Dutta, Nora Fatehi, Ali Quli Mirza, Aadil Chahal, Varinder Singh Ghuman, Aaran Chaudhary, Pranay Dixit, Pulkit Jawahar

Direction: Kamal Sadanah

Production: Abis Rizvi

Written By: Kamal Sadanah, Abis Rizvi

Cinematographer: Michael Watson

Editor: Kamal Sadanah, Muzzammil Nasir

Music: John Stewart BGM

Release Date: 31^st October, 2014

Language: Hindi

Duration: 2 hours 03 minutes

Roar- Tigers of the Sundarbans, an absolutely unconventional movie by debutant director Kamal Sadanah, had the potential to be a great flick. The movie has some stunning shots of the natural beauty of the Sundarbans (Bengal). A plot with man-animal relationship. Ang Lee gave us a beautiful movie Life of Pi where this relationship was explored and picturized / presented in a very unique manner. Roar lacked a coherent script / presentation.

Uday, a young photojournalist, who is in Sunderbans to make a documentary on wild lives, rescues a white tiger cub trapped by a poacher. Uday brings the cub to his place where he was staying in the village. The villages get panicked when they see Uday carrying the cub along with him. Anchit Kaur (an officer placed in village) takes the cub away. Uday gets attacked and killed by the mother Royal Bengal Tigress on that night. Uday’s brother Pandit (Abhinav Shukla), captain of an elite commando team, comes in search of his brother’s body. He gets neither the support of the villagers nor Anchit's. Anchit refuses  to get the search operation done for Uday's body due to the danger zones of the forest. Pandit decides to search for Uday’s body on his own and also find out the Royal tigress so as to kill her. He gathers his commando team and sets off for his mission to kill the tigress. Uday’s local guide Madhu and a forest tracker Jhumpa joins Pandit for this mission.

What follows thereafter forms the story. The team met with lot of challenges on their way. Despite being trained soldiers, they find helpless at times in that land which belonged to wild creatures. White tigress eluded them and also manipulated them into her territory. Apart from tigers / tigress, snakes and crocodiles were also in the scene. Ultimately the hunter turns out to become the hunted. What happens towards the end? Could Pundit kill the tigress? Was his team intact even towards the end? Who wins ultimately? 

Certain scenes are intriguing and also difficult to watch: a couple getting manually covered up by millions of honeybees as part of their ritual, thousands of snakes following Pandit’s gang etc.

Roar has definitely some great visuals in it, with amazing shots of the landscape.

Roar – Tigers of the Sundarbans although doesn’t roar, it is unconventional in nature.

Rating: 2 /5

Review: Happy New Year

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan (Chandramohan Sharma aka Charlie), Deepika Padukone (Mohini Joshi), Abhishek Bachchan (Nandu Bhide and Vicky Grover), Boman Irani (Temhton Irani aka Tammy), Sonu Sood (Jagmohan Prakash aka Jag), Vivaan Shah (Rohan), Jackie Shroff (Charan Grover). Emotional Appearance: Anupam Kher (Manohar Sharma, Charlie’s father). Special Appearances: Dino Morea (host of World Dance Competition), Prabhu Deva (Dance Instructor), Sarah-Jane Dias (Laila), Malaika Arora Khan (an actress), Anurag Kahsyap (himself- Judge), Visha Dadlani (Himself, judge), Sajid Khan (Director), Geeta Kapoor (Judge of World Dance Competition)

Genre: Action, Comedy-Drama

Direction: Farah Khan

Production: Gauri Khan, Red Chillies Entertainment

Written By: Farah Khan, Althea Kaushal, Mayur Puri (Dialogues)

Cinematographer: Manush Nandan

Editor: Anand Subaya

Music: Vishal Shekhar, Background Score – John Stewart Sduri

Distributed by: Yash Raj Films

Release Date: 24^th October, 2014

Language: Hindi

Duration: 2 hours 59 minutes

Happy New Year, a typical Farah Khan film with her lucky mascot Shah Rukh Khan. Although the movie has nothing new to offer, not to be seen with logics in place, very very predictable plot, and a few SRK dialogues rewritten, still, you may like to watch the movie for its light-heartedness.

The stage is set for the World Dance Championship at Dubai and the movie begins with the narration of Shahrukh Khan: there are only two types of people in the world- Winners and Losers. And he takes us through the flash back about the story of six losers coming together for a mission.

Charlie (Shahrukh Khan), Boston University topper, wants to take revenge with diamond merchant Charan Grover (Jackie Shroff) for betraying his father Manohar (Anupam Kher), implicating him, spoiling his business and framing him in a fake robbery. Charlie had been following Charan for the last eight years to keep a close watch on his every step. And then comes an opportunity to avenge Charan when he announced to the world in regard to 9 precious diamonds being brought and kept at his world famous locker – Shalimar Vault (which was originally made by Manohar). And the same day at the same venue, World Dance Competition’s opening ceremony was also there. Charlie plans to skillfully set up a heist plot against the international dance competition scenario.

Charlie gets his team ready for the mission of stealing these diamonds with Jagmohan Prakash aka Jag, an ex-army bomb squad expert (Sonu Sood), Temhton Irani aka Tammy, a 50-year stud and an expert to open any coded lock  (Boman Irani), a hacker Rohan (Vivaan Shah), Nandu Bhide (Abhishek Bachchan) and Mohini Joshi, a bar dancer (Deepika Padukone). Everybody had a reason to be part of Charlie’s mission. Rest of the story is all about how this team of six losers plan the whole mission. How do they execute the whole plan? Are they able to fetch victory in their mission? How do they breach the security?

Yes, indeed the movie is funny in parts. Certain dialogues from SRK’s movies (DDLJ, Chak De, Devadas, Don, Main Hoon Na etc.) are rewritten. Boman has done complete justice to his stud act. Sonu, SRK have lavishly flaunted their six/eight pack abs. Abhishek is good as Nandu Bhide though his vomit is unbearable. Deepika is definitely ravishing with her athlete figure. Vivaan Shah is promising.

Movie in the second half drags. Three-hour long movie seemed to be pretty long. Emotions / pain don’t generate any empathy, don’t touch the hearts. Humour at places goes overboard. Farah has tried to evoke sense of patriotism through ‘India Wale…’ number and a shayari by SRK towards the end of the movie which conveyed that let India be a country of scams / poor people, still everybody’s heart has ‘Tiranga’; but it does not seem to fit completely. Music by Vishal-Shekhar does not do great wonders except ‘Manwa Laage…’.

The best scene in the movie: AbRam Khan’s debut at the credit segment with SRK.

Watch the movie for just the starry element in it (minus logic).

Rating: 2.75 /5

Review : Bang Bang

Bang Bang, another release alongside Haider. This film is absolutely for Hritik Roshan's fans. There is entertainment quotient in this movie for action-flick lovers.

Rajveer aka Jay (Hrithik Roshan) has stolen Kohinoor from UK and is being followed by bad men as well as government agencies. Rajveer lands up in Shimla, where he incidentally meets Harleen (Katrina Kaif) in a restaurant, who was there on a blind date through a website 'truelove.com'. Harleen who was having a monotonous but peaceful life along with her grandmother and working as Bank receptionist, life took a complete u-turn for her after meeting Rajveer. The complications for Harleen starts unfolding.

The whole movie revolves around Rajveer that how he protects Kohinoor and how he saves himself and Harleen also.  

There are shades of Ek Tha Tiger, Dhoom in certain scenes. 

As far as the performances are concerned, Hrithik has done very well. His dance sequences are very good as always. Katrina has done this before also - a sweet, pretty looking lady. Danny and Pavan Malhota are also good. Kanwaljeet and Deepti Nawal, although having very less screen time, are very good.

Watch Bang Bang for Hrithik and action sequences. A decent entertaining film.

Rating: 3/5

  

Review : Haider

Haider is one of the best release of this year. Vishal Bhardwaj's adaptation on Shakespeare's Hamlet has highlighted Kashmir issue. Everything about this film is simply great. First of all let me talk about script. Well crafted script and screenplay. The dialogues depicting the plight of Kashmiris is surely going to touch hearts. What a tragedy! Kashmir is torn between India and Pakistan. They have to show ID cards every now and then in their own homeland. Whoever is doubted to be a militant or suspected of having even a remote connection with a militant is arrested, tortured, kept in cells, killed in encounters etc. Survey says, many people are missing in Kashmir. 

Haider - Shahid Kapoor's best film, comes home from Aligarh on learning about his family house being burnt, father missing. He gets shocked and depressed to find his mother (Tabu) in a singing-dancing mood with his Khurram Chacha (Kay Kay Menon). Haider is not ready to believe that his father is dead. He along with his love interest (Shraddha Kapoor) starts searching for his father in every camp, jail, cells but efforts are all in vain. Then comes Rudaar (Irfaan Khan) as messenger of Haider's father. The message brought by him shakes Haider.

What happens thereafter? Is Haider's father dead or alive? Was there any romantic angle between Kay Kay Menon and Tabu in the movie? What path Haider choose in his life? 

It is sad to see the challenges faced by Kashmiris every moment. So much of uncertainties and  unpredictability to be faced by the people.  

The song 'Bismil Bismil' is great.

Shahid is excellent, deserves a National award. Vishal Bhardwaj is to applauded for handling such a sensitive issue in such a subtle and empathetic manner. Tabu- what a delight to watch her on screen. Kay Kay Menon- as always - another great performance from him. Irfaan Khan - what a powerful entry, even though screen time is less. Shraddha Kapoor's performance is ok.

Haider may not be liked by you, if you are looking for fun element. It is a very intense movie. Go for it, if you love this genre and also to enjoy great performances.

Rating: 5 /5

Preview: Mary Kom

5^th September, 2014, sees the release of another Indian Biographical Sports Drama Film based on the life of the Indian Boxer Mary Kom. The promos of the movie is really very inspiring with Priyanka Chopra in the lead. It seems, Priyanka has really worked hard for this movie. It is directed by Omung Kumar and produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Priyanka suffered an injury while shooting for the film. A cut mark under her eye is real which is retained on screen. Film is scheduled to release in two versions, one for Indian audience and another for International Audience.

Preview of Bollywood Movie Releasing on 15th August, 2014

Singham Returns: This week on 15^th August, 2014, Rohit Shetty’s Singham Returns releases. It is a sequel to his 2011 film Singham. We would again get to see the fierce acts of Ajay Devgan as Baji Rao Singham, paired opposite to Kareena Kapoor. Ajay Devgan also co-produces the movie along with Reliance Entertainment. Amol Gupte, Dayanand Shetty, Anupam Kher, Sameer Dharmadhiari, Zakir Hussain, Sharat Saxena also star in this movie.