Khiladi 786

Directed by: Ashish R Mohan

Starring: Akshay Kumar, Asin, Mithun Chakraborthy, Raj Babbar

Released: 2012

Verdict: destroy every copy – horrible – bad – whatever – flawed but enjoyable - good – great – amazing

I have learned that a good colourful „silly“ masalla is one of the best things that can happen if you feel blue or need to relax. With an intention to be entertained and setting into my graciously forgiving mood I started watching the latest Akshay Kumar release, that same actor whom I didn´t mind in Rowdy Rathore and thought him pure adorable in OMG Oh My God earlier in 2012. I understand „Khiladi“ is a trademark for him, but from what I have understood, the original „Khiladi“ series were thrillers (?), which this one is anything but, which, after all, was clear from the posters and promos. I had next to no expectations of the film and thought that I could pretty much predict the whole thing. I was wrong.

Akshay Kumar (because his filmy name is too long and impossible to spell correctly for me) is from a Punjab family, into which nobody wants to marry their daughters – because they are goondas, you see (in what way is never really shown), and so they have to marry women from other nations (because obviously those don´t care about your background). But Akshay would really like an Indian girl, unfortunatelly his proposals are being rejected one by one. 

Enter Mansukh, a son of a match-maker, recently thrown out from home for ruining his father´s reputation, and hired (more by mistake than anyhting else) to find a groom for Indu, sister of Mumbai Don TT (Mithun Chakraborty). Indu is a spoiled brat who already has a boyfriend, but he is in jail and every single time he is to be released something or the other happens which prolongs his stay behind bars. Indu is patient, but her time is running out, because Mansukh immeditelly has a groom for her in mind – Akshay, who just like ghosts and true pyaar cannot be seen when he moves quickly (not sure that is the best news you can give a bride … but...ehmm... well.....). However Mansukh doesn´t know Akshay is not a policeman, and neither are his relatives, as they claim to be. And to top it he has to lie to them about the girl´s family, and also makes Mithun and his household members of a Mumbai police squad.

After the first 40 or so minutes I was ready to love the movie. It felt funny. Silly, sure, but genuinely funny. Then something happened, fun disappeared, and it just slowly became boring. Akshay is being Akshay, that one who absolutely needs to stop doing films like this for several more years to come. Seriously. Rowdy Rathore, Joker and Khiladi may have had different plotlines and presented him as three different people, but he presented all that in the exact same way, so much you can hardly find any difference between them. His best performance of 2012 thus remains supporting role in OMG Oh My God, any by far it was also the best out of five films he gave us last year.

I always welcome any glimpse of „old“ stars like Mithun Chakraborthy and Raj Babbar, who are largely in the shadows these days, but rarely they get a role that would do them justice in any way. I think the last time I saw Mithun doing something that mattered was in Guru. Asin is as much a leading lady as Bharti Singh (who has short and completely useless subplot to handle). I keep hearing about how amazing she she in her Southern films, and can´t just stop wondering why she is satisfied with playing „bushes in the back“, because that is pretty much everything she has done in Bollywood so far. She doesn´t even have much of a screen presence (like for example another girl, who needs to do more substantial roles – Sonakshi Sinha), and you just couldn´t care about her less.

That characters are sketchy, music bad, jokes over the top and double standarts for men and women regarding age as obvious as ever (27 years old Asin is romancing 45 years old Akshay while being 62 years old Mithun´s sister).... all that I could live with quite well, if only it was a laugh-riot. It wasn´t. Khiladi 876 is actually so forgettable I cannot even recommend it.

Bol Bachchan

Directed by: Rohit Shetty

Starring: Ajay Devgn, Abhishek Bachchan, Asin, Prachi Desai

Released: 2012

Verdict: destroy every copy – horrible – bad – whatever – flawed but enjoyable - good – great – amazing 

Bol Bachchan is a really phunny philm. Working with ever popular formula of lies, lies and more lies creating confusion and more confusion, very much like another phunny philm earlier this year (the one about a house being full), but it actually has a bit of a plot and smaller number of characters which makes it less memory demanding.

Abbas and Sania, a Muslim brother and sister, are forced to take refuge with a family friend in a small town, which is prospering under landlord Prithviraj, a man of muscles and a heart that loves truth above everything else. Try to lie to him even a little and thou shalt know what pain is. Then again this is all rather unfortunate since he is very easy to lie to, as Abbas finds out soon enough, as circumstances make him to do just that. And later he is too scared of Prithviraj and starts making more and more lies, which are good enough to satisfy the landlord, but at the same time give a terrible headache to Abbas, Sania and a whole bunch of other people who get involved. A concept very simple, but executed with lots of freshness (and did that stage play near the end crack me up).

Abhishek Bachchan redeemed himself after the atrocity he served us this January and confirmed yet again he is a very pleasant actor who needs to be presented more as a common man than a genius super-cop/super-con. Also multistarrers do him good, at least those that have another strong performer (here it is Ajay Devgn) to pretty much „complete“ him on screen (how effin´ good they both looked beating up an army of goondas – twice - without even getting sweat stains?). Ajay has always been projected more as an action hero, at least as far as I know, but lately he has been using his great comic sense as well, and as an English-loving yet totally messing up meaning of words and thus delivering some hilarious one-liners (A brother in need is a sister indeed! My eyes have fallen from my face!) macho landlord he rules. For me he stole the show, though Abhishek too has moments of utter brilliance. His notorious gay act, that worked for him so much in Dostana, and actually seems to be his most popular avatar (ouch!), is used here as well, then again it is left soon enough not to weary off. Aided in comedy also by Krushna Abhishek (forever known to me as Govinda´s nephew) and other minor character artists, all the protagonists make sure your sides are hurting from all the laughs even before the interval. 

Asin and Prachi both are presented beautifully, but Asin, as gorgeous as she undoubtedly is, lacks „it“. She has a great beauty, yet no personality on screen, nothing that would catch your eye as soon as she is not the only one in the frame. She does decent, but I´m becoming a bit tired of her decent, because apart from Ghajini that is all she has shown so far. She has not one role that would allow her to perform (and evolve), she seems to be choosing only films where starcast pretty much guarantees a hit. You cannot really talk about a chemistry between the girls and their romantic interests in the movie – well, not between Asin and Ajay (yep yep... age difference too visible – and I am afraid this complaint is going to be more and more frequent in my reviews concerning films by Mr. Devgn, Mr. Kumar and also the Khans etc), fortunatelly Ajay and Abhishek have enough chemistry to make it work.

It could have been 30 minutes shorter, because like this it was getting a bit wearisome at one point, and as a girl I´m not really into the obligatory car porn Rohit Shetty enjoys so much. There are only three songs – two lovey-dovey ones that I really liked and enjoyed, and the one playing during the opening credits and featuring none other than Amitabh Bachchan, which obviously has no other point than to boost his son´s movie at least a little with his legendary status. And I didn´t get why they were jumping out of huge Fabergé eggs either.

If I should sum it up, Bol Bachchan is a fun ride with a heart.

Ghajini

Directed by: A.R. Murugadoss

Starring: Aamir Khan, Asin

Released: 2008

Verdict: destroy every copy – horrible – bad – whatever – flawed but enjoyable - good – great – amazing

Once I finished this film I was not sure if I should feel guilty, because I thought it was actually quite good, but had only read negative comments so far. Maybe low expectation and the fact I have not seen Memento (of which this is a remake) helped, I don´t really know, but yes, I enjoyed the movie, except for the sugary ending.

But first things first. A rather nosy medicine student girl makes us aware of an existence of certain Sanjay Singhania (Aamir). He has a really cool macho hairstyle (caused by circumstances) and rather rare kind of amnesia – he is incapable of remembering anything for more than 15 minutes. The question naturally arises in everybody´s mind – how can such a person live – and that alone as he does? What keeps him going? Sanjay himself is painfully reminded of this everyday – revenge. Using elaborate system of paper notes, photo notes, map notes and not to forget body notes (from „Kalpana was killed“ spread proudly over his muscular chest to „take camera“ on his toe) he lives from fifteen minutes to another fifteen minutes, having nothing but the sense of pure hate for somebody named Ghajini. He knows he wants to kill this person (and few others). The problem is he has no idea who he is – or why exactly.....

Damn. I need a new tattoo so I´ll remember to buy toilet paper,

Through another nosy person – a policemen investigating one of the murders Sanjay has already committed, we are introduced to that reason, when he enters his flat without invitation, beats him up and reads his old diary (before Sanjay regains consciousness, chases him out of his flat and right under the wheels of a bus that is).

Once upon a time Sanjay Singhania was a successful businessman and Kalpana (Asin) was a good-hearted girl working as a junior artist in B-grade TV ads. They probably would have never crossed paths if Kalpana, to make herself interesting and seeing all the advances that it offers, starts spreading rumours about having an affair with him and their wedding being imminent. The news spreads like fire and becomes the talk of the town – and naturally reaches to respectable suited up Sanjay, who immediately decides to go and meet the girl whom he´s supposedly marrying. When they come face to face he is basically charmed off his pants, and eager to get to know the girl closer he gives her a false name and identity. And while he´s trying to figure out how to tell her he lied to her without risking loosing her love, Kalpana gets involved in a rather ugly matter of girl trade run by somebody named Ghajini. Who exactly Ghajini is, how big he is or what he does that makes him so powerful is never really explained, but you are given the idea when police covers up for him and his dark deeds. And Kalpana is soon going to suffer a sad fate of those who cross his path.

Today we offer you...

...three for the price of one!

The film is centered on and around Aamir in both timelines (present and past), with the rest of the cast being just shadowy figures, the way the character himself probably sees them. Except for Asin as Kalpana, who stands up greatly to both Aamir´s screen presence and talent, and fills the „past“ line with freshness and charm. As much as I have failed to see her appeal in Ready, where she was unforgivably wasted by a different Khan, that much I loved her here. In some of the scenes she actually reminded me a lot of another southern star Sridevi with her looks and cute expressions with slightly bulging eyes while quickly speaking. Kalpana, in spite of the first impression I had of her (silly, silly attention seeker) turned out to be actually very likeable and provided the only light and bright moments in such a dark film.

The „present“ time was considerably violent, sometimes perhaps unnecessarily so. Lingering on the details of Kalpana´s death was, I guess, meant to bring tears to my eyes, but the way it was presented actually made me sick and not teary. Aamir for once lets go of his boring subduedness (is that even a word?) and does well as a cute loverboy, but is excellent in his a half-mad, plotting and suffering avatar. His scenes did give me chills.

I wanted Chinese. You sent me Thai.

Music by Rahman failed to impress though, it wasn´t a disaster either. The play of colours used by cinematographer was interesting. While the „past“ was filled with colours reminding me a lot of Yashraj films, the „present“ was happening mostly in the night or in the darkness of Sanjay´s flat, where sun apparently has no place. The ending returns to vibrant colours and romance, but by that point I was disappointed with the climax, and I strongly felt that they should have let Sanjay die. Ghajini is basically a masalla, because it contains everything from comedy, romance to action and thriller, all in reasonably balanced doses. Just maybe the vial filled with violence slipped out of the cook´s hand and we got to see a lot more of it than most of us could digest.

Ready

Directed by: Anees Bazmi

Starring: Salman Khan, Asin, Paresh Rawal, Mahesh Manjrekar

Released: 2011

Verdict: destroy every copy – horrible – bad – whatever – flawed but enjoyable - good – great – amazing

I don´t think I even want to describe the basic story here. I was so terribly bored by it, did not one bit cared for it. Or anything in the film for that matter. But for the sake of my usual format of reviews, here comes:

Prem is a laadla and also a pain of his family consisting of parents, aunties and uncles. They believe the way for him to mend his mischievous ways is to get married, and once they find a suitable girl they invite her over. However because of some lying, running away and misunderstandings the real bride is left on the airport and leaves for her friend´s place while and impostor takes her place. Sanjana, posing as the chosen girl, quickly wins over the whole family – except Prem himself. Eventally the love grows between them while they are hanging above a chasm (literally). But Sanjana is a niece of two powerful goons Amar Chaudry and Sooraj Chaudry, who both want to marry her off to their brothera-in-law, because she inherited a big fortune from her mother. Amar and Sooraj are sworn enemies, both on the look out for Sanjana...

K. Asif is turning in his grave

Salman is riding on the success of Dabangg. That´s it. While in Dabangg he gave a solid performance, in Ready he doesn´t bother in the least to make some effort, and either sleep walks through the scenes completely uninterested, or is simply himself. The character of Prem doesn´t have anything from the edginess of Chulbul or sweetness of the Prem from HAHK, though it seemed to me Ready is supposed to be a blend of both with some massala-ish comedy thrown in. And though he looks great for his age, Salman just doesn´t look suitable for the roles of loverboys on this level.

Whatever humour there might be it is taken care of my Salman´s „family“, he himself did not make me even smile. See – if he was so apparently bored by the film, how should it entertain me? But I suffered through it nontheless, hoping there just might be something worth seeing. Not even the cameos by Sanjay Dutt, Kangana Ranaut, Ajay Devgn, Arbaaz Khan and Zarine Khan are exactly worth it, as they all appear in first ten minutes.

The girl who failed to impress

This was my first film with Asin, and I was quite curious about her, must say she didn´t make much of an impression. Her role was unforgivably limited to being artificially bitchy in the first part and completely disappearing in the second. But I guess you don´t refuse a film with Salman Khan. Even if he´s scaring spoilt kids running around a fun fair in a skeleton costume, NOT being funny.

Wasn´t impressed with music, no, not even Dhinka Chika and Character Dheela that kept shouting at me from all sides ever since the promotion of the film started.

Perhaps not worst, but definitely one of the weakest films of 2011 and without a single shade of doubt the most overrated hit of the year. Anees Bazmi is now officially my least favourite director. In the end he doesn´t fail to deliver at least one sexistic message. Prem´s "That´s the first time a woman said something wise" line woke up my feministic side with a roar.

This is how I felt for the most part of the film.