Movie review: JAGGA JASOOS

First things first: JAGGA JASOOS is a mess. But a mess oozing out of something experimental, something original. An experiment far from success, but yet a try that didn't fall on its face.

JAGGA JASOOS is as messy as a kid's room.A room that is all tangled up and untidy on the surface. But look closer, and you will be invested in the kid's processes that lead to the mess. His intelligence, his ideas, his usage of resources at hand, his clumsiness, his unorthodox methods all contributing to the mess.
Ideas, intelligence leading to a mess, you would question? Of course yes, if they go out of control. Of course yes, if one becomes obsessed with them. Then they become the mess.

But a mess is not all bad, though its not all good either. But I am not an 'All needs to be good' waala person. For me 'Something great' is always a better alternative.'Glimpses of genius' is stimulating enough, 'Everything needs to be in order' is very textbookish.

An experiment might be based on a textbook, but it generally doesn't end that way. And that is the beauty of it.
JAGGA JASOOS is that experiment that didn't go by the book. And hence, faltered.
But amidst, showed great promise.
It gave me melody, it gave me freshness and most importantly instilled my faith in the medium.

If everything was to be judged by the end product, the journey everytime would feel miserable. Anurag Basu had a great time making the movie, I had a decent time watching it. Exhaustive yes, laboured yes, silly yes but still I had a decent time.

I won't recommend this to everyone. Only for those, who understood what I wrote.

Movie review: HINDI MEDIUM

Reviewing HINDI MEDIUM in English is quite an irony in itself. Nonetheless, I write in case it saves you the time and the money.

I had decent expectations from HINDI MEDIUM. The subject at hand felt not only interesting, but relevant too. It had so much potential to work with.
But as we have seen on most occasions, great potential not always transform into great result. HINDI MEDIUM is then, again a lost opportunity.

HINDI MEDIUM begins promisingly. It gives you a feeling that you just might get what you came in expecting -a satire on topical issues, humour stemming out from the protagonist's muddle, an insight on social vices and eventually leading to probably a penetrating perspective. But nothing of the sorts happen. Your expectations take a beating, your grey matter remains unaltered and your emotions run pretty much dry.

Barring a few genuinely funny and moving scenes, nothing much stirs or shakes you. The chemicals in your blood never gets their escalation, the neurons fail their stimulation.

The film though, means well. It is well-intended and brilliantly enacted. It even wants to. It wants to address issues and even wants to send home a message, it just doesn't know how to.
Hence, no matter how relevant the predicaments are, their presentation comes across as forced and contrived. On most occasions, scenes are merely constructed to make them funny. Would have been so much better had humour trickled down naturally from the scenes. It all feels laboured, uneasy and incomplete.

"English is not a language, it is a class", vocals Irrfan's wife.Quite a statement, but the film never establishes the theme. It scratches social taboos aplenty, hints on the prevalent malices,but doesn't penetrate deep enough. All shallow and dealt superficially and lacking the much needed weight or depth.

What the film does manage,(and that usually works for Bollywood)is that it plays to the populist gallery. What it does have are two splendid actors in Irrfan Khan and Deepak dobriyal. It is these two actors who save the day and make the film watchable.

Watch only if you have nothing else to do.

Movie review: MERI PYAARI BINDU

We have all been a witness atleast, if not a participant, to a One-sided love affair.
The 90's we grew up in saw us dwell and succumb to its feeling.
Remember the tape-recorders with the cassettes? The varied songs with their "apni-waali-haalat"lyrics? Truly Nostalgic.

Yes. MERI PYAARI BINDU makes you nostalgic. Not only this, it charms you, moves you and gets you smiling all the way through.

Surely, it offers nothing new. "Pyaar ke baare mein naya kya likhoge", voices Parineeti to Aayushmann. But the mere warmth that PYAAR exudes is enough for us. And the film has a lot of it. Genuine warmth and touching scenes.

The film celebrates the feeling of being in love. The feeling of helplessness, the feeling of being and acting stupid, the charm of innocence, the joy of seeing your loved one happy.
But most importantly, it celebrates holding onto the long-gone love, not letting it go and being comfortable with it. Staying with it even if it is not yours.

I liked it. Chances are that you might like it as well.

LOGAN: Movie Review

Yes, The WOLVERINE can bleed to death. And yes, the fitting send-off will make you misty eyed. As ironically it may seem, the mutant franchise LOGAN feels amazingly humane.

We have always liked Hugh Jackman as The Wolverine. Here in, we fall in love with his Logan.

His Logan gets beaten and we get hurt, he runs scared and we want him to be safe, he cries and we get the lumps, he feels vulnerable and helpless and we want his redemption. And we he does run wild and smashes the bad guys, we shout and clap with aplomb.

He always had the style with his admantium, this time we feel his bleeding heart.
His every second on screen stirs the chemicals in our blood.

Hugh Jackman as The Wolverine and as Logan fittingly deserved and eventually gets one of the finest last scenes.
Yes, you will get nostalgic.

Go watch it.

feels vulnerable. 

Rangoon: Movie review

Rangoon feels like schizophrenia or maybe a split personality disorder. It is beyond saving for most parts but every now and then shows promise and glimpses of Bhardwaj's brilliance.

It is either horribly wrong with Rangoon(predominantly) or flashes of excellence from the filmmaker.
Inconsistent is what the treatment is and incomplete is what the product feels.

Vishal Bhardwaj is a man of many talents but his film making craft always feel incomplete. Almost all his films have brilliant moments but moments alone do not make a brilliant film. On several occasions he seems to loose grip, inevitably succumbs to self-indulgence and falls bait to the abstract.

He picks up difficult subjects, adapts and blends them into our style and manages to create a 'seldom treaded ambience'. It is not that bad though, the problem is that it ain't as good either.

Bhardwaj is never shy to try. He tries because he can, not sure now whether he should. He needs to command his territory and not get lost in the transition.
He need to be ultra sure and keep a leash on his subject and not get scattered.
More condensed and more compact.

Indulge us as an audience, but do not force you self-indulgence. Stay abstract but let us interpret in a better way.
Stay unorthodox but engage us.

We will wait for one more Mr. Bhardwaj.

Movie review: RAEES

Invariably every Salman khan film does it,  Ajay devgn tried doing it (SHIVVAY) and now Shahrukh khan is falling into it with RAEES. Such established superstars and yet their films manufactured to suit their stardom. Always wanting to be important  than the script, more significant than the plot and much bigger than the film.

To begin with, it didn't matter. Then, it began to disappoint. But now, we feel cheated. Cheated and Insulted.
Cheated because we don't get our money worth. Insulted because the filmmakers  take us for granted.

RAEES could have been(and infact should have been) a complete entertainer. A complete paisa-vasool. But it didn't. The sad part is, it seemed that it didn't wanted to.
It had everything laid out well: an Able director, a charming superstar and a brilliant Nawazuddin Siddique.
It also began well. It entertained and entertained good in the first half. We loved the ambience, the dialogues and we loved the Shahrukh-Nawazuddin duo.

And then it happened. All the promise evaporated. The second half turned into a "Let us show what Shahrukh is capable of".  And it began to overstretch and drag. The superstar feeling comfortable at the cost of our inconvenience.

They took us for granted yet again.(The fans would love it anyway, they thought).
We were taken for a ride yet again.( The fans would understand, they believed).

Movie review: DANGAL

DANGAL movie review: Remember what CHAK DE did for hockey and women? DANGAL does the same for wrestling and women.

A Good sport biopic film invests you in the protagonists and intrigues you into the sport, while a great one makes you fall in love with both. DANGAL, then, oscillates in between- rising above than just being good but falling short of being great.(Only if it could have done without the caricature villainous Indian coach).

For all those who thought of DANGAL as SULTAN 2.0,  DANGAL is actually what SULTAN could never be.
DANGAL paves the way of how a sport biopic film should be - insightful, moving and inspiring. Maybe not entirely, but predominantly.

When the opening credits are rolled out, we see the haryana dialect advisor's name along with the wrestling advisor's name (Arjun awardee),  and you know that the filmakers had put in the extra effort and done the research requisite for a sport biopic.(The film gets the wrestling moves spot on, a commendable effort).

The success of a sport biopic is when the journey of the protagonists absorbs the viewers. Their plight, their efforts, their pain, their rise, their fall and eventually their redemption all sweeping the viewers along the way. What happens to them on the screen, alters the chemicals in your blood. DANGAL does that to you.

DANGAL smells of the 'akahadas mitti' and feels like the 'thud on the wrestling mat'.
The father's desperation, the girls initial aversion, their transformed passion all having the emotional depth.
The 'Kushti in the Akhaadas' and the 'Wrestling in the tournaments' competently and splendidly executed.(Never before they seemed so real).

SULTAN had one Superstar(Salman Khan) playing the character to his whims and fancies, whereas DANGAL has another superstar(Aamir Khan)becoming the character. What you see on screen is Mahavir Singh Phogat, the father and not Aamir Khan, the star. Fantastic portrayal.

DANGAL wins your heart, Mahavir Phogat wins your heart, the Girls win your heart. You cry when they cry, you smile when they smile and you celebrate when they celebrate.
Go watch it.