Movie Review - Shandaar - Salvage Operation

This was a flop, it was a train wreck. It has already been ridiculed in news stories and award functions so let's take that as granted.

You know this word - salvage? From a wreck, from the scene of a total loss what can be gathered or saved, that's salvage.

Considering that Shandaar is already a spectacular wreck let's see what we can salvage from it. It does have some pretty long animation sequences which are like its cardinal sins and some actor choices that I am sure the director regretted pretty quickly. But what does it do right?

The story. It does actually have basic story with some sub-plots. Most Hindi films only have basic story (lots of Hollywood ones too),  so that's at part with the industry. Two families coming together for a destination wedding that's also a business deal. The bride is fat, the groom is an asshole who doesn't appreciate her and the family is oppressive. This is the backdrop against which the love story of Shahid and Alia is played out. Shahid is the wedding planner and Alia is the bride's adopted orphan sister.

Characters. The cast of characters is good and varied, many of them are caricaturish but chalk that up to its mistakes. There are 4 main characters though that I really liked - 1. Vipin or Beeps (Pankaj Kapoor), Jagjinder Joginder or Tent House (Shahid Kapoor), Alia (Alia Bhatt), Isha (Sanah Kapoor).

That leads us to the actors. The performances by these 4 are excellent and watchable. The director has tried to leverage the Pankaj Kapoor-Shahid Kapoor real life relationship for comedy, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but they both perform well.

Alia looks lovely, I do like her as an actress but Sanah Kapoor as the chubby bride-to-be Isha is what took my heart and the reason I decided to write this review. She's a sweet, warm-hearted person and has an adorable smile. Her genuine love for her adopted sister Alia, actually I should say the love shared between the two step-sisters, leads to a few nice, sweet scenes in the film.

I maintain that even a terrible film usually has a few scenes, or at least one that can be salvaged from it. Or maybe a quote, or a message, or a visual. Like Justice League. The movie was so bad I called it a bitter disappointment and was really angry with Zack Snyder for this crap. But it had many Wonder Woman scenes that were worth watching. Shandaar has many nice, worth-watching scenes.

There is some comedy in Shandaar which makes you smile and maybe a few moments which make laugh out loud.

Music is okay. Not great, but the Gulaabo song became popular when the movie first came out.

One of my tests for a film is - does it make you care about the characters and what happens to them? Shandaar does. The situation in the story is like - an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Something's gotta give. You want to know how it gets resolved. On that topic, the climax was also alright, entertaining and open-ended enough to make it a good ending.

Conclusion: Watch it with low expectations and you may be pleasantly surprised. 

Movie Review - Firangi - Excellent Entertainer

"My movie is coming near year - Firangi".

Kapil has been talking about it for so long that you can't even remember how long.

Firangi is his second film. His first one was a pure comedy whereas Firangi, his home production, is more of a romance-drama-social-comedy kind of film.

It's a period film, set in the 1920's, the pre-independence India. It would be hard to believe now that the movie has come out but I have thought about this topic many times before. Here's my angle.

There are some topics, or themes, which have...let's call it consensus after the fact. It's kind of a universal hindsight. In hindsight easy to see that what the correct choice was. Similarly this is something that everybody agrees on after it has happened. Like everybody knows now that Gandhi was a shrewd politician, but not at the time!

Another case in point is Brexit. There's a great majority against it now but not when it happened. There are many thing like that.

This whole thing about Indian independence is like that. Right now after 6 decades of the independence everybody agrees that it was a good thing that we fought for it and got it. There's no doubt about it now. But often I have wondered if I had lived in that age would I have struggled for the independence? Right now it's easy, everybody thinks that they would have been in Bhagat Singh's party if they had lived in that time.

Being honest with myself I question it. Would I have been a freedom fighter. Or would I have chosen the path of the least resistance and found some logical, rational, common-sense argument to convince myself that my first duty lay with taking care of my family? There's enough evidence of that sort of thinking with me. I have worked on my career, my job, taking care of my family. How many revolutions have I taken part in? None. Not even a single march on the parliament. So I have wondered about that many times.

This story is also about a person who is not joining the movement for the struggle for independence. His first and foremost consideration is to find a job. And since the better paying, more available jobs are things that you can do in the British government he tries to find a job in the police. That's the beginning of the story. From there it goes on with showing how he finds a job with the top British officer as an orderly. And how he makes peace with the fact by thinking that the Brits are also not such bad people.

From there on the story goes on to include a king, a corrupt, frivolous type of king, a corrupt British governer and the struggle over the land of a village.

The beginning of the film is a simple family life and romance kind of story. But it soon picks up speed and includes that whole tug of war over the land. Throughout the story the role of our hero - Mange - changes as well. He grows up through the story and becomes a better man.

Speaking of performances, Kapil Sharma has done a great job. I sometimes feel that he suffers from overexposure in TV. We have seen him in so many different characters in his Comedy Circus days and later in his own shows that it might seem that he has exhausted the possibilities. Fortunately, he has a lot of acting talent and carries off a new role very convincingly. It it still a delight to watch him on screen, in the funny scenes and also in the dramatic scenes.

Ishita Dutta is beautiful and believable in her role as Sergi - a village girl that Mange falls in love with. Monica Gill has done justice to her role as a princess. But then pretty much all the actors have done well in the film.

Music is a strong point of this movie. There are about 5 songs in it, all are ok, but 2 of them are really lovely, melodic pieces that take your heart. First one is "Sajna sone jaya" and the sad song, which is my most favourite and my current loop song "Sahiba russ gaiya" sung by Rahet Fateh Ali Khan saab. The lyrics and music are so beautiful that it's nice to hear it in any good voice but the original, of course, is the best. The picturisation of both the songs is also very nicely done.

And that brings to mind the cinematography. I noticed even as I was watching how wonderfully the scenes had been captured. A true visual treat that was worth watching on the big screen. Of course the editing also deserves the credit here.

Finally, the feel of the movie. It is phenomenal! Because the first part of it is about the family life and the start of Mange's love life, it's very identifiable. Having been born in the pre-whatsapp, pre-Facebook era I can vouch for the problems that he faces. In that age it was like a thousand miles from seeing the girl you immediately fell in love with and producing a love story out of thin air. That's what you see here and the situations are directly lifted from Indian village life. They feel believable and realistic but also entertaining at the same time. Kudos to the writers and the director for that.

[Spoiler Alert: Stop here if you haven't seen the movie yet. ]
[Spoiler Alert: Stop here if you haven't seen the movie yet. ]
[Spoiler Alert: Stop here if you haven't seen the movie yet. ]
[Spoiler Alert: Stop here if you haven't seen the movie yet. ]
[Spoiler Alert: Stop here if you haven't seen the movie yet. ]


Okay, you didn't stop. So, here goes.

My only gripe about the movie is that I wish they hadn't brought Gandhi in towards the climax but then, they had their own reasons.

Another one is a scene where Gandhi asks if they had done any violence in trying to solve their problem, Mange says that they didn't. But in reality they did quite a bit of violence just before that.

In conclusion: It's a worth watching movie, either with family or girlfriend. I will be getting it on the streaming or DVD as soon as it comes out to watch again. And again. 

Quick movie review - Roy

I just finished watching Roy. Yes, I know it's been out for a long time. The only reason I watched it was because of the song "Sooraj dooba hai yaaro".

My expectations were quite low so it didn't disappoint me. And to be honest, it was a little better than I expected. A simple story of a filmmaker casanova falling in love for the first time. Not many plot twists but the story keeps moving on at a fair pace.

For the first time I saw Arjun Rampal actually acting. Ranbir Kapoor does well in his role. Jacqueline Fernandez looks pretty and does a decent job in her role of filmmaker.

The song I liked, I still like after watching the movie so that's a plus.

There is a slight suspense or intricacy of the story that gets revealed in the end. Not too complex but alright, worth watching.

Yash Chopra - The King of Romance - Passed away

Yash Chopra, prominent Indian filmmaker, passed away this Sunday evening in a hospital in Bombay.

That single sentence is easy to read but it’s not easy to digest! The impact of this one fact is immense! Yash ji was not your normal run-of-the-mill film director - he was a creative genius and a bold trend-setter.

Some of his great films included Deewar, Kabhie Kabhie, Trishul, Veer-Zaara, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom,....the list is long. So many of these are in my all-time favourites list.

He made more than 50 Hindi films and most of them were extremely successful. I think his genius was in his style, he could portray any subject in a larger than life manner and still connect with the common man. He was a true merchant of dreams.

Yash ji sold many dreams to the Indian audience worldwide over his 50 years long career. I don’t want to type out the list of filmfare awards and the honours he won in country and internationally, the internet is full of those facts. I didn’t know they had named a railway station after him.

All I want to do is pay my tribute to the great dreammaker and tell you that he was a great inspiration, definitely to me, and probably to a huge number of filmmakers all over the world.

He will be greatly missed!