Movie Review: Hum Do Hamare Do - Rehne Do

*** Some spoilers in this review ***

While this is not a toxic movie or one which I would need to warn you against, it's not really a great movie either. It's bland like last night's pizza that you didn't bother to heat up. 

The story is extremely predictable which is not bad because you know this going in so there's no disappointment there. Performances are good by all actors.

From my point of view, there are two big issues which make this movie a bland snoozefest rather than a feel-good formula movie. 

One, the screenplay is bad. The story itself while predictable, is quite promising. It's the story of Dhruv who is an orphan and meets a girl who wants a family to marry into. He arranges a pair of fake parents to get her to marry him. From there, even a child of five years can tell you every single twist the story takes. 

As I said, I did not mind that, but I feel that the screenplay misses out a lot of good spots where nice moments could have been created. You might have heard the expression "It's not the destination but the journey." The filmmakers here have been in such a hurry to get to the destination that they missed out a chance to take the audience on an interesting journey. 

For example, Kriti Sanon and Rajkumar Rao's romance has been done at Shatabdi Express speed. They go from first meeting to falling in love to marriage proposal so fast that there is no opportunity to create some heartwarming romantic moments. You see, marriage and the hassles of marriage, the Indian people have that in their own lives. They go to the cinema to see the romance and to feel not just entertained but inspired. Nothing for them here. 

When Kriti comes to live with Rajkumar's family before the wedding, that situation while highly implausible, is ripe for many opportunities to create comedy, romance and drama. It has been completely wasted. Remember Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and the sweet moments between Madhuri and Salman? That's the kind of thing they could have created here but missed it entirely. 

Many occasions like the big reveal which could have been dramatic dyanmite proves to be Diwali's cracker because of the way they have been written and directed. 

The second issue the film has is its extremely weak dialogue. This is already a predicable, formula story but good dialogue could still make it entertaining and watchable. But the dialogues here are so boring and mundane that you feel like they were written by someone who writes phone directories. 

The scenes that could have been explosive drama are simply yesterday's kadhi-chawal because of the boring dialogue. Rajkumar Rao has tried very hard to bring some drama to such scenes and Kriti has supported him well but if the drama is not written in the screenplay you can't create it out of thin air even with great acting. 

Just like the rest of the movie, the climax is also rushed and does not feel realistic at all. The end is unrealistic and quite unjustified. 

My recommendation is that this is not a movie worth watching in the cinema at all. You can watch it on streaming while you are making dinner or ironing clothes. You would not watch it again that I can already guarantee you. 

Coolie No. 1 - Could Not Handle the Baggage

David Dhawan has not done any favours for his son by starring him in the remake of Coolie No. 1 which was already a successful movie. Now the movie itself is okay. It's as mindless as David Dhawan's movies usually are and there's an even a little bit of entertainment in it. But the biggest problem is that when you star in a role that another actor has already done before, you will be compared to him. 

Now Varun Dhawan is an ok actor, not great but ok. He did alright in both the Dulhania movies and even in Main Tera Hero which had much less of a story. But he is no Govinda. Govinda and David Dhawan invented this genre of comedy which was mindless and entertaining with not even an iota of common sense anywhere. Does David think that he can make anybody Govinda? 

The movie itself is ok, not mind-numbing crap but not as good as the original. I watched the 1995 version with Govinda right after watching the new one and the old one is much better. The biggest reason for that is the cast. The new cast is good, David has smartly surrounded Varun with good comedy actors like Javed Jaffrey, Johnny Lever, Rajpal Yadav etc. but the old cast was even better with actors the calibre of Kader Khan, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Tiku Talsania. And yes, Karishma Kapoor was great in her role, Sara Ali Khan, poor girl. 

Even though a majority of the new film is copy-pasted from the old one including exact copy of scenes and line-by-line copy of dialogues, there is still a lot missing. The characters in the old one were much better fleshed out even with the same scenes. The biggest victims of that are two main characters - the father of the girl where Kader Khan was replaced by Paresh Rawal and the other is the heroine herself - Sara Ali Khan. 

If you take her out of the songs, poor Sara might even be called a guest appearance in this film. I am not talking about screen time, I am talking about character development. Sara has not been given much to do. She almost looks like a young girl wearing her mother's saree and playing "house". 

My verdict is 2.5 stars out of 5. I would not go so far as to say don't watch it, but I won't recommend it to anyone and I won't watch it again myself. 

Still, the film might do well on the box office for various reasons. I don't care. My review is never influenced by the money a film makes or what others think about it. 

The biggest reason for me for watching this film was the promotion episode on The Kapil Sharma Show. Day 2 of the promotions included some of the comedy actors and it was hilarious. If I had to set a percentage I would say the movie is about 20% entertaining compared to the TKSS episode. 

One of the things that struck me as funny was Varun Dhawan having a pity party for himself on the show that his father and brother don't listen to his ideas on the set. That's like crying that you have to go to school in the blue Mercedes when your favourite colour is white. Firstly, he is getting these movies because he is the son of a director. And second, you are an actor, your job is to shut up, dress up and do what the director tells you. When you become so smart that you know better than the director, dare to direct. 

Two examples for these things. 

I like Ranbir Kapoor's attitude on the nepotism issue. He accepts that he is getting these opportunities only because he is a star son. He acknowledges that this opportunity could have gone to someone else. Then he says he tries to do the best job he is capable of to do justice to the role and try to do it better than someone else could have done. 

Prabhudeva, who is a very successful actor as well as director, when he is working as an actor in a film being directed by someone else, he doesn't give suggestions, he just does what the director tells him to do. 

Well, that's all for now and if I don't talk to you before, Happy New Year 2021. 

You can't keep a good man down

I  am watching Gotham on Netflix these days. In small increments as it is a stressful show. Last week I got to the point where they assign the protagonist, Detective Jim Gordon, to the Arkham asylum. This is quite a step down for him - hard job, physical danger, and a disgraceful assignment.

But even then I was not much worried about it because I knew he would come back to his normal beat soon. And he did. He never stopped doing his best work even at that terrible job and he gave it his all even at the risk of his own health and life. Soon, he made his way back to his normal position in Homicide.

Thinking about it later, I realised that this is a common trend. Even when our beloved hero is in dire straits we never despair. When he's captured by his enemies, when he's under fire from his boss or being beaten up by goons we always know he will bounce back, maybe not in the next frame or next scene but ultimately he will.

If we know this about him, why don't we know this about us? We also go through difficult phases in life when it seems so bleak that we despair for ourselves. And we let it get us down. Why don't we have that same faith in ourselves - that in the TV serial of our life, we may be down now but in one episode or two, we will come back again. We will rise back to our previous glory and work our way up from there.

Because, be it cinema or life, you can't keep a good man (or woman) down.

Peace.

Joss Whedon is my personal therapist

Well, it's not like I go lie down on his couch and tell him about my childhood once a week. But when I do have issues, and not always filmmaking-related issues, his words give me solace.

I watched one of his interviews where he was talking about his feelings regarding the cancellation of Firefly. His words, as best as I can remember them:
"It's like losing an arm, you learn to tie your shoes with the left hand but the pain of loss never goes away."

Not saying that made me feel better but it did give me comfort, not just about the loss of Firefly but many other losses in life as well.

Then last night I was watching a Q&A session that he had at the Oxford Union on YouTube and someone asked him  how he feels when his ideas are not supported, or he is forced to change something because the studio wants it that way, or something doesn't get delivered the way he envisaged it.

"Rage!" He replied "Endless rage! And it never goes away either. I can take you through my career, 25 years of rage!" Although he smiled when he said that I could totally understand where he was coming from.

And again it gave me much comfort considering how I had been feeling since my last project. I am a tiny player in the vast world of show business, so if the great Joss Whedon has this rage from his previous projects, it's perfectly understandable for a mere mortal like me to have the same frustrations when things don't go my way despite best efforts.

To be honest, it made me feel good that Joss Whedon and I share the same frustrations and rage even if on radically different scales.

In the climax fight of "Avengers" Dr. Bruce Banner says to Tony Stark "That's my secret!" while he's becoming the Hulk "I am always angry!"

Joss had shared in an interview that he realized that that was him. It was him that was always angry and he could see himself in the character of Hulk that he was writing. I get it now. Totally.

So, I don't need to find a therapist, I just need to watch more Joss interviews.

Peace!

Cinematic Disease

I have developed a new disease - don't worry it's only a cinematic disease. All through "Dear Zindagi" I was thinking how great those dialogues of Jahangir Khan would sound if they were delivered by the great Amitabh Bachchan. After that, in my mind it was always AB delivering those deep, thought-provoking lines. And now pretty early in "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" I realized what a nice character it was that Anushka was playing. Also, how great it would be if there was a good actress playing that part - like Parineeti Chopra.

After that, my mind took over and all of Anushka's parts I imagined Parineeti delivering on screen. And believe me, the Parineeti in my mind did a much better job than Anushka could ever hope to do.

This is why I had started to make films, because I was always second-guessing the directors but it seems that the problem still persists. So, it's not a new disease really, just a new strain of the old virus.