GHAJINI

Ferocious! That's the word which comes to mind after watching this movie.

Taking an aerial view of the movie - it's just another story of a man revenging his wife's murder. Nay, nothing new! Drop a few altitudes lower - the man is suffering from Anterograde Amnesia or "Short Term Memory Loss." Interesting now?

It still isn't, really! A gazillionaire, cell-phone tycoon falls for an upcoming model, thanks to her philanthropic nature, which eventually gets her into trouble - WHACK! DEAD!

Moral of the movie - Never help others? No. The moral was - Do not over indulge yourself in showing the public what they've already seen. The director, A. R. Murugadoss (ARM), certainly lost a golden chance to make a stunner. With a subject that intriguing, the movie could certainly have been better.

Ghajini still is a nice, gift-wrapped, pretty looking presentation. Minimal errors in the movie. You don't realise how those three hours pass by. But the movie focussed a little too much on the "love story" part than the "Ante... uh... Antero... ummm.. Ante*&#$%" whatever.

ARM did a pretty good job in creating a good mixture of romance and action. However, when it came to using the protagonist's disorder to an extent that would've made the movie unforgettable, Murugadoss didn't do enough. Quantity was decent, but it was decent on the cost of quality. 

Had the makers spent some time on showing how Sanjay Singhania (Aamir Khan in the movie) manages to get the information (tatooed on his body) about his wife's murderer considering his disorder, or maybe if he would've shown the transition of the "Before-After" of Sanjay, the movie would've been different.

Asin makes an impressive debut in the Hindi Cinema. Looked confident and did not over-do. Jiah Khan - Why? Aamir Khan, as always, delivers! There were no earth-cracking dialogues, no really over the top moments, just a brutal Aamir Khan who, at times, sounded like a tiger.

A. R. Rahman did a very good job, especially after what Yuvvraaj had to offer. Guzarish is already topping the charts, Behka main behka and Kaise mujhe tum mil gayi are two other numbers you'd like to have in your list. That the movie did not require as many as five and that long songs is too obvious to be discussed. Those precious few minutes could've been used to make the movie oh-so-spectacular.

Please do not expect it to be the usual Aamir Khan movie that leaves you open-mouthed. It does not hurt you much either. As Alfred Hitchcock once said - "The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder." That's really not the case here. Ghajini can be considered as an exception.

And about the movie being a copy of Memento - Murugadoss says, "I had written half the story of Ghajini when I saw Memento. I liked the character in the film who remembers things for just fifteen minutes. So, I used just that character."

Ferocious character!

(7/10)

RAB NE BANA DI JODI

It's been more than 60 years now that we got out of the clutches of the British Raj but I'm wondering what plans Yashraj has.

I've lost count of the number of Yashraj movies that have taken the public for granted. This movie just lengthened that list. I'd read this somewhere - Finally the much awaited and the biggest movie of the year has hit the theatres. And I say it has hit them bad. The tremors, however, will be felt 'haule haule'.

Based in Amritsar, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi is a love story of Surinder Sahni aka Suri (Shahrukh Khan) and Taani (Anushka Sharma). Government servant Suri, though an introvert, is the image of the ideal Indian man- well mannered, sincere, honest, level-headed, and everything good that you can imagine. Taani (Anushka Sharma), on the other hand, is a flamboyant, fun-loving, outspoken, affable girl who is all set to get married to her fiancé.

Taani's father suffers an attack due to the unexpected death of Taani's fiancé, and in his final moments, requests his favourite student Suri to marry his daughter. Caught in such an awkward and unavoidable situation, they get married and start leading an unhappy and loveless life. They don't talk much, use different rooms, rarely see each other in the day. Taani is holed up in her room for most of the time when Suri is home. Taani, however, realising that Suri cannot be blamed for whatever happened promises him that she'll be a good wife but won't be able to love him ever.

One day Taani reads about a 'Dancing Jodi' competition being organised in the city and, having a passion for dancing, wants to participate in it. Suri, who by now has fallen in love with her, allows her to get enrolled for the competition.

Having had no luck with love till date, Suri tries to impress Taani in the 'Bollywood' way as he finds out that she is a fan of Hindi movies. Thinking that this could be the way to express his love for her, Suri decides to change his appearance with the help of his best friend Balwinder Khosla aka Bobby (Vinay Pathak).

In his new avtaar, Suri becomes Raj, who is a witty, cheerful, very flashy and a little crazy Jat. Raj joins the dancing classes too and way too luckily becomes Taani's partner. During the course of their preparation for the final night of the mega dance event Raj tells Taani that he loves her. As days pass by, Taani starts realising that Raj is the man that she'd rather have as her life-partner than the uber-boring Suri.

Does Suri tell Taani the truth?, What step does Taani take?, Does Suri change himself for Taani? - are the questions that you might have to pay for.

This movie might look different, in the way that it is a story about a married couple whereas the usual Yashraj flicks deal with youngsters falling in love and the story moves forward. But it is not. It is the love story that you and I have come across countless times. Its portrayal, however, is a little different but not tough to predict. It does not have those exotic foreign locales but then all Yashraj movies have everything 'grand' to them. This one was no different - a lot of people on the screen, Suri's huge ancestral home with bare-brick walls, use of a lot of bright colours (yellow especially), etc. One thing that will prove to be different in this movie is the music. The usual Yashraj films have 'hummable-for-a-few-months' tunes but Rab Ne has forgettable music, let alone the lyrics. 'Haule Haule'  is the only track which makes you tap your feet.

Let's not draw any more comparisons and presume that this movie was different. Then, it had a lot of unwanted scenes. Poor editing let the movie go beyond 150 minutes (which itself is a lot). And with such poor direction, the movie certainly called for two intermissions. Scenes like 'Taani riding the bike to take revenge from a dance competitor', 'Taani and Raj in adjacent changing rooms discussing what a girl really wants', etc. made no sense in the movie. The multi-starrer song "Phir milenge chalte chalte" looked like a piece of one jigsaw puzzle fitted into some other. Probably, the idea of coming up with this novel song (the lyrics comprises names of various Hindi movies) struck the makers after they'd finished shooting the entire movie and then they shoved it in somewhere, cluelessly.

It takes a lot to get good actors to overact. To even try and say that SRK is a good actor would seem like an insult to him. Aditya Chopra manages, every single time, to make him overact. Anushka Sharma is good looking, pretty camera-friendly and also delivered, more or less, what the character demanded of her, but as a friend aptly put it - She'd be better off with TV serials. She is certainly not heroine material. The only actor worth his salt was Vinay Pathak with his comic timing. SRK joined Pathak in giving some humourous moments which were scarce and scattered throughout the movie. 

Aditya Chopra was trying to create magic using the old, forgotten, worn-out formula of making love stories. The dialogues were predictable, even the scenes were to a certain extent. It was as if the movie is waiting for your command. If this is the kind of love stories he has to offer then I'd request him to rather release 15 sequels of Dhoom but not try his hands at something like this.

When the public in movie halls starts throwing funny remarks on scenes which demand some serious attention, it is an indication of how uninteresting the drama on screen is. Today, most of the movies crash at the box office because they fail to establish a link between the reel and the real world. 10-15 years ago Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi would've done very well; wonders, maybe. But the audience to cater to is different today and all this movie does after a certain time period is cause suffocation ad nauseam.

(4.5/10)

SORRY BHAI!

This one was like a piece of thermocol floating on water. That light!

Spanning a little under 2 hours, Sorry Bhai! is yet another story about two brothers falling in love with the same girl. Haven't we seen it innumerable times already? But what this one also gives you is a picture of how we Indians, and maybe even Indian cinema, have probably come of age.

Siddharth (Sharman Joshi) is shown as a young scientist, hell-bent on proving the "Everything Alive" theory - which, as the name suggests, theorises that everything has life in it. His elder brother, Harsh (Sanjay Suri), is getting married in Mauritius and wants the family to be there. However, the mother, Gayatri (Shabana Azmi), is very reluctant on flying to Mauritius because Harsh did not consult his parents before deciding to get married, in stead, just informed them. Harsh, however, 'Maa kasam's Siddharth to get their mother to Mauritius. Siddharth, then, with the help of his father, Navin (Boman Irani), convinces his mother to fly.

While in Mauritius, Harsh's fiancee, Aaliyah (Chitrangada Singh), tries to get close to the family by spending time with them. The business-minded Harsh keeps busy with his business deals and Aaliyah, more often than not, ends up spending time with Siddharth. The inevitable had to happen. They already had a few common tastes and had also started developing the taste for each other's tastes. Initially, both Siddharth and Aaliyah, try to resist the attraction they'd developed for each other. But they fail. Miserably! 

A big plus for the movie was that Onir, the Director, was successful in keeping the movie well within the boundaries of a light-hearted, romantic-comedy. The "melodrama", which one usually comes across in movies with such story lines, was missing. And that, with a doubt, was what made the movie enjoyable. Boman Irani was at his carefree best with his witty jokes every now and then - mostly to take suffocating situations in the movie under control or throw them out of the picture completely. Chitrangada Singh, though needs more lessons in acting, looked pretty stunning throughout. Considering the amount of time she's spent in Bollywood, she was good in not overdoing at any moment.

Shabana Azmi did her bit effortlessly. Delivering what was required of her character - the sometimes itchy, sometimes angelic mother. Sharman Joshi was not his usual comic self in this one. He plays the sophisticated, reserved, mumma's boy. He did attract a few laughs though and played the character that enjoyed the majority time on-screen, other than Aaliyah.

The plusses outweigh the minuses of this movie. With limited music limiting the movie to under 2 hours, you can watch it in between your meetings too. And you'll feel fresh.

And what about Sorry Bhai!, reportedly, being linked to the english movie Dan In Real Life?

Well, let's just watch the movie!

(6.5/10)

YUVVRAAJ

The last that such a feeling came was probably when India exited out of the Cricket World Cup last year, in the first round itself. Well, that too stirred at least some emotions.

Yuvvraaj starts like a love story about the love which Deven (Salman Khan) and Anushka (Katrina Kaif) share. In fact, the movie remains that way for a huge percentage of those almost-150 minutes. And then abruptly ends with the re-union of three brothers - Gyanesh, Deven and Danny (Anil Kapoor, Salman Khan and Zayed Khan respectively) - who'd never loved each other before. What happened to the love story, that was initially thought to be what the movie is all about, is still a mystery. But 'Inconsistency' isn't the only thing that the story has.

Deven gets into a contract with Dr. Banton (Boman Irani), who's Anushka's father, according to which Dr. Banton can get Anushka married wherever he wants if Deven does not become a billionaire in a span of 40 days. Dr. Banton always thought that Deven was no good. Deven came up with this contract after hearing the news of his wealthy father's death.

Very sure about turning into a billionaire after receiving his share of his father's property, Deven rushes to his actual home - from where he was thrown out when he was a teenager, thanks to his violent nature. After hearing his father 'Will', Deven learns that almost the entire property has landed into Gyanesh's hands, who's shown suffering from a mental disorder.

Infuriated by that news, both Deven and Danny get into a deal of tricking Gyanesh into naming the entire property after them. In the process of achieving this, these brothers find the love that they'd never let blossom. But not without a twist there! You can watch the movie for that "oh-so-cliche" TWEEEST. And whatever happened to the master Cello player, Anushka, is still under covers. Ssshhhhh....!!!

If only the movie could match the grandeur of it's sets and locations, it'd have been a different story altogether. London, Austria, Prague... all of them. Very scenic and captured decently most of the times. Lavish sets, large mansions, huge paintings within the halls... It all looked very expensive, yes! I wish only things like these could make a movie though. Sigh!

It takes masters to create a masterpiece. It takes masters to create movies like these. A.R. Rahman showed us that he probably is past his best (I'd not want to believe that, but that is what his music indicates). Gulzar's lyrics could not do justice to his reputation. Salman Khan did not even look like making an attempt. Mr. Subhash Ghai... Well, we've seen better movies from him. Faaar better!

In the end, Mr. Ghai can safely say that it was because of the fact that he did not give a special appearance in this one.

The promos of this movie say -

RELEASING ON 21ST NOVEMBER 2008 ALL OVER.

WHY?!?!?!

4/10