

Bollywood Movie Reviews
Gulabo Sitabo Movie Review: Amitabh Bachchan, Ayushmann Saving Grace In Killjoy Comedy
Gulabo Sitabo(Amazon)
Starring Amitabh Bachchan, Farrukh Jafar, Ayushmann Khurrana, Vijay Raaz
Directed by Shoojit Sircar
Rating: **(2 stars)
How do I put this politely? Gulabo Sitabo is as funny as molar surgery, or maybe even less because when you are watching a man helpless under the dentist’s drill his helpless anxiety renders itself to a kind of sadistic hilarity in the audience.
But what if that man under the drill is you,dear audience? That’s how I felt watching Gulabo Sitabo. Trapped. Miserable. Helpless…. Shoojit Sircar who has made some of the better films of recent years, seems to have devised a new method of making our quarantined life more miserable.Pinning us down to his satirical exigencies Sircar gives us a film about proprietorial greed that misses its mark by a wide margin.
To put it bluntly, Gulabo Sitabo is just not funny. I assume this killjoy comedy is supposed to be funny. Because everyone talks in that casual know-all eye-rolling fashion which cartoonstrips are famous for. Except that the joke here is on us.
Coming out of the unnerving experience I felt like that cuckolded spouse who thought himself to be in a perfect marriage until he caught his spouse red-handed.
Cheated and betrayed? Yes, all of that. But also a bit sullied and compromised by wallowing in the squalor of the protagonist and his crumbling haveli. Both have seen better days. Mr Bachchan has been put into a lot of sticky situations in his times ,but none as abysmally non-redemptive as this character.
Bachchan’s Mirza is monstrously miserly.It’s not about counting your pennies. It’s also about looking like you save on soap money. When Mirza suspects his wife will soon die he bargains with the shopkeeper for her kafan. Not just miserly, but also quite dirty in appearance and dialogue,the doddering despicable Mirza and his crumbling haveli are captured by Avik Mukhopadhyay’s mesmeric camera images in a swoop of squalour suggesting poverty-porn.
In one sequence where Ayushmann Khurrana playing Mr Bachchan’s lisping dimwitted tenant Baanke suggests that Mirza adopt him to save the haveli, Ayushamann angrily snatches a bedsheet from Mirza claiming it to be his.
“Yeah yeah take it I’ve farted on it the whole day,” mumbles Mirza.
Rather than amused, this concession to crassness made me very angry.Surely, there were more tactful ways of showing the character’s crassness specially when played by an actor as classy as Mr Bachchan? Still Mr Bachchan wades through the slushy satire in slouched splendour. Mumbling profanities and screaming insults, Mirza has got to be the most unpleasant character ever played by Mr Bachchan. Shooing girls out of a rickshaw because they haven’t his rent, waiting for his wife to die so that he can legally inherit her mansion…Mr Bachchan plunges into making this vile character enjoyable, but is repeatedly failed by a script and direction that seem to construct a compressed television serial rather than a crisp enjoyable feature film on the miser and his comeuppance.
Ayushmann is given to mouth his dialogues with a lisp that comes and goes, just like the fugitive humour of this shambolic satire. Nonetheless Ayushman, like his character who won’t vacate his rented abode, remains stubbornly in character, sullen,silly and sad,
There is not one likeable character in the film barring perhaps Bachchan’s wily Beghum played by Farrukh Jafar. 17 years his senior, we are told repeatedly probably because the actress chosen to be Mr Bachchan’s wife looked older than him. The Beghum apart, there are no important women characters except a feisty promiscuous girl named Guddo(Shristhi Shrivastava) a self-serving tenant who is sexually so promiscuous she seems to be begging to be called a slut.In one sequence she is seen coming out of hiding with a man fixing the belt of his trousers.We got that, Mr Sircar.
Another woman whom Khurrana’s Baankey dates, dumps him and shows up with her moneyed husband at the end at his aate ki chakki asking for organic flour. Bitch. I am talking about life. What else!
The humour is way too savage to be funny .Everything from an old dying woman’s thumb impression to a character’s pyorrhea is milked for mirth. But sorry, Gulabo Sitabo is just not funny and a huge disappointment from the director of Vicky Donor , Piku and October. At one point in the battle that ensues between an archaeological department employee(Vijay Raaz) and a cunning lawyer(Brajendra Kala) Mr Bachchan’s Mirza comments that greed can’t kill a humanbeing. But be warned. Boredom can.
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Pathaan Is A Slick Spin On SRK’s Stardom

Pathaan Movie Review: There is no reason why any review of Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan(directed by Siddharth Anand but it’s an SRK showcase all the way) needs to be written. The two-and-a-half hour eruption of stylish action will be seen at least once by every movie patron in India, and then of course out West where Sharon Stone, I believe, has already bought bulk tickets for the entire weekend for her friends, family, fans and househelp .
Cast
Shah Rukh Khan as Pathaan, a RAW agent
John Abraham as Jim, a rogue agent turned leader of ‘Outfit X’
Deepika Padukone as Rubina Mohsin, a ISI agent
Ashutosh Rana as Colonel Sunil Luthra
Manish Wadhwa as General Qadir
Dimple Kapadia
Siddhant Ghegadmal
Gautam Rode
Gavie Chahal
Shaji Choudhary
Diganta Hazarika as an ally of Pathaan
Salman Khan as Tiger/Avinash Sing Rathore (cameo appearance)
Directed by Siddharth Anand
Rating: *** ½
Pathaan is a very slick action film. The stunts leave us open mouthed , like Sharon Stone when she saw SRK pass by.
We get to see Shah Rukh Khan more than just pass by in the title role. He is all there muscled and armed ready to take on the world to protect his country. There is a lot of stress in the rippling writing on how patriotic ‘Pathaan’ is. And if we consider the fact that the audiences do not separate the character from the actor when it comes to Salman or Shah Rukh, then the dialogues on nationalism(by Abbas Tyrewala) make a lot of sense.
The political undertones(Article 370 is the triggering point for the bullet bath) are not to be missed. The director won’t let you.
Speaking of Salman and Shah Rukh their Karan-Arjun kinship in their sequence together is winsomely rugged. Most of the film is designed to give Indian fans of Shah Rukh Khan and action cinema a run for their money.
Director Siddharth Anand has a fairly firm grip over a plot that goes all over the place. Not that there is much of it to go anywhere. The screenplay is slinky skeletal and not epic in intent content or impact. But there is always a sense of urgency built into the goings-on. So that we never get a chance to get distracted.
On the other hand, the unfolding of the surprises in the plot is a bit like doing a Santa on a child who already knows about the Christmas gifts hidden under the bed.
Visually, Pathaan is a feast of fury. The fights especially between Shah Rukh and John Abraham(the latter as a seething terrorist grits his teeth so hard we fear for his teeth) are virile and boisterous. The sound decibel drowns out all subtlety.
But then who is in this for tact? Be prepared for your senses to be attacked.
Pathaan Premise
Pathaan, an exiled RAW field operative is assigned to take down his old nemisis named Jim, a former RAW agent turned rogue, who leads “Outfit X”, a private terrorist organization, which is planning to spread a deadly virus dubbed “Raktbeej” across India.
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An Action Hero, Fastpaced Funny & Spot-On

An Action Hero
Starring Ayushmann Khurrana, Jaideep Ahlawat
Written & Directed by Anirudh Iyer
Rating: *** ½
There is something delectably different about this mass entertainer. It is neatly plotted and to-the-point. It avoids the bullshit element in mass entertainment. The eponymous Action Hero Ayushmann Khurrana has no family or girlfriend waiting for him after the shooting.
Where does Maadhav come from? Why does he have a British passport(why not a Canadian passport?) if not to escape swiftly after he accidently kills a Haryanvi goon? The slayed goon(menacingly played by Sumit Singh)is well connected.It can’t get any better than Jaideep Ahlaway, can it?
In London, Ahlawat’s Bhoora Solanki is shown to be ruthless in his pursuit of justice for his brother.And yet he lets Maanav slip out of his hands, not once but repeatedly.
A secret fan, perhaps? The breathless plot allows no room for back-story speculation. It is all done in the spirit of a super-heist, without the ransom. The film is enjoyable most of the way except for some major diversions. The subplot about a restaurateur Sai(Neeraj Madhav) doesn’t fit in.It’s the kind of character that pops up in a long-running television serial. Also the entire track about the dreaded international don(modelled on you-know-who) is so out of its depth it feels more like an afterthought than an organic part of the plot.
That said, there is plenty to enjoy in An Action Hero. Both Khurrana and Ahlawat are in revved-up form. They play against each most effectively, almost like a on-the-run Tom and a persistent Jerry . The plot should have focused on them.
The comments on media trial and the demonization of Bollywood are hilarious.This is a clever intelligent film that sometimes trips over in self-admiration but manages to stay afloat most of the way.
Bollywood Movie Reviews
Uunchai, Not Quite The Dizzying Heights, But Special

Uunchai
Starring Amitabh Bachchan, Anupam Kher, Boman Irani, Danny Denzongpa, Parineeti Chopra, Neena Gupta and Sarika
Directed by Sooraj Barjatya
Rating: ***
The aging protagonists aspire to travel only to the foothills of the Himalayas.The film too doesn’t aim for the summit, but is happy to be grounded cosily somewhere at the foothills as long as the footfalls are there.
Uunchai certainly deserves an audience. For all its flaws of wheezing pacing and panting drama it is nonetheless a film that comes from the heart,although I must admit it doesn’t really stir up a storm of emotions in the audience. But yes,it is touching if you are a sucker for cinema on lifelong friendships and unconditional loyalty.
Mr Bachchan logistically takes pride of place, as Amit Shrivastava(the surname is the Bachchans’ actual passport identification). Amit is a successful author who sells fake gyan to the multitudes.
“Sudhro,” warns idealistic friend Bhupen(Danny Denzongpa) and then promptly dies.
Bhupen three best friends, played by Bachchan, Kher and Irani now decide to take a trek to the base of the Himalayas. Writer Abhishek Dixit(based on story by Sunil Gandhi) has his art in the right place. But he chokes it up with too many back stories for every character so that the film at 170 minutes feels like marathon run for the elderly which becomes an ordeal for the spectators once the participants lose their energy.
One subplot in Gorakhpur about Anupam’s ungrateful ancestors(featuring Kher’s brother) cribbing endlessly about haveli repairs and rising costs should have been taken out on the editing table. And pray tell, which daughter tells her visiting parents and their close friends to f…k off since her birthday guests would feel uncomfortable? These are characters that needed not only polishing up but also a vigorous shake by the shoulders . They are so unidimensional they belong in an animation film.
Another weird plot twist: why should Bhupen’s friends be upset with the love of his life(Sarika) for abandoning him? This is quite what Neena Gupta rightly describes as overstepping the line of friendship.
Neena Gupta’s marital bonding with Boman Irani comes across as very real and endearing. This, I suspect is more to do with the two actors’ skills than anything else. By the time the plot reaches the Himalayas we are as exhausted as the protagonists.
These are identifiable people who deserved a more compact and incisive plot, not this meandering road trip which seems to been constructed like building blocks in a child’s hands .
Nonetheless Uunchai has a sufficient heart to make it a special film.But it could have been much more special with more skilled writing.
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Monica O My Darling , The Twisted Tormented World Of Vasan Bala

Monica, O My Darling(Netflix)
Directed by Vasan Bala
Rating: ****
Somewhere in the acquisitive amoral chaos of Vasan Bala’s twisted kingdom, Rajkummar Rao and Huma Qureshi, playing two of the most shamelessly self-serving jerks in recent cinematic history, are down on the floor, wrestling with an Usha Uthup pretender singing ‘Loving You So Much I Want To Kill You.’
Yes, physically wrestling, until one of them is almost dead.
It is a deliciously demonic moment defining the gender-proof nature of human greed. When you are so money-minded that your conscience has gone for a call of nature, then be prepared to battle it out man-to-man , even if you are a woman.
Alas, such delightfully epiphanic moments are hard to come by in Vasant Bala’s first directorial deep-dive since Mard Ko Dard Nahin into the bowels of eccentricity. Playing a dude who doesn’t feel any physical pain no matter how hard to blow Abhimanyu Dassani was at once wicked and amiable in Mard Ko Dard….
Rajkummar Rao as Jayant a small-town boy from Angola working in a giant robot-manufacturing organization in Mumbai is much more wimpy, partially demonic, partially a victim of fate…if Fate looks anything like Huma Qureshi who plays Monica a crooked femme fatale a squealer-dealer in pursuit of big bucks via big …never mind.
Qureshi’s Monica is a delectably subverted femme fatale.An imposter Marilyn Monroe who lets the skirt fly only when she is sure there are men looking.Somehow I felt Ms Qureshi fell short of the character’s brazen avarice.Her cabaret at the beginning of the film again proves after that limp item song in Gangubai Kathiawadi that she better leave the dancing to those better equipped.
Her performance as a woman who empowers herself by conning men is tonally correct, but unable to scale the summits of seductive salvation it was written to. Radhika Apte as a gritty sarcastic cop nails it. It’s interesting to see how the women in poor Jayant’s life bully him: Qureshi at first, then Apte and then of course the bimbo esque boss’ daughter played with an arresting airheadedness by Akansha Ranjan Kapoor.
Monica O My Darling has a sharp tangy taste to its storytelling . But it eventually gets tangled in its own ambitions. It wants to be dark sexy voluptuous enigmatic satire, but lacks the wherewithal to leap over the plotting hurdles that impede the protagonist Jayant’s progression from a harmless smalltown dreamer to a scheming rat.
Rao is dependably strong in his weak character. There are other extremely powerful actors like the underused Sikandar Kher, Sukant Goel and Bagavathi Perumal . Two of these men are being blackmailed by Monica. She is clearly a threat , to herself. Ditto the film. Monica O My Darling wants to give the conscience-free female lead a sense of Huma.
But she is clearly not up to it.
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