10
2007
Movie Reviews - Part 1
Here's my take on some of the movies I caught up with recently (chronological order) :-
An animated movie about Emperor penguins in Antarctica. Superb animation. Cute penguins. Good music. I especially liked the idea of the young penguins making use of aurora australis as disco lights at their graduation party. I felt the ending was a bit too hurried & somewhat preachy.
Pathetic attempt at remaking the original Amitabh starrer. Shahrukh is as bad as ever. Kareena's item number is so grossly choreographed & executed - Helen must have felt disgusted after seeing this - Sunidhi Chauhan's rendition of the song is bad too. Thankfully the Don bumps off Kareena just after the song - he too must have been put off by the song & dance ;-). The other songs aren't any better - especially egregious is the "Khaike Paan Banaraswala" one. The ending had the scent of a sequel. I hope it never gets made.
Long movie which could have been easily cut by half. Shahrukh Khan (Dev Saran) overacts as usual. Rani Mukherjee (Maya) is irritating. Preity Zinta (Rhea Saran) & Abhishek Bachchan (Rishi Talwar) don't have much to do. Amitabh Bachchan is wasted in his role as Samarjit "Sexy Sam" Talwar. But this movie is much better than Karan Johar's last directorial venture, the very horrible Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (shudder). The visuals are good as the movie is completely shot in New York. Music by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy is decent. I particularly liked one scene where Sam & Dev are seated at the opposite ends of the dinner table. Shahrukh hams his way through the scene while Amitabh conveys his emotions just with his eyes. Ah! All that talk of rivalry & competition between the two actors is rubbish - Shahrukh is no match for Amitabh. Period.
Dhoom 2 is entirely about Hrithik Roshan (Aryan). Abhishek Bachchan (ACP Jai Dixit) just does his job. Aishwarya Rai (Sunehri) makes an ass of herself by overusing 'like' in every sentence she can. But the surprise package is Uday Chopra (Ali) who 'rises' above the rest of the cast in a producer-backed role. His comic timing, his facial expressions (both of them) and his beefcake physique all enable him to deliver a powerful performance. With just one moronic constipated look he can make you tear your hair in frustration. Bipasha Basu's double role (Shonali & Monali Bose) does not make sense at all. I suspect she was first cast as the cop and did some chase sequences. Then the director realised they couldn't do any skin show with a serious cop. Conveniently , Shonali gets injured and in pops her twin sister Monali to do the bikini level stunts. Rimi Sen as Jai's pregnant wife Sweety is inconsequential - she just eats fish in one scene and talks in Bengali. The worst part is Ali thinks he can sway away Shonali from Jai using his looks! He also has a song ("My name is Ali") with Monali! After watching his "talking to Mummy" scenes I think there would be a huge potential for punching bags with Uday on them - should be a good stress reliever. The Dhoom franchise is going from bad to worse, so to speak - I heard that Dhoom 3 will have Shahrukh! I say just add in Kareena & get Karan Johar to direct it & you can just skip the 'worse' & go to 'worst'. But then, they would need to change the title of the movie (Karan has this fetish for titles beginning with 'K') - my suggestion - "Kaun Machayega Dhoom?" - effectively "Who will be the worst of 'em all?".
The sequel to Koi Mil Gaya. Hrithik again as Krishna, Rohit's son. Kids should love this movie. Watchable. Priyanka looks gorgeous. Rajesh Roshan's music is good. You can expect a sequel. One glaring mistake is the use of heartbeat for biometric authentication which AFAIK can't be done - the password for unlocking the computer which can see the future is Rohit's retina scan combined with his heartbeat scan. Once you see the movie it should be obvious why the heartbeat scan was chosen. I might as well not spoil the suspense in case you ever decide to watch the movie.
More reviews are in the pipeline.
Tags : Movies
Posted by Rajat @ 2:06 PM
