Consortium of corny punchlines

Film: Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara

Director: Milan Luthria

Shouldn't it have been Twice Upon A Time? Or a conventional Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai 2? Maybe a suffixed Returns or a completely different title altogether? But no, they decided to go with Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara (OUATIMD). And sadly, in this sequel to the film which was a decent re-creation of the 80s flamboyance, there are no talking points that go deeper than how the title should have been composed. In fact the entire film is as insignificant as the Y in the Ay and the A that was in the prequel's Mumbaai.

Overconfident from having sold the prequel, Luthria's film goes overboard with heavy-duty dialogues that swell up like helium balloons before bursting into nothingness. Every single line in the film, except perhaps the lyrics of the songs, is punctuated and exaggerated to sound deliberately ostentatious, which after a point makes you sick. The punches are only ironically amusing and it is hard not to judge the person sitting next to you, if he/she is genuinely falling for them.

Set roughly in the late 80s, the film picks nearly a decade after the climax of the previous film. Shoaib, played by Emraan Hashmi earlier, grows up and indigestibly turns into Akshay Kumar. And while the setting of a gangster thriller idly loiters around; OUATIMD plays itself out like a ridiculously childish, set-piece love triangle.

After Lootera, the sudden rise in expectations from Sonakshi have led to further disappointment as her character Jasmine sees her regress into the submissive, powerless role where she is at the mercy of two powerful men. One of those men, Shoaib, played by Akshay, is the villain, while Imran's Aslam is the archetypal hero.

Akshay Kumar simply recites punchlines throughout the film, with a cigarette, that has no regard for continuity, constantly lit between his fingers. Lacking the powerful aura of Ajay Devgn's Sultan Mirza and the charisma of Emraan's Shoaib, his black shades and well-kept hair hardly create a persona. While the first film gave us the memorable “Duaa mein yaad rakhna” by Sultan Mirza, Akshay's Shoaib throws one too many dialogues for us to remember any of them. And Imran Khan disappoints once again (or dobaara, if you may), with his contemporary body language and South Bombay accent. Maybe he never received the text that said the movie was set in the 80s.

Overall, OUATIMD is a null and void movie which serves no purpose other than killing time inside an air-conditioned dark-room. However, it will make truck loads of money and set precedents for more dobaaras of the same category.

At 160 minutes, the film is a fitting punishment to give to someone who has just lost a bet. With repetitive sentiments and caricatured leads, the film is a long test of endurance for anyone with a good taste in cinema. Beyond redemption, it wouldn't matter what the critics say. To put it in Shoaib's words, (read in Akshay's husky voice) -- “Agar aisi film ko rating diya, toh number bura maan jayenge.”

Rating: 1 out of 5 

Published in DNA (Pune) on August 17, 2013 

There are films, and then there is cinema

Film: Lootera

Director: Vikramaditya Motwane

Imagine a room full of smokers, each puffing out smoke from their respective cigarettes. And among the grey haze of smoke, picture one of them who's exhaling purple smoke. If you take that room to be Hindi cinema, the one puffing purple haze is Vikramaditya Motwane and Lootera is his dope.

With the response that his debut film received, he had a lot of reputation running on Lootera. Fortunately for him and for us, it worked wonders. The film is a love story of Varun and Pakhi, but the multi-layered narrative and the attention to detail make it more than just a love story. It isn't the first film where a man enters a woman's life and changes it as he leaves, but the plot's treatment makes it feel like a first.

The post-independence setting of a transition period when India changed from many feudal estates to one nation, the accurate costumes, the lighting, the dialogues -- Lootera checks every box of what is termed as good cinema. A little concession for the graphics, which stick out like a sore thumb, is the only fault one can find with the entire viewing experience.

Like Udaan, Lootera too permeates your skin and begins to grow inside you. And slowly, there is nothing left inside but the film. Anurag Kashyap's dialogues bring life to a fresh romance and Ranveer and Sonakshi, the agents of delivering these dialogues, are precise. For Sonakshi Sinha, this could be considered an 'acting' debut and her portrayal of a vulnerable, love-struck daughter of a zamindar is one of the reasons to watch the film.

Amit Trivedi's soundtrack has a lion's share in creating the period in which the film takes place. That, coupled with the background score and other sound elements like the radio are an audio experience that one could keep on talking about. The songs, written by Amitabh Bhattacharya have an eerie charm, honesty and innocence that is not lacking in any aspect of the film.

There is very little about Lootera that can be explained in words as a lot of it has to do with the little things that a director adds to a film. It is not meant to be understood or elucidated; it just needs to be experienced.

With Lootera, Motwane has proved yet again that in this crowded film industry, there is still scope for a filmmaker to celebrate cinema. He truly is a magician in a herd of illusionists. And coming back to the cigarette that produces purple haze, let's hope Motwane has a whole packet left. 

Rating: 4 out of 5

Published in DNA (Pune) on July 6, 2013 

Not Dabangg Enough

The Robin Hood Pandey returns with a new positioning as Kung-fu Pandey; and somewhere in that transition, the essence of Chulbul Pandey is smothered. Arbaaz Khan’s sequel to Abhinav Kashyap’s much-appreciated Dabangg is nothing but an ill-constructed amalgamation of the protagonist in Ready and the villain from Singham. By all means, the film is an outright entertainer; however, built on a carcass of the first film, Dabangg 2 fails to recreate the magic of its predecessor. The main defect in the sequel, without a doubt, is the direction. A lack of vision in terms of a standalone project, it relies heavily on the laurels of the first film and hence, falls on its face to some extent. A character driven story, Dabangg 2 has very little to offer apart from the charismatic cop Chulbul Pandey portrayed with excellence by the people’s favourite superstar, Salman Khan.

Following a similar narrative pattern, Dabangg 2 could easily have been an experience of revisiting Dabangg; like in the case of the Hangover franchise, which didn’t meddle with the plot in its sequel. However, in tampering with the narrative structure, the writers have added some ridiculous bits that are too stereotypical and ridiculous even by the standards of a regular mainstream entertainer. The bad guy harming the family of the good guy who then flares up to take revenge is something we unfortunately grew up on and don’t wish to see anymore.With action sequences that are literally going South (if you know what I mean) with every single film, and the line between the ridiculous and the real growing thinner and thinner, Dabangg was a franchise from which one expected some craftsmanship; but that seems to have left it along with Abhinav Kashyap.

Apart from Salman Khan, whose belt buckle sways automatically this time around, no other character leaves a lasting mark in one’s memory. Prakash Raj delivers yet another Jaikant Shinkre-sque performance and quite frankly, a great actor is being bound in the shackles of being typecast as the big eyed baddy with every single role. Deepak Dobriyal, who plays the bad guy’s brother, is under-utilised. A fine actor whose talent has been quite adequately realised only by a few makers, Deepak’s character, like most others, is simply used as a marker to establish the might of Chulbul Pandey. Sonakshi Sinha plays Chulbul’s wife Rajjo, a role that demands an able bodied woman to just exist, while Salman romances with it.

As everybody had correctly expected, Dabangg 2 is ‘Of the Salman, By the Salman, For the Salman’. With Wanted, he created a realm about himself that has been accepted and appreciated by everyone. It has grown with Dabangg, Bodyguard, Ready and most recently, Ek Tha Tiger. What these films have done is that they have made the viewer tolerant to a kind of absurdity, so much so that his actions are now acceptable. There is realism, there is magic realism, there is surrealism and now, it is safe to say, Salman has created a realm of his own, a Salmanic Realism, if you may.

He drives the wagon of the film and the franchise single-handedly and with his typical dance moves, giggles and punchlines; Salman keeps you entertained throughout and is a job well done. And while you put up a Salman poster in your room and stick it 'Fevicol se', the director needs to apply some 'Zandu Balm' for denting what could have been a good franchise.

Rating - 2.5 out of 5

Published in DNA After Hrs (Pune) on December 22, 2012