Why? Patiala Why?

Welcome to the Patiala House Twenty Questions quiz and your time starts now…

1.     Why did I ever think Nikhil Advani had a lot of potential. Was it because Kal ho na ho is my wifes favourite film, or because he cast Salman Khan as the Indian Hugh Grant in Salaam e Ishq?

2.     Why was this film, with a South Hall setting, an anti-gora dad, a Punjabi munda, a gurudwara sequence, a few samosas and a sukhwinder singh song, not entertaining enough to the Punjabis, let alone me?

3.     Why didn’t the director just make Namaste London 2?

4.     Why did I feel like I was watching DDD Goal 2?

5.     Why does Akshay Kumar, huff and puff after just bowling one ball everytime?

6.     Why weren’t India playing in this T 20 world cup?

7.     Why did Sanjay Manjrekar have more lines than Dimple Kapadia?

8.     For that matter,  why was Dimple kapadia there in this movie?

9.      Why was everything so convenient? The Jilebi maker wants to be a chef, the bhajan singer wants to be a rap or some guy with a ponytail a film maker?

10. Why does Akshay look like he has just come out of a 'Dhadkan' shoot?

11. Why does Rishi Kapoor run out of the house with a Pressure Cooker to beat up the Skinheads? Did he think it would diffuse the pressure of the situation?

12. Why does Anuskha Sharma, with an English mother, Sardar father and living in Mumbai have a Delhi accent?

13. Why was an irritating kid there in the film? Unless he was Nikhil Advani’s son?

14. Why did David Gower and Graham Gooch agree to do this film over Lagaan?

15. Why does no one have a british accent in the movie, except Nasser Hussain?

16. Why did Andrew Symonds, who is clearly the villain of the film, not say 'kitne aadmi the'?

17. Why does ‘Laung da lashkara’ sound like a terrorist group?

18. Why was there no match fixing scandal? I am disappointed

19. Why didnt anyone call the cable guy?

20. Why did I even watch this film?

BBB is a 4D movie!

Something happens to you when Yash Raj gets it right. I have tried to cook it, chew it, digest it to come up with a theory or a formula to see what is the reason for this. And no, this is not the usual identify with the story, characters, great music theory. Its very Raj Kapoorian, where an additional dimension is added to the experience. You can taste the punjabi food, get high on bhaang in Rang Barse, smell the flowers, touch a heaving Madhuri or even breathe the crisp Swiss air. Something very 4-D about their film that i cant explain.
But only when they get it right! When they get it wrong, they just get it so wrong that you want to watch a tamil movie immediately to get over the hangover! Fortunately for all of us they get it all right in Band Baaja Baraat!

If you put Jab we met in a dryer, you get BBB, a tighter, grungier and a more real version.  A minute into the movie and you are taken into the hostel life in a DU college. In five, you are introduced to the lead pair and in ten, the story is on a rollercoaster ride of their relationship set in Delhi.
Its also helps when a Sehwag-like hero and a motor-mouth heroine are setting the pace. The emotional scenes are handled briskly, the kissing scene passes by before any one gasps or gets excited and finally the patch up scenes are so quickly done away with, that its feels like an enjoyable Delhi darshan bus tour.
Just like JWM, the chemistry between the two is brilliant and the hero follows the heroine. It is the ultimate romantic story between the quintessential Yash Raj heorine and the Not so quintessential Yash Raj hero. She is spontaneous, knows whats she wants, middle class, papas girl. She is everything that a man wants the woman in his life to be!
He is a newcomer, he is rustic and he has flaws. Yet everyone loves him for being him.

Ranveer Singh is brilliant as the bad-english speaking, haryanvi jat with his gallery pleasing oneliners ,who has the unenviable choice of either going back to his dad's sugar cane farm or joining forces with Anushka Sharma, who has the unenviable task of playing the bad-aunty type role to a funny Ranveer. The dialogues are never out of character, very Delhi and completely to the point, except that someone pointed out that 'chirkut' is a maharashtrian word but "koi nai yaar!"

If you have lived in Delhi and enjoyed its loud, larger than life idiosyncrasies, you will be at the weddings, drink with the baraat, eat chowmein (one veg and one non-veg)with the hero, dance with the heroine and most importantly speak the same bad english with a delhi accent! If you are from Mumbai, it may be too Delhi for you, so you may go for a re-run of JWM instead.

The movie on Arushi will be better!

The below review is a real life incident and the characters are non fictional and the reviewer is me and the receiver is my dad

Dear Dad,

Hope all is well. I was troubled to hear from mom that you are planning to watch No One Killed Jessica.  I do understand that you have spent atleast 300 hours of your precious time watching the Arnabs, Barkhas and the Rajdeeps crying hoarse for justice in the last decade and you feel that you deserve to watch your favourite actors Rani and Vidya bring that to life. I also know you have been waiting for a meaningful movie for a long time that matches your all time favourite Om-Naseer starrers! 

I too was thinking this movie would have a beige middle class setting, an aging dad, a hope-filled mom, a fighting sister and a helping journalist all get together and get the bad guys. Add to that a hot off the press story, two decent actors and I am curdling amazing images of a tight, angst ridden, emotion packed court-room scene with awe inspiring dialogues and scenes of Delhi I have never seen. Or as mom would say, no one can screw up making daal?

But life is full of surprises. After all that you followed on TV, you surely could have written a better story of the incident. 

Rani Mukherji screamed and abused so much that now I know how she would have sounded if she could speak in Black. She smokes, abuses and sleeps around with men who are so ugly they don’t even show their faces. Not for the faint hearted, and definitely not for you. Even you, who could not see through the Amitabh-Rekha affair, will see through this over the top attempt at losing her goody-two-shoes image. Instead of being the Sunny Deol in Damini, she ends up sounding like Esha Deol on drugs!

You are supposed to feel Vidya’s pain, emotions and her loss like Anupam Kher in ‘Saraansh’, the Rakhee in ‘Shakti’ or even Jaya in ‘Sholay’. But we end up feeling her weight and her flu, as sometimes she walks around like she has high fever and is on antibiotics. By the way, that reminds me, we should stop mom from suggesting her name for Subbramani’s matrimonial.  

I could relate to Jessica though. Despite the parents and the sibling being pretty bad looking, she too like me turned out to be a looker 

The guy who plays Manu Sharma and Neil Bhoopalam(who plays Shayan Munshi) are very good. But then, they are friends of a friend of mine, so can call them home to perform those scenes for you in private, while mom can make them Dosas. Satyadeep Mishra, a friend and a senior from college, got to do what I always wanted to, abuse Rani a lot.

The director is the same guy who directed “Aamir”, the movie that was like a Mumbai tourism campaign for Jehadi Bombers. His attempt at glossing up realism is very similar to your fudging bank accounts when you were at the SBI. I blame him completely for this mess, because he narrated the story as is without good punches that would have made you and I jump with joy, like when Bhuvan scores that six of the last ball in Lagaan. There were also some editing and continuity errors even you would have pointed out loudly in the movie hall.

I was hoping for a Saaransh, an Ardh Satya, an Aakrosh, movies that you didn’t take me to when I was a kid, because you thought it was serious and didn’t suit me. Today its my turn, I would suggest you dont watch this movie and continue watching TV and hope that the movie on the Arushi murder case is better!

Love to mom

A muscular comedy

When Dharmendra first introduced this film to the media he said, this is not a dark comedy, its not a slapstick comedy, but it is a muscular comedy!
The best part about YPD is that its a black and white film, people will either hate it or love it. Its not a classic by any means but somewhere it kind of trips a wire and makes you laugh at even the silliness.

Yes, Sunny is desperately trying to bring back his glory days! Yes, Bobby trudges along like a new comer! Yes, Dharamendra is using this movie to fund his scotch! Yes, Samir Karnik's last film was Nanhe jaisalmer. All this and more, but the Deols behave as though they were never out of season. The confidence with which they roll out this cheesy paratha, is brilliant in itself.
I will not dwell into the story as there is no story. Its a film about brothers and their father and the situation they get into and the funny bone that they tickle. If Apne was a emotional drama with the three of them playing the exact relationship, YPD is just the opposite, a fun riot with a few strokes of emotional connect!
The Deols are obviously in a time warp. I can imagine them sitting down huddled together with family and friends drinking patiala pegs, phadoing kukkads and slapping each others backs just as they did in the 80s when Papa pataoed Hema in Sholay or Bhaiyya shuddered and delivered his 'Dhai kilo ka haat' dialogue. And thats what works for the film. It is as innocent as the Deols believing they are bigger than the Bachchans in the heartland, which is a fact though!
The biggest plus of the movie is that the Deols feel at home in this movie. It gives them license to speak punjabi, license to shoot in Punjab and more importantly license to do and say what they want!

Dharam was probably drunk most of the time but he effortlessly does his bits , almost to the point of nonchalantness. The scene where he says he's got the snacks but no ice, was probably not in the script and the camera kept rolling in the night. Him being drunk should be as accepted as Bachchan's pepper beard.
Bobby, the weakest link of the lot, knew that it was going to be tough one competing against Sunny and Papa. His romancing bits with Kulraaj are a little rough but then someone had to do it.
But I digress. Like Apne, this is a Sunny movie. He delivers the big guns, runs through people, uproots pumps, drinks a 'balti' of whiskey, acts as the dumb NRI sardar, and takes you through a journey  meeting random characters in stupid situations.
The big revelation for me though was Mukul Dev. As the drunk brother (of Anupam Kher), he along with Kher provide a great foil to the Deols with outstanding punju wit. Add to that a Canada obsessed Sucheta Khanna and the support cast outdoes itself!
Full credit to Samir Karnik. To do a comeback movie with Bobby itself must have been nerve wracking. Add to that two more egoistic Deols, one of them a constant drunk and the other who has a two and a half kilo hand. The last two Deol hits have proven that they should stay away intelligent cinema and stick to what they do best, boxing and packing a punch!

Overall YPD celebrates the innocence of the 80s Bollywood. Its not a crass comedy, its not a dark comedy, its not a satirical comedy...it is just as what Dharam paaji suggests, a muscular comedy!