Bollybama and Bollysama

Now that Obama has assured us that Osama is dead and the world is a safer place, it cannot be ignored that art imitates life or the other way around. Bollywood has been at the heels of a story as big as this, and fictitiously we took a look around to see how film-makers perceived a storyline of an ‘Obama-Osama’ saga, in their own inimitable way

Film : Inteqaam ki Aag

Director : Manmohan Desai

Amrit Verma(Satyen Kappu) is a honest inspector in Azad Nagar, living with his wife Durga(Nirupa Roy) and his twin boys Obama Verma(Amitabh Bachchan) and Osama Verma(Shatrughan Sinha). One day, Daku Mangal Singh(Madan Puri) kills Amrit Verma, and kidnaps Osama and flees the country to Afghanistan. Durga in the meanwhile escapes in a ship that takes her and her son Obama to the United States. In a masala plot that ensues, Obama becomes the president of the US and Osama becomes the most daring criminal in the world. Unknown that to them they are brothers, they fight each other. Only when Osama dies, does Durga reveal his true identity. Rekha as Michele Obama, Master Bittu and Iftikar(as Vice President Bidden) form the rest of the cast

Film : Let's Rock!

Director : Farhan Akthar

Obama(Farhan Akthar) and Osama(Arjun Rampal) are a part of a rock band in Goa, along with their friend Tony Blair(Luke Kenny) and Joe Bidden(Purab Kohli).  Obama, the lead singer and the most popular member of the group wants to take his band to the United States, while Osama, the lead guitarist wants to take the band to countries where they can make a difference to the people. In the ensuing argument, the band splits and Osama moves to Afghanistan to stir a revolution with his music, while Obama and Joe start a band in the United States. Tony moves to London. When one hears of the others success, try to destroy each other with their music. Gulshan Grover plays Gilani (a music company owner in Pakistan), who causes this rift. Prachi Desai as Michele Obama and Shahana Goswami as Osama’s third wife form the rest of the cast

Film: Bhai No.1 

Director : David Dhawan

Obama Kumar(Govinda) and Osama Kumar(Chunky Pandey) are two good for nothing brothers who while away their time with their father Kumar’s(Kader Khan) money. One day their father sends them to the city to buy some machine tools for their factory. They get swindled and in the ensuing fight, Obama gets beaten and Osama loses his memory. The captured Osama gets brain washed into becoming a villain. Obama then has to save his brother from the clutches of the evil Saddam(Shakti Kapoor). Karishma Kapoor as Michele Sharma and Raj Babbar as the politician form the rest of the cast. The movie also boasts of the hit number, “ Hai Rama, Tu Obama, mein Osama ”

Film : Wind

Director : Deepa Mehta 

Obama(Lisa Ray) and Osama(Nandita Das) are two eunuchs who live in bylanes of Byculla. Their day beings and ends with doing the rounds, collecting money from the rich at signals, shops and weddings. A photographer George Bush(John Abraham) comes into their life, bringing a lot of cheer and laughter, but by the time they know it, the two are caught in a jealous triangle wanting George to themselves. The movie forms a touching tale of how two good friends who have to fight for their right in society are torn apart by love and become sworn enemies.  

Masala Barbossa!

DMD is a movie that will open your eyes to a few truths of life, that go beyond the movie itself. There were a few questions right through the movie – who is Michael Barbossa? Who is this Rana Daggubatti that Bips dumped John for? Will Abhishek Bachchan do a movie, without you feeling they could have casted Amitabh instead?

By the end of the movie, DMD helped answer all my questions. I now know the origins of Michael Barbossa, why Bips should have dumped John a long time ago and I also know that Amitabh could have done this role easily.

Dum Maaro Dum offers Abhishek a chance to breathe some action into his dilapidating career with his best friend (Rohan Sippy) offering that lifeline to him. The first half moves swiftly, Abhishek enters the scene, Babbar romances and then panics, Rana croons, Bips does some inane ‘frankfinn’ training, Aditya Pancholi shoots off his hip, and suddenly sex, drugs, rock and roll in Goa is presented with Russian panache. We are led through a roller coaster of events that has twists, turns, unnecessary love sequences, brilliant action sequences, mediocre songs, tacky dialogues, some standout characters and Vidya Balan.

Even the twists and truns in the movie, cant make you ignore Abhishek’s dialogue writer for giving him the worst lines for an obsessed narcotics cop. Even Naseer had better lines in Jalwa(The Beverly Hills Cop rip off set in 80s Goa). ‘Baaki sab ke liye Google hai’, ‘Do peg leke hi gutter mein utartha hoon’, ‘mere death day par wet day manana’, ‘phone a friend’ or even the ‘Rang Barse’ sequence, come across as tacky and damp. I still feel, they could have cast Amitabh as a froggy cop and the movie would have probably been better!

Yet DMD has moments of genius. Bipasha’s death scene, the flea market shooting sequence, the dorm-shower fight sequence, are A-grade action sequences that make you wonder why Rohan Sippy would just string the rest of the movie with a pretty loose thread.

My biggest joy was to see Aditya Pancholi back in the thick of things. He has been wasted in recent times, both literally and figuratively with his alcohol issues. He delivers a Dengzongpa-esque performance that is believable. Rana Daggubatti, who sleep-walks through a Sippy movie, overshadows Bachchan and takes over Bips, makes me want to grow up to become him!

Finally Ms Padukone loses all inhibitions making Daddy proud, in a song that has the worst lyrics but works big time for a drug bust sequence...Didnt get her final luring look towards the camera before she disappears though!

Overall Dum Maaro Dum could have been Rohan’s Sholay but ends up being a weaker Bluffmaster!

Game Over!

By now, we all know that Game is a stylized thriller featuring an ensemble B List cast, but deep down, we want to give it a shot for Abhishek’s sake and because it has Farhan Akthar’s name on it. Having seen Game, let me also assure you that though technically excellent, it is badly scripted and extremely amateurish in its narrative. 

As a murder mystery, it leaves a lot of unanswered questions in the end, especially one that stays with you - "Why did Abhishek Bachchan do a movie like Game?" 
The movie is a murder mystery, not of business baron Kabir Malhotra(Anupam Kher) but, of Abhishek Bachchan, the actor. Game has an uncanny resemblance to Abhishek’s own acting career, where you are always at your wits end thinking was this suicide or murder? 
As an avid crime reader myself, I decided to put the possible pieces together that can help me try and solve this puzzle of what may have prompted Abhishek to do this film-

Habit.  Abhishek has made it such a habit that he can only do bad films now.

Money. Amitabh and Aishwarya are no longer giving him pocket money at home

Dialogues. Farhan Akthar himself wrote them so may be some good lines? The problem is that the best dialogues in the movie are in Thai and it’s a pity we couldn’t understand it

Jimmy Shergil. The only other person who will come out of this movie looking worse is Jimmy Shergil. Incidentally Jimmy plays a Bollywood star trying to resurrect his career.

Exercise. I have never seen a hero jog so much in any film. This role gave him an opportunity to exercise and possibly lose weight for his next Dum Maaro Dum

Competition at Prateeksha. If Abhishek hadn’t done it Amitabh would have.

Buy 1 Get 1 free. By doing this movie he gets Luke Kenny’s role in Rock On 2

Bad Music. Unlike all his other movies, Abhishek decided that this time around he will be better than the music in his film.

I still haven’t been able to solve this crime and between then and now other mysteries have come up- India has won the world cup, FALTU has made Game look like a classic and Dhoni has shaved his head. But I am inclined to think this is a suicide, though murder can still not be ruled out, or perhaps an evil twin? 

Actually everyone associated with this movie should contemplate murder. The only person who has any right to feel good about the film is Kangana Ranaut, as she gets to display her knowledge of English beyond the curt 'basterd' that she is known for.

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!