Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara directed by Zoya Akhtar is smooth and effortless on the viewer. It brings the entire Akhtar family together in their various specialties. Zoya with her direction, Farhan with the acting and dialogues and of course daddy Javed with lyrics.
The Akhtar movies have mostly centered around relationships, especially friendship and how vital it is to our lives. The movie is spun around Kabir Dewan (Abhay Deol), Arjun Saluja(Hrithik Roshan) and Imran (Farhan Akhtar). Kabir is in the construction business and has just proposed to an interior designer Natasha (Kalki Koechlin). As part of his bachelor party, he wants to execute the pact they had made while in college. A pact that will make them try an adventure sport of each one’s choice while not revealing it to the other till the moment, which leads them to Spain. Arjun,the financial broker, comes in reluctantly while Imran, the writer has no such hassles.
The first sport is Kabir’s choice, where they meet Laila (Katrina Kaif) a diving instructor. Arjun is not very thrilled by the choice but Laila guides him through the experience. At the end of the dive, Arjun gets very emotional and feels liberated. They soon become friends and accompany her to the Tomatina festival. Amidst all the fun and frolic, Natasha crashes into the happy party, creating a sticky situation. Laila gets Arjun out of his shell and he learns to let go…and becomes more relaxed. This sets a start to their relationship as well.
Next choice is Arjun’s which Imran is petrified of doing, but does it anyways. Post this, they set out to fulfill Imran’s choice, which is seriously life-threatening but has to be done in order to liberate themselves totally. It dawns on them that this is their only chance to live and with the friends that they are and go ahead to enjoy themselves.
The movie does remind you of DCH, but only in the friendship angle and the road trip. Each character has its own insecurities and demons to handle, but it lets you feel that they are after all human. These are the people we all are.
Through the entire story, Farhan exhibits excellent comic timing and light heartedness. Hrithik is stuck-up initially but loosens up towards the end. Abhay plays the perfect balance and is quite goofy himself. Katrina is content being a part of the story and is not in the limelight. Music by Shankar- Ehsaan - Loy is calming and soothing to the ear, and refreshing.The entire journey makes u want to pack your bags and holiday with your buddies.
My rating: 4/5 – Only for all the men in this movie – this is going to make for one of my favorite movies of the year
Delhi Belly is an Aamir Khan production and stars Imran Khan as Tashi,Vir Das as Arup and Kunal Roy Kapur as Nitin. Add to this is Shenaz as Sonia and Tashi’s girlfriend.
Tashi,Arup and Nitin are flat mates and always try to pass on responbilities of the household to each other. Even something as simple as opening the door to visitors and keeping buckets in place to fill water. And they are behind the rent schedule (nothing new). Sonia drops in to let Tashi know that he needs to meet her parents that afternoon for lunch and meanwhile drop off a package for a friend. Tashi delegates it to Nitin. Nitin meanwhile falls sick after eating some road side fare and hands over the package to Arup.
Trouble sets in when Arup switches the package with the stool sample from Nitin. The package was diamonds smuggled into the country for a local don. Tashi meanwhile gets chased and shot at by colleague Menaka’s(Poorna Jagannathan) ex-husband and ruins his newly gifted Santro.
Sonia gets kidnapped and the goons need the diamonds as ransom. Just when they had sold it and got a lot of money for it. They attempt to steal it back, in order to release Sonia. A very staged gunfight later, all the bad guys are killed and the trio with Sonia are miraculously alive. Has to be, it’s a Bollywood movie after all.
The movie is written with language that maybe alien to most of the audience. Has a gross factor in some scenes and swearing that comes matter-of-factly to the cast. It is fast paced and perfect for the multiplex audience.
My rating:3.5/5
I am is yet another Onir creation. It’s more in the critical acclaim category than for commercial. Onir casts his favorites: Rahul Bose, Sanjay Suri, Juhi Chawla
Movie has 4 parts, each with a story of its own.
Afia (Nandita Das) wants to have a baby desperately, only to find that her husband is going to divorce her shortly. Shattered but determined, opts of artificial insemination. Against warnings from friends, goes ahead to know the sperm donor (Purab Kohli) at a personal level. Her anxiety in knowing his personality and family, sort of makes him go on a backfoot, which is not explained well.
Megha(Juhi Chawla) returns to Kashmir to sell off her ancestral property. She meets her long time neighbours (Manisha Koirala), who wants Megha to remember her past in Kashmir. All that Megha remembers and is hurt by is the fact that her Kashmiri Pandit family were forced to flee and wants to have no connections with the place now.
Abhimanyu(Sanjay Suri) is a photographer and is a victim of child abuse. His step father is dying and his mother wants him to be home one last time. She doesn’t know the true nature of the relationship between her second husband and her son as she thinks everything was rosy from her view. Only when he gathers up the courage to go meet her, it is too late. She also doesn’t believe him on the abuse. What is portrayed is very subtle and not in your face to scandalize you.
Omar (Rahul Bose) is gay and a chance encounter with a wannabe actor (Arjun Mathur) gets him into trouble. They get caught by a cop and he ends up coughing up a huge amount of money. He doesn’t know he has been duped till he meets Arjun again at a later point in time.
The story ends with this episode without a typical climax. Nevertheless, well written and keeps you engrossed.
My rating: 3/5
Vinay Pathak as Bharat Bhushan is back. This time around he is on a reality show like KBC and is the lucky winner. He is very impressed with the Exec Producer of the show Ranjini (Minnissha Lamba), and kind of owes his success on the show to her. He wins a weekend cruise,and the simpleton that he is, is impressed with the hospitality. The cruise also has the fraudulent business tycoon Ajit Talwar (K K Menon) on-board, who discovers that Bharat Bhushan is an IT inspector. Now all that Ajit wants to do to Bharat Bhushan is get rid of him so that he doesn’t get caught for IT frauds. After a series of miss-haps, Ajit and Bharat end up on a deserted island and need to find a way out. Enroute, they meet a monkey which steals Ajit’s trousers. They use his underwear as a flag to attract attention. And at nightfall, end up walking into Amole Gupte (Raghu Burman), who is obsessed with his mom, love of his life and a radio that doles out songs on AIR. He has a fixed time table and a gun and is ready to shoot down any trespasser. They try to make a phone call in his house for rescue and end up blowing it up. Somewhere in this melee, Suresh Menon (Bharat’s boss) who is righteous as ever ends up on the marooned island to arrest Ajit. By this time, they are spotted and all’s well that ends well.
The story is very sketchy and the easy humour in the Bheja Fry 1 is just missing. Ends up too stressful for on the audience, which has not accepted this well.
My rating: 2/5
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara directed by Zoya Akhtar is smooth and effortless on the viewer. It brings the entire Akhtar family together in their various specialties. Zoya with her direction, Farhan with the acting and dialogues and of course daddy Javed with lyrics.
