Movie : 'Ugly Aur Pagli'

Producer: Rangita Pritish Nandy, Pritish Nandy
Director: Sachin Kamlakar Khot
Cast: Ravir Shorey, Mallika Sherawath, Manish Anand, Tinu Anand, Sushmita Mukherjee, Vihang Nayak, Bharti Achrekar, Sapna Bhavnani
Music: Anu Malik

A romantic comedy that starts with a fart and a puke joke can only get better as it progresses. Sure enough, 'Ugly Aur Pagli' brings us a kind of detoxicated sex comedy where the gender war is telescoped into a vivacious tongue-in-shriek war of words between an outwardly mismatched pair.

Suparn Verma's dialogues have a lived-in quality. Yup, two young people who are in love but don't know it would speak this language and probably feel some of the emotions too.

If 'Ugly Aur Pagli' looks so believably all-there, it's because of Ranvir Shorey's ability to remain normal and wimpish even when the world around him is exploding into little amusing atoms of undefined chemistry between the lead pair.

But lead pair is more like the 'misled' pair. Often you wish Ranvir and Mallika wouldn't get into those sweaty pubs and dance floors, which have become a staple diet of all 'hip' and 'cool' films in recent times.

A lot of the scenes - some clever, others not quite - are held in place by Ranvir's amazing ability to make the mundane look super-interesting.

Here's the ideal effortless working-class hero. An Amol Palekar with a lot of chutzpah and world weary charm. Ranvir steps back to watch Mallika cavort at the highest shrillest pitch and makes sure she doesn't stumble over and fall.

And we aren't just talking about the character's constant state of inebriation. Ranvir holds up a lot more than his co-star's drunken ceaselessly slumping figure.

The film is a series of well-crafted chance encounters between two Mumbaiites who are in search of companionship. The sequences are shot with a kind of unobtrusive flamboyance(if that isn't a contradiction in terms). Mumbai doesn't look different but it sure looks indifferent to the feelings of the sensitive. That's the whole idea of a familiar metropolitan backdrop, right?

Ideally a romantic comedy should converge only on the two love birds. This one takes the rule too its extreme limit. Ranvir and Mallika are so much at the centre of it all, you wonder if the rest of the world is on a sabbatical. But watch out for Ranvir's encounter with Mallika's parents - played by Tinu Anand and Sushmita Mukherjee.

Though this sequence belongs to the two character actors, again, it's Ranvir who gives character to the ambience. Would this sometimes sassy, sometimes sensitive, constantly searching romantic comedy have worked without Ranvir's penchant for producing pyrotechnics out of pedestrian working-class impulses? Hard to say.

But then who can say what 'Ugly Aur Pagli' has in mind? By the end of it all we don't even know who is ugly and who is mad. 'Ugly' Ranvir even wears a petticoat for one sequence and cycles all the way to pagli's home.

Care to solve the mystery of the man-woman equation? This film has a go at it. Albeit in swipes of talkative satire that make the film resemble an American sitcom.

Movie: 'Maan Gaye Mughal-e-Azam'

Producer: Champak Jain, Ganesh Jain, Ratan Jain
Director: Sanjay Chhel
Cast: Rahul Bose, Mallika Sherawat, Paresh Rawal, Kay Kay Menon, Pawan Malhotra, Zakir Hussain, Manoj Tiwari
Music: Anu Malik

This film means to be quirky, cute and comical. It ends up being a crashing bore. And the sound of the crash that you hear could be those plaster-of-paris props that adorn the stage where the cast enacts the worst version of K. Asif's imperishable romance 'Mughal-e-Azam' ever conceived.

As often happens, the film must have sounded so much better on paper. All the accomplished actors who constitute the vast cast must have got the joke and agreed to do this intended satire about the goofy adventures of a stage troupe during the week of the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

Alas, Asif weeps in his grave. And so do we.

This is a political satire combined with a naughty comment on theatrical infidelity with Paresh's sexy wife Mallika being wooed by a smitten Rahul (suitably wide-eyed and far removed from his Mallika-driven affections in 'Pyar Ke Side Effects').

Is this a theatrical film on play-acting? Or is it meant to be a cinematic interpretation of theatrical hi-jinks? Be that as it may, while Kay Kay goes from 'Black Friday' to goofy Friday, Mallika (god bless her costume designers) goes from 'Murder' to blue murder. Watching her do a re-mix of 'Pyar kiya to darna kya', Madhubala must be smirking in her grave.

If Mallika's 'Murder' on infidelity was a path-breaker (at least as far as sexual audacity goes) her attempts to flirt from the pokey stage with her besotted spectator right under her suspicious husband's watchful eyes can at best be described as 'Pati Patni Aur Woh' gone to the dogs.

Chhel has always been a capable wordsmith. As a director, he had his polished moments in 'Khubsoorat' where Sanjay Dutt turned ugly duckling Urmila Matondkar into a swan.

One is never sure if Mallika is the duck or swan in 'Maan Gaye Mughal-e-Azam'. All one knows at the end of this horrifically hammy ode to a hammy theatre company's outrageous attempts to save Mumbai from the underworld (yeah, but who saves us from this film?) is that there is no more than perhaps seven minutes of bonafide humour in the entire tale.

The dialogues are either dreadfully double-meaning or primary school gags. RDX and R.D. Burman are equated for laughs. But the film has neither Burman's melodiousness now the explosive quality of RDX.

Movie:'Singh is Kinng'

Producer: Vipul Shah
Director: Anees Bazmee
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Neha Dhupia, Javed Jaffrey, Ranvir Shorey, Kamal Chopra, Singh, Om Puri
Music: Pritam Chakraborty

Burp re burp! At last a thali filled to the brim with spicy, pickled, 'ghar ka khaana' fried in the sinfully calorie-filled desi ghee prepared in the heartland of Punjab and then imported to the West. Crocodile Pug-Dundee, anybody?

At last, a blast. Dunno if Singh is king with two 'n's or not. But he sure is entertaining. Damn entertaining. This film is one of those feasts of flurry that leave the on-the-run characters and the audience breathless. Chalk up another winner for Akshay Kumar.

As the 'happy-go-looking' Happy Singh who leaves his village in Punjab to look for a colleague who has disappeared into Australia, Akshay is a revelation. He is strong and vulnerable, funny and tragic. He's Charlie Chaplin and Jim Carrey rolled into one.

'Happy' Akshay Kumar's mission is simple. Get Lucky. And boy, does he!

As Lucky Singh, Sonu Sood - all spruced up and dapper-dolled in Australia - has to stay risibly inert for half the film as he goes into a coma and is replaced by fellow villager Happy Singh as the new underworld don.

The film, its plot and characters are a crazy, adrenaline-induced rush of caricatures and other spaced-out creatures.

To his credit, writer-director Anees Bazmi retains the broad raillery of his earlier hit 'Welcome' but abandons the slapstick and ribaldry to style one of most disarming comedies in recent times.

The plot is cluttered with the most elementary action and adventure in the incredulous tone of 'Crocodile Dundee' goes from Punjab to the land of the Aussie-rans. Akshay takes care of the rest.

Adapting his comic stance to a patently comic-book mood and attitude, Akshay swims through the tittering tides of zany humour to emerge with one of his most finely-tuned comic performances in recent times.

It wouldn't be wrong to call 'Singh is Kinng' a showcase for Akshay's vibrant virtuosity. He goes from being a buffoon in a Punjab village to a native-abroad (with a nubile broad as arresting arm candy in the romantic songs) with the cheerful fluency of a trapeze dancer who knows his territory but still manages to make it look challenging for the onlookers.

Akshay's bravura performance is punctuated by moments of bridled subtlety such as the one where our incredulous hero informs Katrina's nerdy suitor (Ranvir Shorey, wasted) why the lady they both adore must be treated in a special manner.

Bazmi treats his audience as special as Akshay's gentle, caring affections for Katrina. The narration is a pulsating patchwork of goofy crime and culturally-challenged adventure where anything can happen.

A 'rose lady' (Kirron Kher as engagingly broad in her matronly ministrations as ever) pops up in the middle of an Australian suburbia offering 'khana' and 'maa ka pyar' to the 'pyar ka bhooka' Sardar hero.

In all fairness, certain portions of the film are insufferably edited. What in the name of maudlinism are those sequences showing the Sikh dons' benevolence and charity towards Black Australians? Post-colonial Asian snobbery at its slapdash-worst.

Keeping the pretensions out of the plot and focusing on the multiple mirthful masquerades that motivate the amusing plot would have done the general health and wellbeing of this pleasantly-diverting entertainer a wealth of good.

The supporting cast, specially Om Puri is in splendid form, adding fuel to the funny-lines with just that right dash of devilish bravado. Akshay is effortless. The film is not.

What we see here is a big, broad Bollywood entertainer celebrating screen heroism in all its giggling, grunting, groaning glory.

Movie: 'Bachna Ae Haseeno'

Producer: Aditya Chopra
Director: Siddharth Anand
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone, Bipasha Basu, Minissha Lamba
Music: Vishal - Shekhar

Let's get real. Commitment phobia is endemic among 20-something urban yuppies, especially in the metros. Siddharth Anand, a master at depicting urban mores - 'Salaam Namaste', 'Tara Rum Pum' - this time pulls out all stops to expose the suave urbane heel who cannot feel above the waist.

Raj (must Ranbir Kapoor be called that every time?) is a man on the path to redemption. That of course comes later, much later in this elaborate but tightly-edited and engaging comment on the prowling dude's demoniacal insensitivity towards girls who give him the chance to dance into their lives.

Ranbir inadvertently turns the whole concept of romantic love as propagated by Shah Rukh Khan in 'Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge' and its zillion spin-offs on its head. Love now can easily be taken to bed. Though no one is thinking of sleep. Not the characters, not the audience.

The first episode with the starry-eyed Mahee (Minissha Lamba, suitably starry-eyed) is a rather diverting homage to Aditya Chopra's 'DDLJ'. That's a pretty auto-erotic thing to do considering Chopra is this film's producer. But then, you win some when you try to be winsome. Ghar ka khana served up with affection is not unacceptable.

Ranbir and Minissha are pretty much taken through the same Swiss terrain as Shah Rukh and Kajol in the earlier film. Even the circumstances created to bring them together can't be told apart. Except that this boy-man is out to have a 'good' time with the girl who lives in a bubble.

Some of the sassiest, sauciest and smartest lines come in the second overture of this anti-romantic comedy when Ranbir, now 20-something and suitably hormone-driven courts and mates Bipasha with ferocious intensity.

Ranbir has been there, done 'em all. He lives the characters to the 'jilt', swathes the character in the cruelly cool quirks that make utter self-centredness a fashion statement in contemporary societies.

One of the film's most stirring moments is when Bipasha is shown sitting on the steps of her marriage venue in her bridal finery waiting for her bridegroom to turn up, her mehndi getting washed in the rain.

A very Raj Kapoor thing to do in a film that's all about being cool and finally falling flat on one's face when the hero meets his match.

Deepika Padukone as the statuesque but spunky cabbie in Sydney has the shortest feminine presence in this made-to-order Ranbir vehicle. She gets to mouth the best throwaway lines and to hit the commitment-phobic hero where it hurts the most. And we don't mean below the belt.

The director has the guts to show his hero as a man thoroughly exposed in his self-seeking egocentricity. Ranbir doesn't spare the character. He penetrates Raj's nerve-centre and portrays him as a smooth-talking charlatan who's looking for trouble in shapely places.

Ranbir plays the Casanova with just the right dollops of dips and curves. The fact that he has already done it all in an abundant flourish in 'Saawariya' doesn't take away from the sincerity of the performance. Watch his surprise when he sees himself cry after Deepika rejects him. No one has done this before.

There are any number of scenes displaying inspired cinema in this work of cyber-art. The characters are etched with a contemporary air without making them overly illustrative. Bipasha's turn as a wannabe supermodel ready to chuck it all for marriage only to be jilted at the altar is notably powerful.

What the script says about a career women is that sometimes male insensitivity forces their true metier out of a woman. An interesting thought, and one that the narrative holds in place with grace on Bipasha's expressive face.

But the most interesting female character is Deepika's. A self-willed, humorous and gritty cabbie, she drives the Casanova round the bend and beyond. Deepika exudes a reined-in grace. She is the future of Bollywood.

Hiten Paintal, playing that age-old thankless part of the hero's friend, joins the ranks of the natural-born scene-stealing supporters like Ninad Kamath, Kabeer Sadnah and Vishal Singh.

The film has been beautifully shot. The azure blue oceans of Italy form a telling contrast to the bronzed, tanned and probably tattooed actors who clutter the Swiss, Italian and desi locales.

Cleverly crafted and structured to contour the severely flawed characters, 'Bachna Ae Haseeno' is not meant to be a mammoth social comment on love and marriage. But in its own tongue-in-cheek manner it manages to say plenty about life in the fast lane.

How Preity Zinta prepared for 'Heaven On Earth'

The spunky and outspoken actress had to do a lot of preparation to play a character that is in contrast to her real self. In Deepa Mehta’s Heaven On Earth , Preity plays a meek, submissive Punjabi wife who is physically and psychologically assaulted by her husband in Canada.

Now, even though Preity is the owner of Punjab’s IPL team, the actress admits she can’t speak Punjabi fluently. But all her dialogues, including long monologues, in the film required Preity to speak the language. So Preity slogged hard, took a crash course in Punjabi, and learnt to speak her dialogues properly after a practice of over one-and-a-half months.

However, this was only half the battle won. Preity, who hasn’t experienced domestic violence in real life, had to get an insight into the lives of wives who suffer violence at the hands of their husbands.

So she read the relevant books (including ‘The Woman Who Walked Into Doors’ by Roddy Doyle). She also saw a documentary by Deepa Mehta in which the director interviews kids that saw domestic violence in their homes.

Preity says going through all this material gave her a reference point for her character.

And Preity’s performance has been so terrific in the film that Deepa Mehta has unhesitatingly said that Preity is the most talented actress she has worked with so far. That’s certainly a great compliment coming from a director who has worked with the likes of Shabana Azmi , Nandita Das and Seema Biswas in her past films.

Movie:'Mission Istanbul'

Producer: Ekta Kapoor, Shabbir Boxwala, Shobha, Sunil Shetty
Director: Apoorva Lakhia
Cast: Vivek Oberoi, Zayed Khan, Nikitin Dheer, Shabbir Aluwalia, Shreya Sharan
Music: Anu Malik, Shamir Tandon, Chirantan Bhatt, Mika Singh

Mission Istanbul has some superbly skilful editing. The editor's scissors snip through the material on international terrorism demonstrating a tailor's tight command over size and measurement.

In fact, editor Rajesh Singh's work is so exemplary in the first half, you sort of brace yourself for something grander in the second.

Alas, the pace and sheer velocity of the first half slackens. Post-intermission the plot becomes just another 'two heroes fighting the baddies' film that we have been watching from the time when villains were smugglers and then gangsters. Now they are tycoons in Saville Row suits!

Terrorism goes international with a screenplay that's blessedly free of the amateurism that we have come to associate with cinema on terrorism in our country.

Lakhia and his co-writer Suresh Nair get the politics of terrorism dead-on. And the virility of the Turkish outdoors lends credence to the volatile goings-on.

But one surely can't take such silly liberties in a film that seems to have researched international terrorism with some attention before plunging into the project.

Lakhia knows how to handle vast crowds caught in terrifying insurgent violence. The canvas though crammed with exploding guns and ricocheting power games never loses its vision, momentum and humour.

In a bizarre sequence of comic violence, Vivek Oberoi wrenches off a victim's hands and uses them for hand-print entry into a forbidden area of the terrorist headquarters - the TV channel.

Zayed Khan as a newsreader clearly gets to cross all boundaries of duty. He tackles terrorists and alongside makes room to shake a leg on the dance floor.

The attempt to bring in conventional song-and-dance into a rigorous film on Islamic terrorism is not quite misplaced. Lakhia pulls off the coup with energy and elan. Full credit goes to the film's super action sequences orchestrated by Javed and Aejaz.

Amar Mohile's over-emphatic background score slams in the mood of danger and intrigue.

'Mission Istanbul' works big time as an action thriller. The director creates a mood that swings dangerously between a Hardy Boys adventure and a 'Barkha Dutt in the war zone' kind of news story. That Lakhia pulls it off with a near-effortless outflow of energy is a miracle of sorts.

There is nothing dreamy about this mission. But the subplot about the estranged journalist couple with a romantic song thrown in is as convincing as a devotional song in a beer bar.

There's a time and place for everything and 'Mission Istanbul' gets it right most of the time. The boys are all fully clued into the mood.

Zayed Khan shows remarkable restrain in the most outrageous of situations like the one where Viveik and he share colas and kisses with a 'desi' Lara Croft who may or may not be from the enemy camp.

Vivek Oberoi, with his flowing hair and full-on body language, proves himself a pro at the pyrotechnics. He has a real blast.

Not for the squeamish and certainly not for lovelorn dreamers, 'Mission Istanbul' is a rollercoaster of action, terrorism and revenge that seldom pauses for breath.