Bollywood after a long time

As promised to myself, i am on a streak of bollywood movies. Here are some quick reviews.

Every now and then bollywood throws a movie which completely takes me by surprise. Though it happens only a couple of times a year but when it happens, its a delight.

A Wednesday is one such movie. Under the direction, screenplay and story by Neeraj Pathak ( i have no idea who this guy is), this is an action packed 100 min movie featuring a brilliant cast. My favourite was the character of Jimmy Shergil - angry young man never ceases to amaze the Indian audience and in this case we do not see the anger except in one case, we are just told about it through others and thats what makes it special. Also, it was great to see Anupam Kher in a non comic/non-drama role. Naseer is his usual.

I was watching Satish Kaushik's Roop ki rani Choron ka raaja 2 days ago and somehow i liked that masala movie. I was reminded of a reasonably young Anupam kher inthat one and a wednesday brought the same feeling.

Some masala movies are good like Mr. India, original Don, ab tak 56 etc. While others are too hard to mention.

Next one was the much awaited Dibankar Banerejee's (Khosla ka Ghosla (KKG) fame) Oye lucky lucky oye. A jolly good decent movie even though the expectations were too high because of KKG. On conmen, there has been the disastrous Bunti aur Babli, bluffmaster and other such cases. When compared to those ones OLLO is miles ahead. It is kept simple, plain and a human story. Paresh Rawal is looking good in all three cases and so is Abhay Deol though he could have been better. Add some laughs here and there with a good plot, OLLO is a good watch for one time. The young lucky is brilliant.

Next in line was Madhur Bhandarkar's Fashion. Fashion has a Madhur Bhandarkar stamp all over it. A different story, good in patches but beats me as it is too long to handle. So was page 3 but it had Konkona Sen. I disliked Madhur's movies because of his choice of lead roles - Priaynaka chopra in this one and what-was-her-name in Corporate. Priyanka can not act - first thing first - she is artrificial from scene one to end. In this one the choice of supporting actors is also bad and overall the movie is watchable because of its plot. A self-referential joke adds some joy to me (as i am a big fan of self-referential things).

And other than the above experimental movies, i had to watch a mainstream one and by god one was more than enough. I chose Dostana and it was horrible. There is no dosti from start to end in dostana. There are big flats, florida locations and horrible actors. John Abrahim who i thought was going differently is bad. But the worst performance would still be of Priyanka chopra. I have no idea how or why is she getting all those flicks. Frankly, i was not aware that indian audience will even gulp a gay concept let alone enjoy it, but yet again indian audience has shown that they are down right hypocritic about everything as long as it does not happen to them. A country where inter-caste marriages causes a family to disown their children, i wonder what would happen if a child says to his parents that he is gay.

I checked the ratings and TOI had given OLLO a 3 out of 5, Rab ne bana di Jodi 1.5/5 and i was thinking that wow, TOI has fired its old review staff and taken a good new idea about indian cinema but then came dostana with a 3.5/5 which dashed all my hopes.

The review at mouthshut.com for Rab ne bana di .. reads like this

Rab Ne bana Di Jodi, but hamara kya ?? Hum ne koi gunaah kia hai jo aisi filmein dekhne ko mil rahi hain humein ??

Its good to see that atleast one yash raj movie is getting a beating. Next in line is Dasvidhaniya, khoya khoya chand and a couple more, then i think i will be done watching hindi movies for a good 3-6 more months.