Movie Roundup

Haven’t been writing a lot lately, so thought I would summarize my views of some of the movies I have watched in the last 3-4 months. How’ve y’all been?

How To Train Your Dragon

Excellent movie! Extremely adorably, excellent screenplay, great characters and some wonderful animation. Not the usual kids acting beyond their shoes lamentation in any part, no pity when something sad happens, and no masochism when something big is done. Everything that happens, happens smoothly. And that’s the beauty of the movie. The Night Fury dragon’s character, just as much as Hiccups, the kids and the Vikings in general, was a delight. I can keep gushing about how much fun it was to watch the movie, but I would let you go and enjoy the movie yourself. And by the way, watch it in good quality 3D if you have an option.

Badmaash Company

Decent, but suffers from the usual Indian problem. No closure. We drag everything to infinity and beyond, but not the way Buzz Lightyear does. Many of our movies are known to have a great start (like Sehwag) but seem to falter somewhere in the middle (like Ravindra Jadeja). I liked the first 40-odd minutes of the movie reasonably fine, which was just about the time the director decided to put the same print in spools. The pace of getting through the cons was a drag, and so was the high pitched melodrama. Surprisingly, Chang  (of Indian Idol fame) was not too bad, though most of the jokes on him were about his chinese face/origins. Anushka seemed to be in a hurry to change her image. Her entire first half presence is dedicated to wearing dresses that break the Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi mould, and the smooch sequence is the final frontier in Bollywood these days. Vir Das is ok. Anupam Kher and Pawan Malhotra are wasted largely. So is Kiran Juneja (the Ganga of B.R. Chopra’s Mahabharat). Worst though is Shahid Kapoor. He needs to have a middle name starting with R, so that he can also start calling himself SRK. Hamming like a rooster, his acting skills seem smaller than the size of a pimple on the butt of a mosquito (that’s a phrase borrowed from one of my bosses). Anyways, its not so bad that its not watchable on DVD/ cable TV, but should be avoided in theatres, unless you are watching it with the comfort of a large recliner sofa.

Ironman-2

Not sure why some of the fanboys seemed to have loved the movie. The movie is far too patchy for my taste. And as Anand said after we walked outta the theater, there is no epic crisis in the movie, which is essential for a superhero movie. You don’t want to watch a total of 3 minute conflict/exchange between the superhero and the epic villain who is almost about threatening to unleash 50 Ironmen on the mumbling (Robert Downey) Jr. Ironman. More so, when it ends with a lame dialogue like – “you lose”. Someone like me can still manage to enjoy bits of the movie, and not feel completely cheated, but I do not see how most people would like it. It has a bad screenplay, some fairly average editing, some great action sequences, and a lot of patchy technological brilliance thrown in here and there. Watch it if you are a comics lover.

Housefull

Arrgh! Why do I agree to watch such movies? Why didn’t I learn from Hey Babyyyy (did I get the number of ‘y’s correct)? Anyways, the long story short is that I took the plunge because 7-8 of us from the office were going together, and the idea seemed fine. For such mindlessness, you need the comfort of numbers. However, not good enough. Housefull is full of such inanities and ridiculous sequences that even mayhem would feel threatened sitting in the theater. The jokes are not funny, and actors far too many and wasted, the usual gags of gay-ism and mistaken identities, make your life miserable. But what Sajid does in the last 15 minutes of the movie is a housefull of idiocy. Why would you make a stump-faced Arjun Rampal try and act under the influence of laughing gas. That good looking goofball cannot act normal scenes. Knowing the limitation of your team doesn’t seem like a skill that directors have these days. Anyways, Sajid Khan has an extremely long and idiotic 15 minute sequence which is an attack on the not-so-discerning senses of people like me. Yet, I know, and know it really well, that the movie would do great business. As Dodi and I were discussing yesterday, we no longer represent the average audience in our tastes, especially when it comes to identifying hits and misses. Though, to my credit, I knew “Wanted” was going to be a rage the moment I saw its first trailer.

A couple of other movies of note –

Wanted! Please watch it if you haven’t. But watch it with a sense of detachment that you can’t have when you are watching a Karan Johar movie. And you’ll love it. I would have loved to see it in theater, but I missed it. Loved it on TV as well. I wonder why Ayesha Takia did not become more successful. She seems quite decent, especially when I look at the competition we have to suffer.

Karthick Calling Karthick – quite a decent one time watch, though the pace of the way is way too erratic. And again, this is a movie which could have been 20 minute shorter with good editing.

Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge – I liked it. Light, Hrishikesh Mukherjee kinds. Some of the gags are old, but some of them are quite refreshing. Paresh Rawal is brilliant, and Ajay Devgn and Konkona Sen Sharma don’t disappoint either. Definitely, a decent DVD/TV watch.