Left to right: Leena, Omi, Vicky, and Esha. Now what does that spell?
I will admit that I don’t expect a lot from unsubtitled 80s movies, but this was awfully sweet. I can’t pretend that I understood everything that happened, but the basic plot was standard, and sound effects alerted me if anything dramatic was happening. Leena and Esha (Neelam) are sisters, whose mother, Lakshmi (Tanuja) wants them to get married to rich men with prestigious jobs. She isn’t interested in anything irrelevant like her daughters’ happiness and she’ll stop at nothing to get them to do exactly what she wants. She’s just a wonderful evil bitch, I loved it.
SHAHID! You’re back! Finally! This movie is a beautiful thing for any Shahid Kapoor fan who has been waiting years to see him in anything good*. It’s completely his movie. It’s Sashapalooza. He’s in almost every frame, making faces and emoting and I laughed my pants off.
*Are there any other kinds of Shahid Kapoor fans? The lucky ones who don’t know he did anything besides Jab We Met?
I have no idea why this is getting bad reviews. It was hilarious. There wasn’t a big crowd at the theater, but everyone seemed to be really enjoying it, so it was a lot of fun. I’m still confused by their trend of showing a post-intermission trailer-- I’m not sure if that’s an Eros thing or what, but we got Krrish 3, which was cool on the big screen. At least it wasn’t the horrible mood-killer that the Bajatey Raho trailer was in the middle of Lootera.
Shahid Kapoor plays Vishwas Rao, whose widowed mother Savitri (Padmini Kolhapure) has only one dream: to see her only son become an honest police officer. Vishwas, naturally, has only one dream as well-- he wants to be a film star. Despite this, they are close and their relationship is very sweet. (They have a song!) Padmini has the filmi maa thing DOWN, by the way. She has all the appropriate feelings, all the right dialogues, everything turned up to 11, but she’s still a unique character with backstory and everything. Plus she’s always ready to tuck in her sari and go after thugs when necessary. When you come down to it, their relationship is what drives the film and both Shahid and Padmini are excellent in portraying their slightly silly, but ultimately good characters. Honestly, it’s one of the most enjoyable family dynamics I’ve seen on screen in a while. Savitri has dreams for her son, but really she just wants him to be happy. Vishwas isn’t a mama’s boy, but he’d still do anything for her just because she’s his maa and he loves her. This does mean that the romance track in the movie kind of takes a backseat, but that’s okay. It’s a lot more satisfying to see the hero in emotional turmoil over the plight of the mother instead of the girl who randomly jumped on the back of his scooter at the beginning of movie.
I can’t find a subtitled version on youtube, but the primary lyrics go something like
“I am so irresistible, all the girls love me, etc. etc.,”
“BECAUSE. . . My pants are sexy, my shirt is sexy, my hair is sexy, my walk* is sexy, my handkerchief is sexy toooooo.”
*so far as I can tell, whenever a Hindi song rhapsodizes about the qualities of anyone’s “chal”, they do in fact mean the person’s butt.
Also, you can’t tell from the youtube version, but Govinda’s sexy shirt has little mesh cut-out panels for extra sexy.
Anyway, this song is reason enough to watch the movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, you are MISSING OUT. It’s Govinda-riffic. It’s 90s-tastic. It is spectacular*.
*My roommates, who were alternately horrified and amused by this movie, complained, but since they kept coming back to see more, it’s hard to take them seriously.
Sometimes, I watch a movie with lots of expectations, and it falls short. Sometimes, I don’t expect anything, and I’m pleasantly surprised. And sometimes, all I want is a movie where there are female characters who exist for reasons besides being constantly threatened with rape. This was not it.
See all the awesome in this picture? It lies. Don't watch this movie.
Wanted seemed like just the thing. Salman, beating people up! Something flashy that did well at the box office!. The song after the opening fight scene is an energetic, silly dance number, with special appearances from Anil Kapoor, Govinda, and Prabhudeva (who directed).
Wanted is a remake of the Telugu movie Pokiri, which I have absolutely zero interest in seeing now. Salman Khan plays a generic badass-for-hire, who frequently and dramatically beats people up. Ayesha Takia is the love interest, who has her own problems with a creepy-ass policeman stalker. The characters have names, but I don’t remember and I’d rather not watch the movie again to find them out. Ayesha and Salman are pretty adorable together. It’s hilarious to watch her get more pushy and outspoken as she spends more time with Salman’s bad-ass character. It’s just too bad it’s so rapey. Go watch Bodyguard instead. It’s also terrible, but much more watchable and plus Salman loses his shirt to a fire hose.
Also, Ayesha as Madhubala in an appliance store. Honestly, the first 20 minutes are worth it for the fight scene, this meet-cute, and the Jalwa song.
I mean, it was still completely worth the ticket price. I really enjoyed it. But it ended up being a lot more pedestrian than I had been hoping. I watched Cocktail in April, and I was so impressed by Deepika that I really started looking forward to this movie, but she didn’t have a lot of room to do much. Post-interval it was all Ranbir, Ranbir, Ranbir. He got all the good choreography, all the montage songs, and all the backstory, but it didn't really make me like his character any better.
I don’t want to discount the flashy stuff, though. Most importantly, MADHURI ON THE BIG SCREEN!
I’m not sure why they stuck the song right at the beginning of the movie, or why Farah Khan couldn’t come up with something a little fancier for Madhuri, but that’s not important. This and Balam Pichkari are my runaway favorites, but the entire soundtrack is great, all the dancing is flashy, and all the outfits are glamorous.
(Translation: Love is Crazy). And crazy it is, man. I didn’t know anything about the movie before I watched it. It had Rani and Govinda, and "pyaar" written in pastel colors of the cover. For the most part, it's what it says on the tin: sentimental romance, unabashed filminess and some great dancing. Then it gets a little weird. More on that later.
Sunder (Govinda) is an artist who moves to Delhi from the country and his friends make fun of him for being naive and uneducated. He gets a job painting billboards and meets Payal (Rani Mukherjee) who’s visiting from the US. There’s a misunderstanding, she thinks he’s mute, and he keeps up the charade so he can keep seeing her.
And who can blame him? I really liked Payal. She does classical dance, she climbs up scaffolding to meet a sign painter, she drives herself to Agra in the middle of the night. When she’s struck with pity for a beggar, she sets him up with a telephone stand, and when she finds out he’s faked his disability, she has him tossed in jail. She’s the one who decides that what she feels for Sunder is love, not sympathy, and calmly tells her family of her decision to marry him.
Plus, Rani is peppy and gorgeous and has great chemistry with Govinda.
This review just descends into self-indulgent screencapping from here.
Just another to add to the list of crappy movies I watch because Shahid Kapoor is in them. Shahid and Priyanka Chopra play triple roles of 3 different couples in 3 different time periods. The problem, of course, is that there’s no actual plot, or anything linking the three stories. They get together for no discernible reason, and then something stupid happens to keep them apart. The songs are good, and everything looks really nice, so it's not a complete loss, just a disappointment.
We start with 1960s Mumbai. Shahid is a musician, Priyanka is an actress. She’s very pretty.
2010s London. They are young, and hip. They drink beer. They text, and tweet, and facebook.
I feel embarrassed to even own a cell phone
Yeah, this was a song where the text-speak lyrics go dancing across the screen. It was pretty awful.
The 1910s segment is this close to actually having a plot, and was the most fun besides. Shahid looks just as realistic as the muscle-bound casanova of Lahore as Priyanka does holding a goat and swinging around her hair extensions, but you know, they’re pretty, so who cares. We aren’t in this for the story at this point.
Besides horrible poetry, Shahid finally gets to dance, and we can spend an enjoyable five minutes watching him waggle his pelvis all over creation.
This is where I thought we would find some sort of theme for the movie, some connection between the three stories. We don’t. Their reunions are just as contrived as their separations, and I didn’t see the universality in their relationships that I assume the director intended. It's really disappointing that the script gives us no reason to care about any of the 6 characters in the movie, because I would have really enjoyed a grand love story with Shahid and Priyanka. When they have the right material, I really like them. This movie is just so shallow, and not in a fun, Dostana way. Just a wasted potential way.
