Movie Review: Bullet Raja

It sounded like a cool pairing – the darkly fun Tigmanshu Dhulia, coming off Paan Singh Tomar and Saheb Biwi and Gangster Returns, in collaboration with Saif Ali Khan as a pulpy goonda. It pains me to say that despite a few isolated fun moments, Bullet Raja is a stale and forgettable movie.

I love Tigmanshu Dhulia. I love that he'll go to any extent to craft a funny line, and he really knows how to construct Virat Hindu Villains. Having said that, his latest movie has a crossroad. On one hand you could call Bullet Raja better than most Simbly South remake style movies because it avoids the grating visual tackiness of that genre. On the other hand you could call this film the worst Dhulia flick because it takes a clever concept and does nothing with it.

Here the hero Raja is an Uttar Pradesh ka goonda, a bearded, henna dyed, Bullet-riding, chick magnet macho man. Raja sucks at love, plots revenge, and well, let's just say Bullet Raja doesn't exactly work as a throwback or as a dark comedy thriller. And as pulpy entertainment it fares even worse. The movie is called Bullet Raja and the hero never does anything awesome with his Royal Enfield or his revolver’s bullets. Saif plays the cocksure swaggerer, with Jimmy Shergil as his bestie, together they are a UP goonda gang and they wander from place to place, perpetually doing gangstergiri. On paper this should work, but it doesn’t. Saif and Shergill are forever mumbling and snoring their way through the movie, and it doesn’t help in making us care for this unexciting duo. There’s Ravi Kishan who dresses up as a woman while having sex with another woman in a saree - and stuff like this fails to both funny and pulpy. Every UP-wale-daakoo character waddles onto the screen and snoozes through the set pieces.

At times we'll be offered doses of Dhulia’s clever one liners, but they’re offset by the wearisome look of the film. Lensed in bland shots (in which some characters speak directly into the camera with grim faces), Bullet Raja is one hell of a dry looking movie. Combine the dreary visual style with a deafening tone that pretty much reeks of Prabhudeva’s masterpieces, this movie is the textbook definition of a stillborn action comedy. It has no rhythm or panache or any trace of the naughtiness found in Dhulia’s earlier films. There's a superficial backbone about Raja trying to find a job and being forced into goondagardi but it exists only as a coat hanger on which to hang a random and disjointed series of skits. Toss in an excessively horrendous score by Sajid-Wajid and you're looking at one hot mess of a movie.

Did I laugh a few times? Absolutely. There’s a scene where Saif escapes his chaser by jumping through a glass window and people around him stand and clap. Give Dhulia a word document and put Saif on the camera for two and a half hours and you're bound to find a few giggles from the footage. But the laughs delivered in this film are painfully few and far in between. For the amount of entertainment that Bullet Raja has to offer I'd say it's more worthy of a lazy TV watch. Once all the boring ‘backstory’ bits are dealt with in the first half you'll be treated to a short series of dialogue baazi that doubles as action sequences – Saif vs Chunky Pandey, Saif vs Raj Babbar, Saif vs Vipin Sharma. And after Sonakshi Sinha’s Bong actress moves in with Saif and Shergill after having met them once, the film gets all deep and serious as if it expects you to find and extract one sincere drop of emotion from these terribly written characters.

Saif struts through the movie under the impression that acting is optional in this movie. We’ve seen what he is capable of in Omkara, and he was pretty darn good in Ek Haseena Thi – he is miscast in this role because he just can’t pull off a showy gun trotting slightly OTT gangsta without going into the farcical zone. As for Sonakshi, after seeing her nuanced performance in Lootera it looked like she was moving beyond the cash grabby roles but Bullet Raja marks her worst performance to date. The very pretty Vidyut Jamwal wanders through the film doing Kung Fu Karate kicks, careful to never take the spotlight away from the camera-hogging superstar hero. And if there's one universal rule of filmmaking it is this - when you get Gulshan Grover in your movie, you better give the guy some good material to work with. Bullet Raja manages to make even Gulshan Grover seem tedious, and for that I dislike the film even more. But it'll take more than one disaster before I wash my hands of Dhulia. Let's just call this one a small mistake and wait for his next great film. 

(First published in Firstpost)

Frances Ha

Imagine if Jim Jarmusch and Woody Allen got together and made a movie. That progeny would be a lot like what Frances Ha is. The film has Jarmusch’s trademark coffee and cigarettes approach to the postmodern psycho-social youth subculture, with Allen’s wonderfully buoyant and neurotic air, along with director Noah Baumbach’s own unmistakable sensitive touch.

Starring Greta Gerwig in her breakthrough role, Frances Ha is for everyone and anyone who would like to gain some perspective on their own life through a film. On that front Baumbach has pretty much made a movie for every twenty-something in Bombay. Gerwig’s character Frances is in her late twenties, and is struggling to get her life in order. Like so many young folks in Versova she chose to take the 'artistic' route rather than the corporate one, and is naturally scuffling to find any firm ground and draft a career. 

Baumbach does a cool job of developing the perceptual problems of Frances’ stagnant life and her inability to achieve any focus or independence. People in their late twenties are supposed to be settled but Frances is unable pay her rent. She struggles to grow up as a person and is so attached to her best friend and roomie Sophie that she is unable to process anything when the latter decides to move out. She has to face the realization of suddenly being too old to date someone in their early twenties. She has to deal with the fact that her close friends are moving on with their lives and leaving her behind. She has to digest the bitter irony of being single while facing the eventuality of her roomie getting married.

The best part is all these seemingly depressing themes are established with humor and Gerwig’s lovable persona and her terrific comic timing. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments to complement the icky sweet and the tear jerking ones. Not to mention the lovely black and white NY landscapes to gawp at.

Gerwig and Baumbach are in a relationship in real life and it’s fun to wonder how much of the film was based on her own life’s experiences. So many of Gerwig's previous movies have been meta, including the mumblecore long distance relationship dramedy Nights and Weekends and the highly underrated Lola Versus. There are very few movies of this genre that have a protagonist which exudes sympathy without exacting kitsch, and Baumbach and Gerwig deserve brownie points for that. It's also a rare movie that ends on a hopeful note that doesn’t feel like a contrived life lesson. The film may be set in New York but the Bombay parallels are simply too obvious, and Frances Ha is really a piece of art for Bombayites who can project their own experiences onto it. It’s their own personal little film.

(First published in DNA)

Movie Review: The Hunger Games Catching Fire

The Twilight movies teach young girls to like terrible books, believe in an unrealistic and ridiculous definition of love, run away from problems, and depend on some guy to save them.

Katniss Everdeen teaches young girls to NOT believe in some ridiculous definition of love, but instead stand on their own feet, face their fears and kick copious amounts of ass. Hunger Games is the teenage franchise that teenagers SHOULD see.

The first Hunger Games had a lot going for it, but a lot against it too. The sequel Catching Fire fixes everything that was wrong with the first film. Unncessary shaky camera? Sorted – the new director Francis Lawrence goes out of his way to make the imagery in this film more fluid and watchable. The boring Liam Hemsworth side character? He’s shafted into a decently established space this time around. The uncharismatic Josh Hutcherson? He’s finally given better lines and he’s discovered some much needed screen presence. The budget is amped up as well, and the fire on Katniss’ dress no longer looks like a cheesy hand drawn doodle. 

As for everything that was good about the first film, it gets even better and more interesting in the second one. The various themes of nihilism, dystopia, the failure of humanity as a civilization and its voyeuristic obsession with violent debauched reality TV entertainment are significantly better established in Catching Fire. Moreover, the hunger games themselves are bigger, more dangerous, far broader in scope and better shot (with IMAX cameras no less). And there’s the heroic, ethereal presence of Jennifer Lawrence, perfect in every way, oozing massive talent, shooting arrows and truly becoming the role model for young girls to look up to. She’s unstoppable on screen as she is off screen, and like Katniss she’s leading a revolution against the tyranny of bullshitty literature like 50 shades of Gray and Twilight.

The book itself is a sort of a filler that leads to the third and final chapter Mockingjay, but Catching Fire holds your attention despite its two and a half hour runtime. One big reason why it works and stands apart from the rest of the big franchises of the year is that it spends almost an hour on character development, and tries decently hard to avoid the cliches. The other contestants have some personality this time, best of which is the foul mouthed Jena Malone who shares one utterly hilarious moment in an elevator with Lawrence. It’s great that the film works as pure sci fi, and as a teen centric escapist entertainment, and as a blokbuster and as fodder for the Jlaw GIF lovers. And it’s cool that it’s not in 3D. And it ends with Coldplay’s Atlas, which perfectly encapsulates the haunting mood of the film. 

(First published in MiD Day)

Movie Review: Frozen

Since Disney bought Pixar, two things have happened – the Disney films have become better and better while the Pixar films have become significantly worse. Whether you take that as a blessing in disguise for Disney or as a tragedy for Pixar is up to you, but with Frozen one thing is for sure – Disney is back in a big way.

Without a doubt, Frozen is Disney’s most visually spectacular and enjoyable film since 1994’s The Lion King. It’s obviously not as good as the latter, but it is way more entertaining than 2010’s fun Tangled. The film finally achieves what Disney had been trying in the last two decades – it finds the right balance between the nostalgia of the old Disney films and characters and forging some new ground into narrative and style. Plus as a bonus you get to see an amazing Mickey Mouse 3D short film before the movie begins.

Like most Disney films the plot contains a kingdom, a princess, a mysterious handsome prince, an everyman of a hero, ‘true love’, a supernatural curse, half a dozen songs, quirky perpetually smiling good natured side characters, not so subtle life lessons and lots of ice. Every element of Frozen has been done before but directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee find that sweet spot between a throwback and the contemporary, thanks to some great characters, dialogue and truly outstanding visuals, demonstrating that good writing and not just CGA makes for a good animation film.

What makes Frozen so refreshingly different from the rest of the Disney cannon is that the filmmakers challenge the viewers’ expectations and as a result there is no central antagonist in the film. There are no evil Wazirs or shady sorcerers or witches to make the hero fight against, instead Frozen plays out like a fun character based comedy-drama with a tinge of adventure thrown in. And surprisingly it works this time, despite the fact that a similar tactic used by Pixar in Brave failed. More importantly, for the first time in years, a Disney movie managed to pass the Bechdel test. 

The lack of a villain is counterbalanced by a terrific voice cast including Kristin Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff and Alan Tudyk – because they aren’t big stars it enables you to invest in their characters rather than constantly and jarringly be reminded that a recognizable big movie star is voicing some computer puppet. The filmmakers also subvert the old good-vs-evil storytelling gambit with a grown up, astute sensibility and yet is still fun enough to keep the kids entertained. There’s plenty of jaw dropping large scale animation, which is not terrible in 3D but will most definitely be better in 2D. This has been a pretty very weak year for CG animation movies and Disney shows them all who the boss is. Watch it on the most gigantic screen that you can find.

(First published in MiD Day)