"Mission Mangal" (Hindi Film Review)

ISRO's evolution of the last fifty years since inception couldn't have been better celebrated than the successful Mission Mangalyaan circa 2014. The film "Mission Mangal" captures that exciting milestone in 133 minutes of unbridled entertainment laced with energetic screenplay, peppy starcast and loads of cinematic Pax Indiana that will get animal spirits of "Made in India" back roaring. And who better to drive the narrative than Akshay Kumar, our hero for films with patriotic fervor releasing on national holidays - a metrosexual version of Manoj Kumar!

Director R.Balki, the creative brain behind the film helps director Jagan Shakti pace a well-written script which has a good prologue, middle story and an epic finish which though predictable gives some tense moments before the Mission becomes a success lauded by the world including NASA. But if you were to chronicle the saga of how a resource-starved ISRO built this mission like a bootstrapping startup entrepreneur, you need more cinematic ammunition than just being a minutuaeing National Geographic docu-maker. That is provided by a killer cast of two men and four women (played by the likes of Tapsee Pannu, Nithya Menen, Sonakshi Sinha, Sharmaan Joshi) and the worlds they inhabit (at home and in their minds) - they create a panorama of world views which first limit the mission and later unbottle their true potential for Mission Mars. But Akshay Kumar as Mission Director needs a shepherd to rein in these micro-Indians who run amok with their own agendas - one wants to migrate to NASA, one believes in astrology and was told to avoid Mangal planet if he has to get married, one just wants to pass time to vest superannuation benefits, one just underwent infertility treatment to become a mom, one wants to re-unite with her Army husband and so on. That shepherding is done brilliantly by Vidya Balan, let's call her the master of the project who steers the team to meet the deadlines and the deliverables. With her mercurial and multi-nuanced acting, Vidya Balan steals the show one more time acing up each scene with her own inimitable style - sparkling eyes, face as a pointer and modulation worth its weight in gold. She fights the many battles shown in the film that Indians, argumentative Indians fight every day in life with their biases, fears, doubts, naysaying beliefs, debilitating concepts at home and office - whether it's her son turning to Islam out of blind love of aping AR Rahman or a retiree who sees Mission Mangal as just as a job not as a mission.

Director Jagan Shakti and writer R.Balki must be complimented for creating a multi-layered script that shows India as an improbable bundle of flaws and contradictions to be overcome before anything great can ever be achieved - it is a cinematic feat that makes Space Mission theme seem more colorful and exciting to watch than a tik tok documentary reel. In between there are excursions into astrology (thought not well-explored because Astrologers in India predicted everything from World Wars to World Cup defeat in Semi Finals to Kumaragowda government collapse in Karnataka and are a happy punching bag in the quest for "scientific temper"), parenting (let the new gen be themselves!), call of duty (why any job than serving in army is no less!), bootstrapping (how long ISRO pulls off financial miracles without going public or crowd-funding!)and so on. The film is  nothing short of achieving a miracle in convincing pundits and masses about the odds that ISRO goes through before you see a tense countdown of -15 on live TV. Akshay Kumar has given another fine performance of being a Director who takes all the brickbats on failures and then pats the team when met with success - those one-liner songs of Dev Anand hummed at critical points in the film tell a lot through hidden subtexts, do not miss them! Music by Amit Trivedi gives the exhilarating fuel needed to punctuate the right emotions throughout - one hardly feels a lag moment ever and the subtitles for Hindi is a welcome initiative to ensure nothing lost in translation. Cinematography by Ravi Varma and the VFX are also quite pleasing. A few more outer world shots would have made the film more immersive in experience.

Without explaining the complexity of fuel tanks and orbiters and what goes on in rocket science, the directorial team uses simpler narratives of how the final execution of Mission Mars looks like in the initial scenes to make the audience tether to a surcharge of emotions later and then make them go through the drama and believe some outlandish logic too (like using wolverine clothing for the outer covering and using non-recyclable plastic as light-weight fuel and so on!).

On the whole, the film is immensely watchable and achieves multiple goals of appreciating what ISRO does without sounding theoretical or boring. Hollywood has paid more tributes to NASA  and made space shuttle travel a routine affair! Instead of making looney comic stories about life on moon (like some Telugu films did), this is a good attempt to bridge the gap between Astronomy and Public. A film like this will do more education than a hundred trips to Birla Planetorium.   

Rating: 3.75/5

#MissionMangal #RBalki #JaganShakti #AkshayKumar #AmitTrivedi #VidyaBalan #RaviVarman #ISRO #SpaceMovies #MissionMars #NASA #IndianSpaceMission #Chandrayaan2

"Dear Zindagi" (Hindi Film Review)

The director of “English Vinglish”- Gauri Shinde - is proving to be a film-maker with much evolved sensibilities than her husband R.Balki. In “Dear Zindagi”, she presents a delightful story of a girl who is caught at the crossroads of life and torn between the pulls of her love-life, the struggles to carve out her own identity in career and the stress created by repressed childhood. Alia Bhatt is the twenty-something girl who is undergoing these multiple pangs at the same time and she has help from a psychotherapist Shah Rukh Khan on an unexpectedly overdue trip she makes to Goa – home of her parents. Director Gauri’s strengths are a well-written script, engaging screenplay and a commanding grip on characterization of all the major and minor characters in the film. She makes a point without belaboring the narrative and knows to weave nuances into the main story. All the men in Alia Bhatt’s character breathe fire and passion and so does Shah Rukh Khan who gives a dignified performance even as he takes a backseat in a film of this kind. There is a mathematical precision to his portrayal as Dr Jehnagir Khan and any other person without his aura would have botched the role by lowering the bar of poise and respect that a therapist should have with his patient. Alia Bhatt is of course, the show-stealer. After “Highway” and “Udta Panjab”, this film would pitchfork her as the new Diva of Bollywood - the one on whom long-term bets can be placed – with a fair conviction that she would balance any role. Whether she grooves, hums or shrieks out in anger, her screen presence magnifies her persona better than any million-buck lines written for her. Music by Amit Trivedi dovetails with the scripts of Gauri Shinde – it seems a zone that the composer is comfortable – atypical yet chart-buster variety yet versatile in range. One wonders why many commercial film-makers don’t sign Trivedi on for their scores. I don’t understand why the film got U/A – it deals with a subject that even toddlers can relate to and parents should get beaten about.
My rating: 3.5/5

"Shamitabh" (Hindi Movie Review)

The voice that should have become as world-famous much before the man who still casts a spell on billions of fans was once rejected by All India Radio. Yes, we are talking about Amitabh Bachchan’s voice which is the finest amalgam of texture, timber, diction and a baritone that reads the best Hindi dialogues. So what happens when that voice has an ego that eventually engulfs a superstar? Without delving deeper into a storyline that gives away the plot, “Shamitabh” is a 153 minute roller-coaster ride through the emotions that oscillate between ego and ego-massage between two men who are joined at the hip; both of them can’t do without the other and both know this - Dhanush and Amitabh Sinha (Sr.Bachchan). Akshara Hassan is the anchor in the film building bridges between the two who throw tantrums at each other. Great performances by all the three principal stars including debutante Akshara Hassan. Yet director R.Balki, undoubtedly one of Bollywood’s exciting directors, fails to give a clean output that can sustain interest. What went wrong?

Could it be Ilayaraja’s music? No, the maestro has given three good songs and embellishes the scenes with his own majestic interpretation of how we should read a film. And he has done this for the 1000th time in his career with this film. On the other hand, director messes with the picturisation of songs. The golden rule in South is, you don’t break Ilaiyaraja’s song, you don’t insert dialogues in between Ilaiyaraja song because his music is like a symphony with interludes that ascend and descend seamlessly. If you break his song, the beauty is lost. In almost all the songs, Balki commits this crime which disrupts the sense of sounds we grew up with. Can’t beat it right? Is it PC Sriram, the ace cinematographer who lets it down? Nope, he doesn’t add his interpretations to the camera angles, his work has always been a subset of the director’s eye and this movie is no exception. R.Balki must take it on chin for making a film high on form but low on substance. He gets majestic performance from Amitabh; even Dhanush is spirited and Akshara shows much promise despite unconventional looks but the story-telling sucks. Instead of building layers into the storyline, director resorts to extracting monologous performances from 'Amitabh in the graveyard' or breaks into a song that shows a Western Toilet in flowing glory. (What a criminal waste of "Piddly" song - the best in the album - showing WC in all variants of design!) Or he takes potshots at all that’s wrong in Bollywood - middle-men acting big, producers launching zombies into heroes, NYTs making it out in bed with stars at  night, directors cocooned in their delusions of grandeur and so on. Nothing new.

The fault in our stars…is an undercurrent to the film’s plot as the director gets under the skin of a rags-to-riches Dhanush who becomes a Superstar. Beyond this undercurrent, the film hardly moves and characterisation is lacklustre; Amitabh gets to use his “voice” maximum even when he is off-screen. Dhanush hogs limelight in the first half but only until Amitabh enters. The film has many gaps in narration. Balki takes the flashback route to tell the story of a rags-to-riches superstar but halfway we lose it whether the movie is in present tense or past, although the film moves back and forth. A lot many scenes are repetitive and don’t either move the story or surprise us, which is not the case usually with Balki. He has an Admaker’s eye but in his efforts to balance commercial cinema with artistic license, he forgets to entertain. And leaves more gaps in the narration with a disappointing climax. As it is, the plot is interesting but difficult to fathom how a superstar can grow without a home-grown voice and keep it Bollywood’s best-unknown secret. Leave that, why does he show a superstar with humble beginnings on one side but  uses people on his way to stardom without acknowledging  their contribution - be it Akshara or Amitabh? Why does he carry flings with co-stars when he is in love with Akshara? Why does Amitabh throw tantrums everytime with Dhanush but cooperates with the latter when he is in bed with someone? Why dos Akshara leave her assignment as Assistant Director and go all out to help Dhanush at the outset - is it that easy for an AD to skip work and knock on the doors of the who’s who? In the second half, when Dhanush refuses to work with Amitabh and agrees to make an all-mute film with real star Abhinaya (that girl who acted in SVSC) the director doesn’t appear serious about making a sensitive statement about such actors. More, Dhanush is made to abandon the project itself halfway. A lot many questions unanswered.

What redeems the film? For sure, performance by Amitabh Bachchan.  And his witty one-liners. Balki’s brief to Bachchan is to insert theatrical oddities in a commercial cinema with him as the centrepiece. “No Whiskey, very risky”…”Don’t use your little finger  so much or you will change the definition of No.1 in Bollywood”…”My voice is worth more than your weight” are a few of AB’s best one-liners. Dhanush is good in parts but his characterisation is confusing. I wonder what happened to him when he was hearing the script of this film for the first time. It seems he turned down 33 scripts before choosing “Shamitabh”. It is quite a sub-optimal choice for him because despite his antics, he is over-shadowed by Amitabh and doesn’t use his strengths well. After “Raanjhaa”, this doesn’t really cement his entry in Bollywood. Akshara Hassan has the face of her father and the eyes of her mother, she carries her role with maturity and poise but I am afraid she doesn’t have the glamor of her sister. Since this is her first film, I hope she proves her acting talent with more versatile roles. Ilaiyaraja’s music is good only to the extent Balki uses him. In some crucial scenes, unless the director and cinematographer understand the subtle nuances of the scene and present it well, Ilaiyaraja can interpret in his own way and give it a different dimension. That’s what happened in many scenes, where the emotions get jumbled in Ilaiyaraja’s ensemble. Compared to Balki’s previous films like “Cheeni Kum” and “Paa”, the sync between the maestro’s music and the director’s intent is largely amiss. What pulls down the film is lack of entertainment and comedy and the depth that can counter the non-stop rendition of Amitabh Bachchan’s “voice”. One of the best lines Bachchan says goes something like this: “ I don’t want my film to go to Sundance festival, Cannes festival, Venice festival and so on. I want my films to get released for Diwali, Dasera and Christmas festivals and do big business.” Or to that effect. Alas, “Shamitabh” becomes a joke on the same lines - it may go to Sundance and Cannes, hasn’t got released on any festival here and may hardly do big business. Watchable only if you have loads of patience and undiminished love for Amitabh. If you skip it, however, nothing changes.

Rating: 2.75/5

#Shamitabh #AmitabhBachchan #Dhanush #RBalki #ErosFilms #Bollywood #Ilaiyaraja #IlaiyarajaMusic

"English Vinglish" Hindi Movie Review

“English Vinglish” is a lovable film that is worth the wait. If you like the English language, you will find it finger lickin’ good. If you can’t digest English language and like to stick to your native language, you will find it deliciously finger lickin’ good. No jokes here, I am serious. For fans of Sridevi who have been waiting for a film where she reinvents herself after a hiatus that’s almost a generation gone, it’s a very good comeback film. Credit must go to atleast three people besides Sridevi – the producers Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and Radhakrishna Damani (both of them India’s ace stock-pickers), debutante director Gauri Shinde (an ad professional in her own right) and her backer, R.Balki (R Balakrishnan who made acclaimed films like “Cheeni Kum” and “Paa”).

As the title says, “English Vinglish” is all about a homemaker’s falling sense of self-esteem because of her ignorance of English. Mother of two, and wife to a high-flying corporate executive, Shashi (Sridevi) is bored with life and except her younger kid who adores her, her elder kid chastises her for not knowing English. (Doesn’t happen as cruelly in real life) and her husband doesn’t show much sensitivity to her blues and midlife crisis of confidence (happens). There comes a call from Shashi’s only sister Meera in US beckoning her to come early for the wedding of her daughter. With much reluctance and usual ridicule from family, Shashi leaves for US ahead of the family members by three weeks. There, in proper Manhattan district of New York, she fumbles again and again failing to communicate in English but finds accommodative nieces and an affectionate sister. And the comes a move that redeems her sense of self-pride – a secretive enrolment into a English Class – an American equivalent of Russell’s Spoken English comprising of a cosmopolitan crowd – a Chinese, a Pakistani, a Madrasi, a Russian, an African, a Frenchman (who develops a fondness for her) apart from her – all taught by an infectiously enthusiastic Gay English teacher who looks like a cross between Clark Gable and Steve Forbes.

You can guess what happens in the end – a woman driven to desperation by family finally redeems herself, gets back her mojo in life and earns her spurs with the basic character-building traits of persistence, self-awareness and determination. Towards the climax, as the story moves, the English teacher announces the date of final test as proof of proficiency in functional English wherein each one of the students has to give a speech for five minutes in English. That coincides with the day of Shashi’s niece’s wedding- the purpose of her stay in US. But she comes up trumps on the d-day, skipping the test due to her own faltering first and later delivering the speech of her life for five minutes in full glare of the guests who turned up at the wedding, her discouraging family, raving fans of her culinary skills and the students of the English class and the teacher. She delivers a speech that stupefies all with words that stir you in fully functional English that makes her earn distinction. And then, the accolades sweeter than the Laddus she is famous for.

On the whole, a good story induces a form of trance because it alters your state of awareness – of the here and now. Director Gauri Shinde’s story can take most people of both genders to an expanded awareness of an imagined world that may not always happen– to the classroom corridors with kids who shy away from the deficiencies of their parents at the PTA meetings and get needlessly “embarrassed” by their parents, to the inside of a flight you are about to take for the very first time in your life and you choke for water, to the wide-eyed canvass that never seems to strike your visual range when you get on to the last floor of a building that’s enveloped by multiple skyscrapers in New York City, to the moments of our daily life when our destiny keeps getting shaped and re-shaped and relationships build and destroyed. Gauri Shinde seems as adept as her husband R.Balki in weaving a story that’s honest, and hugely evocative. “English Vinglish” gives you a roller-coaster ride of emotions that make you cry, laugh and not necessarily choke. In 136 minutes, she stirs your senses enough to give you a fully-bathed experience of watching a nice movie. Even though the story uses tunnels underneath the conscious walls of logic to touch the subconscious, most times it is convincing and on few occasions where it seems unreal it won’t affect your growing respect for the director.

Music by Amit Trivedi including BGM and lyrics by Swanand Kirkire are exceptional. Most of the songs enhance the story and heighten the cinematic experience which is the hallmark of a good composer. The five minutes of screen space Sridevi shares with cameo artist Amitabh Bachhan is a treat for fans. Amitabh dazzles well and every artiste gives good performance thanks to the characterization achieved by the director. Sridevi should be congratulated for taking a role that suits her demeanor and her sparkling body language which is strikingly expressive – her nuances of emoting naturally with her face and her spirited body rhythms show no signs of letting up. Age definitely shows on her face with makeup that hides the wrinkles but her acting talent in her squeaky cute voice is as spotless. I am tempted to call her by a movie title: the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind. Finally, for those who want to see the US at closer shots in the inner circles of New York city, you won’t find a better film.

Comedy and entertainment come in lavish doses through the grammar grouches of native speakers in English – they form the lightest part of the film. The film can easily find its way into the cinema halls of the countries whose populations aspire to learn English. At least 45 per cent of the dialogues are in English, the level of proficiency is expected to be a basic learner’s vocabulary of less than 1000 words and the toughest word in the film is the word - “judgemental”. I wouldn’t like to be called judgemental in rating a film of this quality and sizzle; I would not give 5 out of 5 but I think it deserves an above-average rating – 3.5 on 5. Take your family to the film – whether you like subtle messages or not – you will surely have good laughs and a feeling of seeing a neat and clean film.