Review of Dishkiyaoon

Release date –28 'th March  2014

One Word which describes the film – Entertaining 

Best Dialogue - “Dhanda goli se nahin, dimaag se chalta hai aur mera dimaag toh bachpan se hi bahut kharab hai.” 

Genre – Gangster / Action

Music – Palash Muchhal

Producer- Shilpa Shetty
Sunil Lulla

Story & Direction -Sanamjit Singh Talwar

Cast - Sunny Deol , Harman Baweja , Ayesha Khanna , Prashant Narayanan ,  Aditya Pancholi , Anand Tiwari
Sumit Nijhawan

Budget- 20 crores (approximately)

The film shows the story of a young man who is fascinated by the underworld since his childhood and wants to be the next mafia king.  Though the story is old but the way debutante director , Sanamjit has presented it in  the form of flash backs is quite interesting. There are lots of characters in the film and though their roles are small , each one has a crucial part in the story. The film has good dialogues and excellent acting by most of the male stars. 

Harman Baweja , last seen  in What's Your Raashee? (2009) has made a comeback through this film. Apart from his changed look, he has also worked hard on his body and acting skills.Though this is his first action film, he looks comfortable in most of the scenes.

Sunny Deol plays a Haryanwi named Lakwa whose right hand is crippled except its trigger-pulling finger. Though he has a small role in the film but his character plays an important role in shaping up the story. He gets some really good dialogues like  , 'Dost se bada dushman koyi na hove hai .' 
At a time when actors spend months in getting a new look , Sunny Deol's joint eyebrows and floppy hair looked quite kiddish.

Ayesha has nothing much to do in her debut film and the songs in which she appears slow down the otherwise fast paced film.  

Music composed by 18 year old  debutante , Palash Muchchal , is average.

'Tu hi hai aashiqui ' , sung by Arijit Singh is the only song which stands out in the full film. 

Shilpa Shetty's item dance at the end of the film ,'Tu mere type ka nahi hai' ,  is totally wasted . According to rumors, the cost of making the song alone is quoted to be almost at par with the budget of the film. The entire set was lit up with one lakh bulbs and it was designed to look like  Brooklyn, New York and London Broadway.

In a line , if you love gangster flicks then watch it and you will not get bored.

Paisa Vasool. Can be seen in theaters.  

Rank - 3 (Out of the 9 films I have seen in 2014)

Review of Bewakoofiyan

Release date – 14 'th March  2014

One Word which describes the film – Directionless

Best Dialogue - 'Police commissioner mera dost hai, mujhe naughty sms bhejta hai.'

Genre – Comedy/ Drama

Music – Raghu Dixit

Producer - Aditya Chopra

Story- Habib Faisal

Direction - Nupur Asthana

Cast - Rishi Kapoor , Ayushmann Khurrana , Sonam Kapoor

Budget- 22 crores approximately

Nupur made her directorial debut with YRF's Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge which was about the young generation addicted to Facebook.

Her second film shows the love story of Mohit who has the perfect girlfriend, Myra.
Myra wants to marry Mohit but only with her father's consent.

As we are introduced to the characters , we start liking the film.

There is the father, the soon going to get retired IAS officer who wants the perfect guy for his daughter .
The boy who is passionately and madly in love with a girl and is ready to do anything to have her in his life.
The girl who loves her father as much as she loves her boyfriend.
We like the father daughter interactions especially when he says,'main aapse kabhi baat nahi karoonga' which must have been used by parents all over the world. We like the chemistry between the love birds but soon it starts getting repetitive and we can guess how the story is eventually going to end.
The main problem in the film is the lack of characters and events. In most of the scenes there were empty roads , empty hotels , empty neighborhood which made the setup look so unreal and made me wonder why a studio like Yah Raj could not keep more junior artists in the film.
Rishi Kapoor tried to add humor in the film with his superb sense of timing and acting, but he alone cannot save the film.
Sonam Kapoor wore a bikini for the film and even gave some really steamy kissing scenes but the songs in which all this was shown occur randomly and so failed to make any difference on the overall speed of the film.
Ayushman Khurana has the same troubled expression during most of the film. Least efforts were made on developing his character so in one scene he is shown as a very caring person and then he asks his girlfriend to get off from his car, he refuses to accept a job as a trainee but has no problems in asking his girlfriend for money.

The producers must have been equally dissatisfied with the end results and so they decided not to waste anymore in promoting and advertising the film because of which  the buzz of the film was pretty low.

In a line if you are a big Rishi Kapoor fan ,then only you should watch the film in theaters , otherwise the film hardly offers anything which you haven't seen before.
Avoidable. Can be seen when is aired on TV

Rank- 5 (Out of the 7 films I have seen in 2013)

Review of Queen

Release date – 7'th March  2014

One Word which describes the film – Liberating

Best Dialogue - ' Kissing mein bhi Indians hi best hai '

Genre – Comedy/ Drama

Music – Amit Trivedi

Producer- Anurag Kashyap , Vikramaditya Motwane

Story & Direction -Vikas Bahl

Cast -Kangana Ranaut , Rajkummar Rao , Lisa Haydon

Budget- 12-15 crores approximately

Queen is about a girl from Delhi , whose lover turned fiancé breaks with her a day before their wedding , telling her that he thinks that she would not be able to match his lifestyle in London .
What follows is a slow story with some flash backs , crying over the past and then a random decision by the girl to go on her pre planned honey moon alone .
Once the other female actress Lisa Haydon enters the scene the film turns into a glamorous , fun filled affair with the two females who are poles apart in their way of living , discovering a strong bond of friendship .
The film has powerful female characters like a single mother who works hard and parties harder , a lap dancer who is practical about how the profession earns her good money  and  a grand mother who makes her grand daughter realise that if she wanted to watch TV she could have better stayed at home .
The film shows Kangana's journey from a time where she is drunk and crying   "Mera toh itna life kharab ho gaya, itna life kharab ho gaya mera.." to a time where she happily says 'Thank You'.

Apart from Kangana's acting the other thing which stands out is the way the director has shown Paris and Amsterdam. The cities are not shown like some 'heaven on earth' as is done in Yash Chopra's films. There are small hotel rooms,shady roads and crowded night clubs.

Director Vikas Bahl said in an interview that they didn’t have the budget to shoot elaborate sequences or stay put at one location for long. “We were just 25 people from India for the shoot. We would book a place for a couple of hours, then rush to another location. We would eat at the nearest hotel where we were shooting, and at times Kangana would change her clothes in public toilets! We shot in about 145 locations in 40 days,” .

 The budget constraints gave the film the much needed realism . 

Rajkumar Rao has the weakest role in the film and keeps irritating the audience with his repeated i love you yaar and other cheesy dialogues.

The master stroke of the film is the climax where the girl uploads her memorable pictures on Facebook and her new friends comment on them.

In a line after watching Shaadi Ke Side Effects people will really enjoy how a woman luckily escapes getting married to a stereotypical Indian male and instead gets to live her dream and see the other side of the world.

Entertaining . Can be seen in theaters.

Rank - 1 (Out of the 6 films I have seen in 2014)

Review of shaadi ke side effects

Release date – 28'th February 2014

One Word which describes the film – Mundane

Best Dialogue - 'Meri galti hoti hai to main sorry bolta hoon, meri wife ki galti hoti hai to main sorry bolta hoon. Ladai hoti hi nahi .' 

Genre – Comedy/ Drama

Music – Pritam

Producer- Ekta Kapoor, Shobha Kapoor
Pritish Nandy

Story & Direction -Saket Chaudhary

Cast - Farhan Akhtar , Vidya Balan, Ram Kapoor , Vir Das , Ila Arun, Purab Kohli

Budget- 40 crores 

Saket Chaudhary made his directorial debut with  Pyaar Ke Side Effects (2006) . In this film he takes us to what happens after the romance , the candlelight dinners and the honeymoon is over. 

Farhan and Vidya are both talented actors and so we expected a lot of on screen fireworks on the screen. The film started in a good way showing great chemistry between the lead actors .But slowly as the love went away from their wedding , viewers also started losing interest. 

The main problem in the film is , the lack of well defined characters.

Farhan's character is confused most of the times and one can't understand whether he wants to be with his wife , his friends , wants alone time or wants to just watch a football match . 

Vidya since the start of the film is shabbily dressed and has no other work except for  having a baby , taking care of the baby , talking about that baby and then planning for another baby ! As if a housewife's life just revolves around a baby.

Purab Kohli , Vir Das and Ila Arun must have been added as after thoughts in the film as their presence took the film nowhere and after sometime they just made a silent exit from the film.

There were few good dialogues in the film like , "I felt like Sehwag. Ek do match kharab kya khele team se hi nikaal diya aur naya young, player rakh liya and ' doosro ke bacche and puppies sabko acche lagte hai ' but making a complete film just on the basis of few dialogues is not a very good idea.

In a line the film justifies its name and is like marriage which sometimes is sweet , sometimes exciting and sometimes so boring and mundane that we start wondering that were we better off as singles .  

Timepass . Can be seen in theaters.

Rank - 4 (Out of the 6 films I have seen in 2014)

Review Of Highway

Release date – 21'st February 2014

One Word which describes the film –Scenic

Genre –Drama

Music – A. R. Rahman

Producer- Sajid Nadiadwala

Imtiaz Ali

Story & Direction - Imtiaz Ali

Cast - Randeep Hooda , Alia Bhatt

Budget- 40 crores

Imtiaz Ali made his directorial debut with the rom com Socha Na Tha and followed with romantic films like Jab We Met (2007) , Love Aaj Kal (2009)  and Rockstar (2011) . The director has always been fascinated with nature which is evident in all his films .

Imtiaz's latest venture Highway seems to be a work of passion. If we remove the scenes featuring highways of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir, sand dunes of  Kuchaman valley , Aru valley and Chandanwari near Pahalgam there is nothing left in the film. The movie felt like Imtiaz Ali's answer to all the Yash Chopra films where he glorified Switzerland . 

Apart from promoting Indian tourism the film tries to focus on the lives of two individuals with a difficult past.
Alia Bhatt gets ample opportunities to show her acting skills and even manages to outshine Hudda in some scenes. 
A.R.Rehman's music is soulful but because the film is not for the masses it has a small shelf life.

The main problem with the film is it's target audience. People who loved the director's earlier films will surely not like this high tension road trip and Alia Bhatt's fans will not like their sweet bubbly heroine wearing drags and moving around without makeup. Just near the climax my 6 year old daughter asked me " hero ki entry ho gayi kya ? '. Her innocent question made me laugh in the otherwise dull film. 

In a line the film can be a big disappointment for Imtiaz Ali and Alia Bhatt's fans .

Watch it at your own risk. Avoidable.

Rank - 5 (Out of the 6 films I have seen in 2014)

Review of Yaariyan

Release date – 10'th January 2014

One Word which describes the film – Candyfloss
Best Dialogue  – (can't think of a single good dialogue)

Genre – Romance / Comedy/ Drama

Music – Pritam , Mithoon ,

 Arko Pravo Mukherjee , Anupam Amod , 

Honey Singh

Producer- Bhushan Kumar , Krishan Kumar

Story & Direction - Divya Khosla Kumar

Cast - Himansh Kohli , Serah Singh , Dev Sharma , Rakul Preet Singh , Nicole Faria

Budget- 19- 20 Crores (Including P & A) 

Bhushan Kumar 's company Super Cassettes ( T-Series) controls more than 60% share of the Indian music market . For his wife's directorial debut film he chose the best 5 music directors , 13 singers which covered all the music styles from sufi to rap to pop songs. The result is a collection of melodious songs which one will keep humming long after the film ends.

The film starts with three guys and a girl who are friends and study at a hostel in Sikkim. The boys are more interested in making girlfriends than in any other college activity. After showing some  American pie kind of scenes the story moves to Australia and then the director has tried to include every possible idea right from racial issues to mother son angle to love triangle to patriotic to Holi and last but not the least first kiss . 

Because of so many twists and turns though the film has speed yet it fails to leave any long lasting impression on the mind of the viewers. You don't get bored but neither the characters stay in your mind.

Instead of  the story , screenplay and dialogues the director has focused just on getting the skimpiest shorts and skirts for the leading ladies which is a major reason for pulling the teenagers to the theaters.

    

Despite getting bad reviews the film has managed to collect 20 plus crores in just 5 days which shows that the current generation doesn't care much for story or acting and is comfortable with vulgar jokes and cheap comedy.  

In a line the film can be seen for some beautiful scenic locations , some scenes which make you laugh and the songs.

Time pass

Rank -6/ 6 ( Films released in 2014)

Sholay - The Magnum Opus

Release date - 15'th August 1975

One Word which describes the film - Epic

Famous Dialogues–

Gabbar Singh -'Jo dar gaya samjho mar gaya.'
'Holi kab hai, kab hai Holi.'
'Are O Sambha, kitne admi the?'
Thakur-
'Ye hath nahi phansi ka fanda hai.'
Jai-
'Tumhara naam kya hai,basanti ?'
Veeru-
'Basanti, in kutton ke samne mat nachna.'
'Kutte,main tera khoon pee jaoonga.'
Basanti-
'Bhag dhanno bhag, aj teri basanti ki izzat ka sawal hai.'
'Dekho,mujhe befazool ki baat karne ki adat to hai nahi.'
Jailor-
'Hum angrezon ke zamane ke jailor hai, ha ha.'
'Adhe idhar jao,adhe udhar jao.Baki hamare sath aao.'
Kaliya-
'Sardar , maine apka namak khaya hai, Sardar.'
Immam-'Itna sannata kyon hai bhai ?'

Genre – Action

Screenplay- Salim-Javed

Music – R. D. Burman

Producer- G.P. Sippy

Direction - Ramesh Sippy

Cast - , Sanjeev Kumar ,Dharmendra , Amitabh Bachchan , Hema Malini , Jaya Bhaduri , Amjad Khan

Budget - 3-4 crores 

Sholay is the highest grosser of all times. If the figures for inflation are adjusted then the film has earned almost 700+ crores till now.
Sholay was released with just 40 prints in Mumbai and on it's release it received negative critical reviews and was declared a flop. It was the word of mouth publicity which brought the audiences to the theatres  and the rest is history. It broke records for continuous showings in many theatres across India and ran for more than five years at Mumbai's Minerva theatre .

Once it became a commercial success all the things which were against it like the western touch , the violence turned to it's favor and everyone started considering it as the best story ever told.

So what does it takes to create a magnum opus ?

Sholay’s story was drastically different from what audiences in India expected from a film at that time. It had everything from dacoits on horseback to gun fights (where in some scenes even real bullets were used), to item numbers to a beautiful  lady riding a tonga . There were many characters each having their own story and the way those stories were inter connected with each other kept the audience involved till the end . 

Though Amzad Khan had just 9 scenes in the film, Gabbar Singh character became so famous & hit amongst people that Britannia made a commercial advertisement with Amjad Khan eating Biscuits. This was the first time in Indian cinema that a villain was used by a company to market its products. The advertisement was an instant hit in children and the sales doubled in no time.
The film had a lavish production for its time  and went over budget as Sippy re-filmed scenes many times to get his desired effect. "

One can think that it takes a good story , good characters, good dialogues and songs to make a hit.
But if it was that easy, why couldn't Ramesh Sippy repeat the same success story again ?
Why even after acting in many film  Amjad Khan is best remembered as Gabbar Singh ?
Why when we think of best friends the first name which comes in our mind is of Jai and Veeru? 

It's a lesser known fact that Dharmendra recommended Amitabh Bachchan for the role of Jai (producer's choice was Shatrughan Sinha) and Amitabh Bachchan recommended Amjad Khan for the role of Gabbar Singh(producer's choice was Danny ).

At the time of it's release Sholay won just one Filmfare award for best editing but over the years it has won many best film awards. Sanjeev Kumar was nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor award for Sholay .Though he won the Best Actor award that year but it was for his role of J.K.in Aandhi.  

Attempts to recreate the magic of Sholay 

In 1991,  Ramgarh Ke Sholay , directed by Ajit Diwani was released. Amjad Khan who played the iconic villain Gabbar Singh in the original film returns to the role of Gabbar in this film. The film featured Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh , Vijay Saxena ( who resembles Amitabh Bachchan ) as Jai and Kishore Bhanushali ( who resembles Dev Anand) as Veeru. The movie did good business in the small theaters.

In 2004, Sholay was digitally remastered and shown again to packed theatres in India, including Mumbai's Minerva, where it had run successfully 29 years earlier.

In 2007  Ram Gopal Varma made ' Aag ' which was the official remake of  Sholay featuring  Amitabh Bachchan as Gabbar Singh . Aag was heavily criticized by critics and is  considered as the worst films of all time.

In 2010 , G. P. Sippy's grandson, Sasha Sippy approached Ketan Mehta's company Maya digital to convert the film into 3 D. It took 25 crore and a team of 350 people to convert the film into digital 3D format for which each and every scene had to be individually restored, colour-corrected and re-composited in 3D to match the depth. The film was released on 3'rd January 2014.

In a line, Sholay is the perfect example of a complete entertaining Bollywood film having the perfect mix of drama, action, humor and songs . 

Can be seen at any time .