Tag Archives: Bollywood

In My Hands Today…

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A Bollywood Affair – Sonali Dev

Mili Rathod hasn’t seen her husband in twenty years—not since she was promised to him at the age of four. Yet marriage has allowed Mili a freedom rarely given to girls in her village. Her grandmother has even allowed her to leave India and study in America for eight months, all to make her the perfect modern wife. Which is exactly what Mili longs to be—if her husband would just come and claim her.

Bollywood’s favorite director, Samir Rathod, has come to Michigan to secure a divorce for his older brother. Persuading a naïve village girl to sign the papers should be easy for someone with Samir’s tabloid-famous charm. But Mili is neither a fool nor a gold-digger. Open-hearted yet complex, she’s trying to reconcile her independence with cherished traditions. And before he can stop himself, Samir is immersed in Mili’s life—cooking her dal and rotis, escorting her to her roommate’s elaborate Indian wedding, and wondering where his loyalties and happiness lie.

Movie Review: Dil Dhadakne Do

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We saw Dil Dhadakne Do over the weekend. I’d heard some good stuff about the movie, but went to see it without much expectations.

The premise or story line of the movie is real thin, but the cast was spot on, both the casting and the acting! After seeing the movie, I can’t see anyone else in these roles.

The movie is about a rich, high-society, but highly dysfunctional Punjabi family called the Mehras. Kamal and Neelam Mehra (Anil Kapoor and Shefali Shah) are spending their thirtieth wedding anniversary with family and friends on a cruise ship. However,the reality is that, his business is failing and he is in the brink of bankruptcy. They are typical Indian parents who have high expectations of their only son Kabir (Ranveer Singh), who would rather fly a plane than run the business, and at the same time think their married daughter Ayesha (Priyanka Chopra), a successful entrepreneur, should devote her time to her husband (Rahul Bose) and mother-in-law (Zarina Wahab) in being the perfect wife, daughter-in-law and mother!

The Mehras invite the Soods to the cruise as they want Kabir and the Soods daughter Noorie who had been ditched at the altar. This so that Mr. Sood (Parmeet Sethi) will inject funds into the Mehra’s dying company. But Noorie only has eyes for Rana, the son of the Khannas who hate the Soods. There’s also Farah,(Anushka Sharma) a British Indian dancer in the ship, whom Kabir falls in love with. Last is Sunny (Farhan Akhtar), Priyanka’s ex, whose father works with Kamal Mehra and who joins the cruise halfway into the film. Oh, I forgot about Pluto Mehra, the adorable pup, voiced by Aamir Khan who is the sutradhar or narrator for the film.

The movie depicted human life as it happens to each one of us – there were so many points in the film where I felt the character was acting exactly the way I did or would do in such a situation. Kudos to the actors and Zoya Akhtar for pulling it off! Some of the humor was very juvenile, evident by GG & BB laughing their heads off, but overall, it’s a paisa vasool movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlIaiLoBEvk

Ra One: Not really what I expected

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Shahrukh Khan got two new fans to bolster his legion of fans. We caught Ra One en famille over the weekend and while they didn’t like the movie, GG & BB liked the hero.

So Ra One….Where do I start. Before I start with my observations on the movie, here’s a Wikipedia link with the detailed storyline and reviewsThe movie had a PG 13 classification here and since BB & GG are eight, and they saw Enthiran/Robot last year in the theatre, I thought they could handle a similar genre of movie. I was wrong, they can’t handle violence, so I am going to try and get them to see something softer, maybe a romance or a comedy soon. Since they are learning Hindi in school, this was supposed to be something which had undertones of education attached to it.

I found the movie to be a big disappointment. For a movie which was the most anticipated movie of the year and which had so much hype surrounding it, the actual movie was a complete let-down.

The film starts with a double meaning joke which is supposed to be a dream which Shahrukh Khan’s (SRK) son, a 10-12 year old is dreaming about! This is not the only crude joke in the film. The whole film is peppered with such jokes, with a ‘condom’ joke running through the entire film. This ‘condom’ joke is offensive, not for the content, but for the fact that it is supposed to be a wrong version of the tamil word ‘konjum’ (little) which Kareena’s Punjabi character mangles all the time.

The stereotypes alluded to Shekhar Subramaniam is typical, which is quite irritating given that he is supposed to be living in London for a minimum of 12-13 years (they show a song with the courtship of Sekhar and Mona then the birth of their child), so in that time, it is inconceivable that he would learn to speak English without that irritating accent and also lose all those stereotypes like eating noodles with yoghurt with bare hands! Come on, nowadays, most people are more sophisticated that that!

I also found the back story between SRK and Kareena very vague. She is a typical gaali (ephitet) sprouting Punjabi kudi while SRK is a sterotypical Tamil scientist nerd. How did they meet? Where did they meet? If the couple is based in the UK and Sekhar Subramaniam (SRK) is a British citizen, then how does he own a huge house in Mumbai with the house holding loads of memories for him and his wife? These questions were never answered and leads you with a sense of the storyline missing something.

SRK’s Shekhar Subramaniam dies within 30 minutes and the hero of the film, the good guy G One appears at the point just before the interval is announced. The villian, Ra One is initially an Asian guy and the real villan Arjun Rampal, appears in the last 40-50 minutes of the film!

The songs are ok, I loved the Chammak Chalo song which comes almost at the climax. At the climax you also see Ra One on a running train, something that reminds you of Enthiran/Robot. Alluding to the same movie you have Rajnikant make a 1 minute appearance as Chitti, his robot character in the movie which is greeted with awe by the characters in the scene.

So all in all, the movie is worth is a watch, just to see the special effects and especially if you are a Shahrukh Khan fan. But if you are planning on taking children below 12 to see the movie, then exercise caution. If your child/ren are the innocent variety like GG & BB, then give the film a miss or see it alone/with adults. If your child likes/understands adult and toilet humor, by all means take them with you