Tag Archives: Films

Movie Review: Bajirao Mastani

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Over the long Christmas weekend, we decided to catch Bajirao Mastani. This was one film I was quite eager to watch, having studied the history of the Maratha Kingdom in school. Also, outside of regional movies, you don’t actually see such characters in mainstream Bollywood movies and so it was something I wanted to see how the director interprets history. Last, it was a Sanjay Leela Bansali film and enough said I guess…

The film is rich, lush and every scene is very lovingly crafted. I guess showing around 20 odd years of a character’s life in something like 150 minutes is difficult, hence the bits and pieces look of the movie. Sometimes during this movement across years, it felt a bit jarring and sudden and takes the viewer a couple of seconds to figure that the scene now is not a continuation of the previous one, but something that is happening in the future.

The movie had a PG 13 classification in Singapore due to some of the violence and bedroom sequences in the film. But I think BB & GG, at the cusp of age 13, took it well…

Ranveer Singh is spot on as the valiant Peshwa Bajirao I, after this movie, I can’t imagine anyone else acting the same role, though in parts, I did find him being his usual flamboyant self. I also thought he and Priyanka Chopra as Kashibai (Bajirao’s first wife) had authentic Marathi accents, not being locals themselves. Deepika Padukone as the epynomous Mastani was fantastic, her eyes conveying a lot that dialogues do not…

Mastani who is said to be the daughter of Raja Chatrasal of Bundelkhand from his muslim wife and who is raised as one is married to a Peshwa Bajirao under a Bundelkhandi tradition where people marry by exchanging daggers when Bajirao comes to help her father fight the Mughals. She then comes to Pune and there starts the real movie where Bajirao’s family who are Chitvapan Brahmins do not want to have a Muslim Mastani to taint their lineage and who start their courtly intrigues to stop Bajirao and Mastani from meeting.

The film is not historically accurate, which they announce right at the beginning of the film, more of what goes inside the bedrooms of Mastani and Kashibai and the intrigues of Shanivarwada (the official palace of the Peshwas in Pune).

Priyanka Chopra as Kashibai gives a very understated and elegant performance, something that I really didn’t expect and Tanvi Azmi as Radhabai who was Bajirao’s ambitious mother was fantastic! Vaibhav Tatwavdi who played Bajirao’s brother, Chimaji who wanted to keep the purity of the Peshwa lineage at any cost was very good.

The Pinga song however, brought memories of Dola Re from Devdas to mind and comparisions are inevitable there. Pinga, a song liked very much was not really a match for Dola Re!

The movie is a must-watch according to me, especially since it showcases some of the lesser known historical figures of India. For students of Maratha history (casual ones like me), it was fun as I knew pretty much all the principal characters, having read about them in school. For those who don’t know about Maratha history, this is a good starting point to get interested in it and read more…

BB enjoyed the movie while GG found parts boring. S found it quite boring, so I think it will be a hit or miss with children and some adults!

 

The Pinga Song

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

Puss in Boots – Movie Review

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I just realized what a boring life I live, when the highlight of my week is looking forward to Friday evening, so that I can sleep in over the weekend! Gosh! My life also does not give me any material for my blog, unlike the other parenting blogs I come across.

So what do I write about today? I know, let me review Puss in boots which we caught at a matinee last week. We saw the 10:30 show at the Cathay cinema in Causeway Point. If you are a Passion Card member, note, you get the tickets at S$7 with a small popcorn for two tickets purchased. This took care of the popcorn that BB & GG expect when they go to the theatre. Since we were going back home for lunch straight after the movie, I didn’t want them to eat anything else which can spoil their apetite later.

Set in the western town of San Ricardo, Puss in Boots tells the prequel story of the character in the Shrek movies. Voiced by Antonio Banderas, this Spanish speaking kitty wears heels, is a lady killer and is an outlaw. He has been searching for the magic beans which he learns is with Jack and Jill. He goes to their hotel room and tries to steal the beans but is thwarted by another cat who soon escapes the place. Following her to a cat traven, they have a dance-off cum fight, where he finds out that he is actually Kitty Softpaws, the softest paws any kitty has. At the same time, he also learns that his estranged childhood friend Humpty Alexander Dumpty is behind this meeting and wants the help of Puss to find the magic seed which has been his childhood dream.

So Puss, Kitty and Humpty plan and steal the magic beans. They plant it and go to the giant’s castle in the sky and find the golden eggs. When they realize the eggs are too heavy to carry, they carry the goosling which lays the eggs, eluding the terror which guards the goose and the eggs. Once back on earth while celebrating their victory, Jack and Jill catch up with them and hit Puss and decamp with everything – Humpty, Kitty and the goose.

On awakening, Puss tracks them back to San Ricardo and learns that all this was a plot by Humpty to take revenge on Puss for abandoning him when Humpty’s heist when they were children went wrong. Kitty was also on this plot. Puss then turns himself to the authorities and is put in jail where he meets the real Jack and realizes that the Terror is in fact the mother of the goosling who will stop at nothing to get her child back. Kitty helps Puss break out of prison to try and stop the Terror from demolishing the town. In the fracas, Humpty gives up his life so that Puss can save the goosling and when his shell cracks, he is found to be golden!

The verdict – the kids both GG, BB and all the rest in the theatre loved the movie. I was not sure what was there that made the censors put a PG classification, guess the slightly adult theme and fights was the answer. All in all, a movie worth watching, atleast once!

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