Desi Boyz: is a pleasant surprise !!

Rating: 2.5/5

Congratulations to David Dhawan's son, Rohit Dhawan, who has made "Desi Boyz". His debut film is indeed better than David Dhawan's  previous 5 films released in the span of last 7 years.

Each and every element essential for making a watchable commercial film is present here and it's in "almost perfect" quantity. This is really a surprise package. I went into hall with zero expectations and may be that's why I was able to overlook few faults of this simple and amiable entertainer, set in London.

Jignesh Patel aka Jerry (played by Akshay) is a college drop out; works as guard in mall and so, most of his expenses are suffered by his best friend and room-mate, Nikhil Mathur aka Nick (played by John Abraham). Jerry has responsibility to merrily raise his nephew, Veer (played by Shraman Jain).

Nick is having a well-paid investment banking job and a hot girl friend, Radhika (played by Deepika) with whom he is supposed to tie a knot with.

Life of Jerry and Nick is absolutely happy-go-lucky until the day in 2009 when both of them are thrown away from their respective jobs due to recession. They are totally bankrupt now. With no other options available and chiefly for the sake of raising Veer, they accept the offer of becoming Male Escorts presented by Sanjay Dutt. Their life again becomes joyful with the new tags “Rocco” and “Hunter”. Film then gets caught into the paws of regular bollywood clichés and melodrama makes its way. Radhika gets shocked with Nick taking up such cheap job and that results into multiple break-ups, one between Nick and her and another between Jerry and Nick. Now Jerry is back to college to complete his unfinished graduation and over there, he romances Tanya (played by gorgeous Chitrangda Singh) who teaches him Economics in a style which no other professor likely can. Film ends comfortably with all the characters getting everything they wished for.

After a long long time, I was able to tolerate Akshay Kumar. It has become a habit to use word “tolerate” when it is Akshay’s film but this time I didn’t actually tolerate him, I cherished his act. His Gujarati accent managed to make me laugh for plenty of times and thank god, there was no slap-stick humor. Hope, he won’t disappoint with his upcoming films. John finally acted. Cheers !! He successfully threw some funny one-liners and his efforts in getting back his love looked somewhat genuine. Acting by leading ladies wasn’t much required here. They were supposed to look lovely in sexy outfits and both of them did that commendably. Omi Vaidya’s cameo was film’s silliest portion but to be honest, it was the goofiest portion. He added humor effortlessly with his brilliant act. Pritam’s music is unproblematic this time.            

Coming to the flaws of the film, Sanjay Dutt’s uninteresting and nasty cameo with Khalnayak’s music playing in background could have been much more funnier. If they don’t have bucks to pay rent then Why can’t Nick sell his Yamaha V-max ? You know, that bike costs 20 lacs. Hell lot of money. No? Script wastes so much time on Nick and Radhika in second half that movie becomes bit humdrum.     

It could have been sexier, funnier and little less melodramatic but it’s by a debutant whose sincere efforts to make a watch worthy commercial film are visible and Akshay again seems to be in form, so faults can surely be ignored.  

 

Immortals: Ugly Clown Stuff !!

Rating: 0/5

‘Immortals’ is one of the ugliest and most unexciting films I’ve come across this year.

To bury humanity deep down, merciless king Hyperion (played by Mickey Rourke) must need a particular weapon and so he is on a run riot to get it. Boulder in his way is but naturally our hero Theseus (played by Henry Cavill). Phaedra (played by Freida Pinto) is a virgin oracle priestess who is supposed to help Hyperion in his wicked ambitions but does exactly opposite. Theseus is not only aided by Phaedra but by God Zeus also, who every time saves him. Special effects and safety of protagonist go hand-in-hand in the film. Whenever our hero is in danger and desires help, Zeus is there with his troop and they fight the enemies in a Mortal Kombat style and triumph. It’s cool to have Zeus by your side every time you are in danger but it brutally kills ‘thrill’ which is not clever. They didn’t understand such simple thing.

Idiocy doesn’t end here. Right in the middle of the film, when they ran out of material they showed neat and clean glimpse of Frieda Pinto’s breasts and also injected one insipid sex scene. We know that spice is necessary in recipe but there is a method to utilize it. 

300 showed us brave Spartans in a somewhat believable way and visuals were stunning in it. ‘Immortals’ transparently copies its action sequences from 300 and bores audience. Each and everything is dim and dull here. Castle build with playing cards by any toddler would look more impressive than Immortals’ set-pieces. I bet. I don’t know what was there in greek mythology but it can’t be as dreadful as portrayed by Tarsem Singh. Masks & costumes wore by characters were so irritating and ludicrous that at one point of time I felt like throwing rotten tomatoes on screen.  

‘Immortals’ was a very painful experience and charm of Henry Cavill is wasted here. I hereby proudly announce that Hatim (TV Series – directed by Amrit Sagar & Shakti Sagar) which used to come on star plus on weekends was much more engaging and amusing than Immortals. Watch that instead.      

I'm happily going with absolute zero out of five for Tarsem Singh's Immortals. 

In Time: is imaginative !!

Rating: 3.5/5

Andrew Niccol’s brand new film “In Time” has a thunderous & attention grabbing plot. After witnessing first 20 minutes of it, I wanted it to reach close to Inception, Source Code & Shutter Island but director never thought about my senses while making it. It is brilliant at its core, very very imaginative and stylish but sadly, just not smart enough to satisfy your hunger for surprises and severe shocks.

One doesn’t age after 25, all humans die at 26, only some lucky ones get chance to live after reaching a mark of 26 years old and most importantly, world is devoid of currencies. Yes, this is the world designed by Andrew Niccol and unsurprisingly, he has tagged it as “distant future”. Don’t know about you but my elder ones always used to utter one famous proverb when I used to waste my time in unproductive work. They used to say: Time is money. Andrew’s elders would have said same to him and he understood it better than me and so he made a film based on that proverb. In the world portrayed by Andrew Niccol, time is money, no seriously. People are born with in-built digital clocks on their hands & the ones who wish to live after 26 years need to lend time from banks and illegal time-lenders. Banks lend time here, of course with high rate of interests. You know how banks are !! In Casinos, one doesn’t have to throw casino token in style to grab attention of anyone; time span notified by their digital clock is more than enough for that. Whatever amount of time one spends, exactly that much amount of time gets subtracted from his/her total life span.

Storyline goes like this: Will Salas (played by Justin Timberlake) is an ordinary worker living an unhappy life who on one fine day is blessed with 100 years to live by a dying man. Time-keeper (played by Cillian Murphy) is investigating about it and in a mean time, Will kidnaps Sylvia Wiss (played by Amanda Seyfried). Will blackmails her father for lending him time and he successfully manages to defend time-keeper & other odds & accomplishes everything he decided to, with ease.  

My favorite scene in the movie is Will catching her mother (played by Olivia Wilde) just when her time’s over. It really is emotional but if you think Olivia Wilde is younger than Justin Timberlake in real life and she can’t play his mother, then it is not.

Film has trademark Hollywood car chase sequences, foot chase sequences, haunting background score, absorbing philosophical conversations (man, they included Charles Darwin also!) and a great concept too. Film lets us down when director instead of exploring the probabilities of concept goes other way round. Justin and Amanda both have acted very well. Justin could have been better but Andrew seemed to be a big fan of his previous works, Bad Teacher & Friends with Benefits. So he unnecessarily induced smooches and by the way who doesn’t like watching Justin Timberlake licking his lips to a charming female lead? But that’s not wise for a film belonging to a sci-fi genre.

At the end I’d say film is very interesting; make sure you don’t miss it. Spend your time, money, energy and full-attention for “In Time”, it is worth.

Lines I loved from the film are as follows:

For a few to be immortal, many must die.

Everyone can’t live forever, where would we put them ?

Too much time in wrong hands can crash market.

I need to borrow a month with interest. Today’s rate: 30%