Comedy Nights and Colors

Only Kapil can save Comedy Nights! Salman khan guffawing a million tonnes of hysterical laughs can not create comedy, nor parade as humour where none exists! It's almost like Archana Puran Singh laughing like an idiot in previous Avatars of Comedy. And mind you, I am a Salman fan, yet I am saying this! He is so unconvincing in Comedy Nights Bachao, which is a damp squib, that it will do nothing to divert viewership from Comedy Nights with Kapil! . 

No matter how much Colours connives with Salman, Krishna and Bharti to evict Kapil, he has a certain natural connect with the audience, while the parallel/cannibalising show is too contrived!

The spoof by Kapil on CNB and the art n craft of duplication was hilarious and generated some genuine amusement! BTW, Navjot Singh Sidhu's laughter didn't seem so bad after all! Effect of Salman forcing himself to laugh like Archana Puran Singh on CNB!!!!

Bajrangi Bhaijan

Bajrangi Bhaijan: Salman khan

The fun of enjoying a Desi movie in Vides----great! The fun of watching Desis crowd into a 20 screen multiplex to watch a Bollywood biggie over and above 19 Hollywood blockbusters----fantastic! The fun of watching Salman Khan defining humanity as the supreme religion----unparalleled! Bajrangi Bhaijan proved all the more fulfilling as I watched it in far away California! And before my friends accuse and remind me of my strong Salman Khan bias, let me admit unabashedly, that he has given me a reason, all over again, to continue to hold him in higher esteem than many of his peers from Mumbai!
So, Bajrangi Bhaijan is the story of a mute girl from Pakistan who is separated from her parents while in India and how the God fearing, Good Samaritan Pawan Kumar Chaturvedi alias Bajrangi sets about ensuring her reunion with her family. The little girl, alternately named Munni, is the most loveable and heart wrenchingly innocent kid and pivotal character around whom the story is woven! She is the heroine while Kareena Kapoor is the highly dispensable element in the movie! She emotes with her eyes and each time her mouth quivers or her eyes moisten up in memory of chicken tikka or Shahid Afridi, you feel a lump in your throat! The film has used humour and created comic situations most befittingly to unfurl the story and characterisation. Whether it is the manner in which the realisation about her cast/religion/country of origin dawns upon Salman or his escapade across the border from under the barbed wire fencing, humour has been used with great craft and finesse! So much so that despite a serious theme, the movie never weighs upon you. Stereotypes of cast, religion, nationality have been handled so naturally and effortlessly, that you accept them as they unfold, without squirming in your seats, unflinching in your belief about their credibility.
At one point I thought that Salman was going to succeed in carrying Munni and the movie on his shoulders, till the final destination. But I hadn't bargained for Nawazuddin, the maverick, small town reporter in Pakistan, who finds his genius in the unfolding drama and quietly creates a huge place for himself in the movie! The journey across some of the most picturesque settings in Kashmir makes you yearn for more! The reunion between Munni and her mother contributes towards the high degree of pathos in the film. But the political fallout of Salman's escapade into Pakistan, which, by the way, he entered only after "permission", leaves much to be desired! The climax is all too predictable but I can't imagine it ending any other way!
Great script and direction, credible performances by Salman, Munni and Nawazuddiin, make the film a serious, thought provoking experience! Does your Faith provide you with courage and kindness of such magnitude? Does Religion have any value before Humanitarian values? Is one the synonym of the other? What are geographical boundaries and political ambitions in the face of humanity? In the end, All the elements that matter in the sub-continent find a place in the movie; cast, religion, nationality, cricket, border policing and its infringements, lost child so reminiscent of partition, Kashmir, Gandhi, Jinnah, espionage et al! The movie was meant to succeed!
As my niece put it: humanity is best depicted in the innocence and mute suffering of a child and that fantasy has always been cleverly deployed by Bollywood to raise regional socio-cultural-political issues! But rarely so well!
Salman your sins of Kick, forgiven and forgotten!

Hero, zero

Hero:
With nothing better planned for Sunday evening, I finally hit the cinemas after a hiatus of nearly 8 weeks! Thought I would check out the new kids on the block, even though they happened to be star kids and one of whom actually had a beleaguered introduction to the public, not so long ago!
The movie started well enough. The opening scenes introduced the well sculpted body of the male protagonist- muscles, sinews and the workout regime, combined with the predictable pub crawling swish set, their escapades and brawls. Thematically, it promised to be close to the original Hero, Stockholm Syndrome intact. But, just when you thought, mid way through the first half, that the movie was shaping up well, it just collapsed!
So the IG's daughter is kidnapped and taken to some absolutely fantastic, breathtakingly serene and eye catching white locations in the Himalayas. The bandits, who she foolishly believes to be armed guards deputed for her protection, look after her so well that she falls in love with their leader-Sooraj, all muscles and V shaped body but with the vulnerable soft looks of Zarina! Why she falls for him, what are the things he does that capture her romantic imagination, is all left unexplained! But for this, Hero can't be faulted alone! It's this millennial generation! No explanations, no touching-the-heart, evolution of the love; just one fine day, you declare that you are in love!
So they return to civilisation after a gun battle, court room drama etc, with the girl being sent off to Paris to do her dance degree, while the Boy serves out his prison sentence. He is released before time for good conduct ( oh please, get original!) and goes about proving his reformed persona by starting a Gym and you heave a sigh of relief that the movie is getting over! But no there's a triangle which had been thought of and probably shot for an earlier insertion in the plot, but which the Editor forgot to include at the appropriate time! So virtually at the end, this character is brought in, The Prince of Rajasthan ( hello, Rajasthan had a 100 thikanas and all of them could individually boast of their Princes!!!) . He symbolises and epitomises VICE, in capital letters. I don't know what happens after that, for its an incoherent, fumbling, boring plot, with a sloppiness seen very seldom! After a lot of dhishum dhishum the movie ends!
Such a relief at the end of the movie! It is a poor poor substandard attempt at cloning the original Hero! Where is the Meenakshi Shashadri or Jackie Shroff style magnetism in this pair? Tigmanshu Dhulia fails to impress the way Shammi Kapoor did! The boy Pancholi is good and holds promise of a better future. The music is OK but seemed really obtrusive, with songs butting in to disrupt the flow of the story, which was weak in any case. " lovely ki train ki chain pull kara de, aur uska Jab We Met kara de". Really, what amazing lyrics!
Oh I forgot to mention The Heroine of Hero! Never mind, she is entirely forgettable! She is a fairer version of her father Sunil Shetty and I almost expected her to drawl in his baritone! Better she does ramp walking at Milan, for F TV, where wearing a dead pan expression is an essential qualification!
Watch it at your peril!