Pari : Movie Review

Pari almost succeeded in capturing the hair tingling feel of the horror-paranormal genre but somewhere in its germination from a nascent story to big screen it got bitten by Bollywood reality bug. If it had to sell in the Hindi heartland or even in India's metros where wearing hearts on sleeves is the norm, it had to take into account the non-negotiable ingredient of 99.9% mainstream Hindi movies - Pyaar! (Love) And down the chute goes the twilight scented, monsoon washed, Bengali story about Islamic werewolves.

I like movies produced by the brother-sister duo Anushka and Karnesh Sharma. I felt Pari was indeed better than the much touted recent paranormal outing in Malayalam - Ezra.

The screenplay and the story could have used some all purpose glue, seems all over the place by trying to sound more complex and cryptic that it actually is. Rajat Kapoor had to bear the burden of playing the all-knowing modern day fakir / exorcist who was only equipped with some incomprehensible and mysterious Arabic phrases to exorcise the jinns.

Yet technically - screen design, costumes or the overall production design of Pari is above par. Freckled, white as a ghost Anushka looked out of place among the dark skinned Bangladeshi or Bengali peasants. But it was not the ill-suited heroine, who to her credit, showed amazing acting chops, who led to the ultimate failing of the movie - it was pyaar (love), the much needed element in Hindi films, totally out of place in this film, that brought it down in my eyes.

Read More

Phillauri

Second venture of the sister-brother producer duo Anushka and Karnesh Sharma, starring Anushka Sharma, Diljit Dosanjh and Suraj Sharma (Pi in the Life of Pi) is a perfect desi Halloween movie for our Hindustani brethren in Umrika if they are searching for one.



Anushka is a nebulous white ghost stuck in a tree, accidentally freed by Suraj and currently stalking him, pestering him for answers. The bumbling, aspiring Canadian rapper that he is, Suraj is unnerved and thrown into a loop by the presence of this floating apparition whom no one else is able to see. Diljit Dosanjh stops by as Punjabi folk singer/ Anushka's love interest in her real life, in the early 1900s Punjab.


Phillauri is a perfect example of how ghost stories look like when they are delivered via the dream pike at Bollywood. There is the quintessential over the top Punjabi wedding and there is a horizontally floating ghost swishing around in a sparkly ghaghra whose ghostliness quotient has been bolstered up by the masterly use of CGI and changing the operating angle to 180 degrees. Add to this, we have not one but two love stories - set a century apart for to meet the enchantment needs of different generations.

Read More

Ladies vs Ricky Bahl

It had an interesting title, looked as if there were a tad too many ladies in it for my liking, better keep that for later – that was my initial thought when I first heard about this movie. Then Parineeti Chopra and Screen Awards night happened. The clips they showed at Screen Awards where Parineeti won the best female debut of the year presented Ladies vs Ricky Behl as a sort of dark, gritty independent flick for which people usually win acting awards. Nothing like the Yashraj films lively rom-com(or con) it turned out to be.

It must be one of the films Anushka Sharma and Ranveer Singh had to do for their film contract with Yashraj Films (3 films?) Anushka sure seems to have talent and Yashraj Films has made a wise choice investing in her, considering her earlier films – Rab ne Bana di Jodi and Band Baja Baraat were hits at the box-office.

In Ladies vs.., the ones who steal the show are the ladies. Three rather unknown faces - Dipannita Sharma, Aditi Sharma and Parineeti Chopra are the life of the movie. All three of them have exceled in their roles, but it is Parineeti who takes the cake as the fiesty and fun loving loud mouth Dimple Chaddha. Infact so much so that as a viewer I find it a bit disappointing that Ranveer Singh’s character fell for Ishika(Anushka) after a couple of meetings and not for Dimple.

The story of a set of ladies trying to outsmart a con man is contemporary. Script and camera keep in tune with the times and the theme. You can blame it for predictability, but then again this is not Tarantino, we are watching a Bollywood movie dressed for commercial success. Incredibly cool songs(very Punjabi-sh beats), the kind that will make you thump your foot on the gas, zoom past like a flash of light while being thankful to some invisible force that bestowed you with life so that you could enjoy this music. Good work, Salim-Sulaiman! Some may not find it as appealing as Band Baja Baraat, but I like it because the acting credits are spread out over a wider group of actors and not just Anushka and Ranveer. All in all, a good entertainer.

Read More