Raajneeti – Disappointing

One of the most awaited films this year, due mostly to the director and the stellar star cast, Raajneeti carried a lot of expectations on its shoulders. But here we are let down first and foremost by the director himself. Prakash Jha deals with too many characters in this film and in the end it turned out to be a disadvantage for him and the film. I felt a few characters should have been developed more. Ranbir Kapoor’s and Manoj Bajpai’s character were among the very well written ones. Ajay Devgn’s character too had “dome” motive in the start, but in the second half even his actions were not well justified. Katrina Kaif was hardly even there in the first half.

The major problem of Raajneeti is the scripting; Jha gave more preference to how to bring in Mahabharata in the film than to concentrating on the current politics, which should have been the main plot. The elements and characters of Mahabharata should have been add-ons. He was concentrating more on the character of Dhrithrashtra who was a less important character in Mahabharata, at least if we are only using elements of Mahabharata in a different story to tell. And Raajneeti wasn’t staying so true to Mahabharata that it should have characters like Dhrithrashtra when there are only 2 Pandavas and Dhrithrashtra has only one son.

The film turns into an unintentional comedy because of all these extra doses of Mahabharata going on and a few more scenes of poor writing. Katrina Kaif saying “I love you” to Arjun Rampal and when Ranbir/Arjun’s mother tries to tell Ajay Devgn that she is his real mother are laughable moments. And in a film which is supposed to connect with the youth, who uses words like ‘jaisth’ (meaning eldest) in the dialogs - “Tum mere jaisth putra ho.”

It also turns illogical sometimes, when you see a mother going to meet someone when she has just lost her son and hasn’t even performed the antim sanskar. The film really misses the word EMOTION. Everyone here including brother, sister, mother, father was more interested in politics than their personal relationship. It is true in politics, people are more concerned about winning and losing, but even a mother? I can’t take that. Katrina Kaif was married to Arjun Rampal because he was standing up for the post of chief minister. I don’t see why a father of a girl will sell her daughter to a person and give over 50 crores rupees as dowry; especially when her daughter is Katrina Kaif. And Katrina Kaif did not turn the match down, which again was unjustified. The script really needed more effort and even though the duration of the film was around 170 mins, it still was incomplete. Although after seeing how the things going in the film and emotional moments turning into hilarious scenes, I was happy it was left incomplete. It would have been difficult to take more.

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Badmaash Company - Movie Reviews

Please post all Badmaash Company reviews here..

Rediff.com- Raja Sen

When did Badmaashi get this boring?


Perhaps, like in the one fantastic film he was great in, there really are two Shahid Kapoors. One is a decent actor, the sort of person Imtiaz Ali  can coerce into impressive restraint, and Vishal Bhardwaj can work miracles with.

The other, more frequently seen brother is a talentless hack, one of those young dancing boys who purses his lips to show emotion and wallows in his own smugness.

This film, as you might have guessed, stars the latter. Not that director Parmeet Sethi -- who will forever be known as the man Simran turned down in the biggest hit of our times -- is absolved of blame purely because there isn't a single actor in his film. (Well, there's Pawan Malhotra, sure, but there's only so much that ever-reliable performer can do on his own. Remember Delhi 6?)

Badmaash Company is an unimaginably boring film that is so amateurish it hurts. Peopled entirely by imbeciles, the film is about a bunch of swagger-happy bling-loving scamsters who come up with some mild manipulation with selling sneakers.

So smitten is the director with this plan that he shows the team in action again and again, setting up sequence after sequence first so Shahid can slowly explain his plan and then repeating the shots so they can execute that very spelled-out plan.

Meanwhile, we yawn and wait. Surely there must be more to an entire movie than a group of fools parading around in costumes and selling shoes. There is: they move on to doing the exact same thing with gloves. And we're shown it all again, oh yes. Mr Sethi, looking up the word 'montage' might be a good idea.

And it's all soaked to the gills in cliche. There's melodrama of every kind, as moron by moron develops trouble -- daddy issues, relationship insecurity, alcoholism, overriding ambition, a suddenly stubborn gambling streak -- and all of it is as obvious as it gets.

The two vivacious ladies on either side of me in the theatre today made a game out of predicting what hackneyed melodramatic lines and twists would come next: they were mostly right, and the few times they erred, their predictions were far superior to the directors.

And before you think it's a so-bad-it's-good kinda film, it's not. It's just drab and repetitive and quite persistently annoying, and thanks to every theme being stretched out over and over again, feels absolutely unending.

Shahid, as said, scowls and furrows his brow to look intense, makes puppy dog eyes while talking extra-plaintively to his folks, and raises eyebrows self-appreciatingly when he thinks he looks pretty.

Meiyang Chang of Indian Idol seems to have gotten this gig simply because of his Chinese roots, leading to some weak gags.

Vir Das plays a miraculously inconsistent character, one who starts off frivolous and armed with that Bollywood flavour of the season, a stutter, but loses that and his amorality as he turns into the calm one.

And all of these boys, these boys acting as if in a poor school play, are outdone completely by the girl, who is in a whole different league of awful.

Anushka Sharma, clad in technicolor pants and trying hard to look at ease while showing skin, is painful right from her first shot, where she overacts while chewing bubblegum. And giving her a casually sexy personality -- complete with the most wannabe vocabulary of all time, freakin' screwy stuff, yeah -- doesn't help matters.

It's hard to take this sort of film seriously, a film that lathers on the same lackluster ideas over and over again, expecting us to lap it up but actually beating us into stupor. There's not a single scene in the film that actually works, and there are a couple that just hurt: including a very poorly thought out reference to a music legend.

Nope, all they get right with Badmaash Company are the first three letters of the title.

Rediff Rating: 0.5/5

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Road Movie Reviews (Raja Sen)

Raja Sen - 3/5

A long and winding ode

All roads lead to roam. Dev Benegal's new film, armed with a syntax-challenging title, is one of those wonderfully shot ruminations of a young clueless man trying to find himself.

He -- by which we mean both protagonist and filmmaker -- can't quite find his forte, but takes us along on a fanciful, unpredictable little diversion, a very pleasant hitchhike through bleak deserts we really ought to see more of.


The film is about slackjawed young loner Vishnu , played by Abhay Deol , an apathetic slacker who really doesn't seem to give a damn about anything. All he knows is that anything would be better than his actual stinking legacy -- he's a hair oil heir -- and escapes by way of delivering an old truck across Rajasthan .


On his way he encounters a motormouth chaiwallah determined on finding a better life, a grizzled old mechanic who knows the ways of the world and points them forward, and a comely young widow looking to forget.

In short, a perfectly family-photograph sized entourage heading to a makeshift Oz mela down the yellow brickless road.


It is, as you'd imagine, a charming film. Thanks mostly to Michel Amathieu's starkly stunning cinematography, the frames are what you take away from the film, frames of a blue, graffiti-led truck wheezing to a halt in the middle of Kutch, of a kid in a bright yellow tee-shirt and of a fat mechanic struggling to stand but never to smile.

The film is textured lovingly, the colours are beautiful and its slow, sluggish pace initially enchants as much as it eventually exasperates.


Yes, exasperates. For this film -- this pretty little waterless detour of a film -- falters because of inconsistency and the lack of a cohesive storyline.

It's neat and pretty and quite charming, but after a while shots of a truck framed by arid landscape begin to seem tiresome. There are moments of genuine surprise and cleverness, but these are often cancelled out by overdone moments, like an excessive fair that appears out of nowhere, or the unforgivably theatrical shot of filmstrips blowing in the wind.

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A very short review of 3 Idiots

Sorry, can't write a detailed review right now, so here is my very short review of 3 Idiots -

3 Idiots has some genuine funny moments, but overall the film is very illogical. The main problem of the film is the writing. Though the dialogs were good, but the script as a whole was nothing but illogical. Hirani got confused on how much the film should be according to his Munnabhai reputation and how much of it should be Five Point Someone. In the end he makes a film which is a bit of Munnabhai and a bit of Five Point Someone. Hirani yet again tries to do a Hrishikesh Mukherjee but ends up making a David Dhawan kind of film .Tries to make Bawarchi but ends up making Hero No. 1.

Aamir Khan yet again disappoints. Does well in senti moments, but overacts in trying to show that he is still young and cool. Maddy, Sharman and Kareena were very good, but Boman Irani was the best IMO.

6/10

Sherlock Holmes Review by Roger Ebert

The less I thought about Sherlock Holmes, the more I liked "Sherlock Holmes." Yet another classic hero has been fed into the f/x mill, emerging as a modern superman. Guy Ritchie's film is filled with sensational sights, over-the-top characters and a desperate struggle atop Tower Bridge, which is still under construction. It's likely to be enjoyed by today's action fans. But block bookings are not likely from the Baker Street Irregulars.

One of the comforts of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories is their almost staid adherence to form. Villains and cases come and go up the staircase at 221B Baker Street, but within that refuge, life stays the same: Holmes all-knowing and calm, Watson fretful and frightened, clues orderly, victims distraught, never a problem not seemingly insoluble. Outside is the fabled Victorian London, a city we all know in our imaginations. I think I became an Anglophile on those winter nights when I sat curled up in my dad's big chair, a single lamp creating shadows in the corners of the room, reading the Modern Library edition of the stories while in the basement I heard the comforting sounds of my parents doing the laundry.

Every Holmes story is different and each one is the same, just as every day has its own saint but the Mass is eternal. "Sherlock Holmes" enacts the strange new rites of hyperkinetic action and impossible CGI, and Holmes and Watson do their best to upgrade themselves. Holmes tosses aside the deerstalker hat and meerschaum calabash, and Watson has decided for once and all to abandon the intimacy of 221B for the hazards of married life. Both of them now seem more than a little gay; it's no longer a case of "oh, the British all talk like that." Jude Law even seemed it be wearing lipstick when he promoted the movie on Letterman.

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3 Idiots Reviews (Raja Sen, Taran Adarsh, Nikhat Kazmi)

Raja Sen - 2/5

Three Idiots, Two Stars, One Missed Opportunity

In Rajkumar Hirani's [ Images ] latest film, a character steps to a blackboard and chalks up, for the benefit of a befuddled engineering college classroomful of students, the word 'Farhanitrate,' daring them to tell him what it means.

The word is a pun on the character's best friend, Farhan, and while it may be a non-existant gag word in the film, the compound seems to exist in real life -- Hirani's film is doused liberally with Farhanitrate (in an Akhtar sense of the word) and several other directorial scents -- including Hirani's own touch, which is why by the time the end credits eventually roll around, you have a 'been there, sniffed that' feeling about it all.

There's also a tragic, overriding feeling of futility. Why, you ask yourself, does a college film have to be made with middle-aged men playing the lead? Can we not trust younger actors to deliver, or has the insecurity of the star system blinded us to all reality?

Why must Aamir Khan [ Images ], a man who told us of the last day of college 21 years ago, still play a fresh-faced student? He does adequately, and is impressively bereft of age-lines, but we really have seen it all before. For the actor, it's probably yet another disguise, that of the young man. But it's a role he can do in his sleep.

Ditto for Hirani and his partner in wordplay, Abhijat Joshi. 3 Idiots is a very average bit of fluffy Bollywood masala that tragically pretends, at times, to be making a profound point, one it loses in repetition. The result is a confused film, one that doesn't know exactly where it stands, torn between lump-in-the-throat filmmaking and amateurishly written juvenilia. There are a few moments which click, but coming from the duo that created the finest film this decade, this is a massive letdown.

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Exclusive Review -Rocket Singh : Salesman of the Year

Who is Shimit Amin? The one who directed Ab Tak Chhappan or the one who directed Chak De! India and Rocket Singh. After watching Rocket Singh, I began to think is Ab Tak Chhappan more of a RGV Factory product than a Shimit Amin film? Is Chak De! India and Rocket Singh more of Jaideep Sahni films than a Shimit Amin film? Does Shimit Amin adapt himself to the company he works for? When he was associated with RGV factory he gave Ab Tak Chhappan that always looked like a factory product. When he moves out and teams up with Jaideep Sahni, his style of making film completely changes. I am not blaming Shimit Amin for making himself look adapted to the company he works for, I am just trying to figure out how much is Shimit Amin, the director, involved in making films? I wouldn’t call Chak De! India or Rocket Singh as regular Yash Raj films but yes, they have Jaideep Sahni written all over them. And I appreciate Shimit Amin not taking the credit for the film alone. Instead he has made sure that Rocket Singh is as much his film as it is of Jaideep Sahni. The first stills that came out of Rocket Singh had Ranbir Kapoor, Shimit Amin and Jaideep Sahni in it which is quite surprising. That itself showed Shimit Amin respects Jaideep Sahni for his contribution to the film. I haven’t seen such immense respect given to a writer before in Indian Cinema. Gulzar and Anurag Kashyap have got recognition for their writing too but then they probably got it once they entered the field of direction. Jaideep Sahni on the other hand is getting himself recognized only because of his writing skills and capabilities. We never heard the name of Shimit Amin alone whenever there was talk about Rocket Singh. We always heard Rocket Singh is from the makers of Chak De! India or Jaideep-Shimit duo are back.

Rocket Singh, one of the awaited films of the year, especially because of the fact that it is from the makers of Chak De! India, is about a fresh graduate Harpreet Singh played by Ranbir Kapoor, who trying to adapt himself to the job of a salesman. It isn’t a stylish film that shows the extraordinary capabilities of Harpreet Singh as a salesman, nor does it glorify the job of a salesman. Harpreet Singh is very much like a common man working in an office, and about a man whose ethics do not synchronize with the company he is working for.

The story of the film can well be compared to the silent era comedies especially the ones of Charlie Chaplin where he played the honest person forced to take the wrong way due to the situations in his life. And Rocket Singh references it very well with a transition effect which was used in the silent films. We can see the reference in the image below.



The script written by Jaideep Sahni is really the true winner of the film. The subtleness and the realism he gives to his characters and situations should be applauded. The atmosphere shown in Rocket Singh is very much real and how well Jaideep – Shimit have shown the atmosphere in different places (HOME, PARTY, OFFICE) and distinguished them is commendable. The best part of Jaideep’s writing is he is very honest to his work and no doubt in the fact that Shimit Amin does complete justice to Jaideep’s script. Through his work, one can see the effort he makes to make a scene look very much real. The characters in the film do small things that work like wonders in giving the film look real. Like right at the start, we see Ranbir Kapoor winking to his God and then apologizing right after that and then Harpreet Singh (Ranbir Kapoor) giving body massage to his father. Jaideep – Shimit establish the character so well in the film through their mannerism and dialogs they speak. Characters in the film speaking regional lines like “Nakko Re” for “No”, Harpreet Singh’s(Ranbir Kapoor) father calling him ‘Sardar’ in a informal way, speaking regional language while at home, etc makes the film look real.

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REVIEWS - Rocket Singh - Salesman of the Year (Taran Adarsh, Raja Sen, Rajeev Masand, Nikhat Kazmi, Khalid Mohd., Baradwaj Rangan)

Taran Adarsh -


Some films absorb you instantly, from the very outset. But it takes time to get into the world of a salesman who thinks from his heart.

Come to think of it, ROCKET SINGH - SALESMAN OF THE YEAR is about a simpleton, but the story of his struggle and accomplishment isn't the kind that would charge you or make you charter a similar path in life. Also, the story of an underdog who comes up the hard way should make you feel euphoric in the end, right? But ROCKET SINGH - SALESMAN OF THE YEAR doesn't.

Frankly, ROCKET SINGH - SALESMAN OF THE YEAR is more of a documentary on the life of a salesman. It's a decent film, no two opinions on that, but the question is, [a] Is the story powerful enough to excite you and [b] Does it grab your attention in entirety? Sadly, the answer to both the questions is in the negative.

There's another problem and this is strictly from the point of those seeking entertainment. A Yash Raj film with Ranbir Kapoor [after AJAB PREM KI GHAZAB KAHANI] essaying the title role, coupled with fun-filled promos ['Pocket Mein Rocket Hain'] might make you assume that it would offer loads of entertainment, but this has barely a song or two, as good as no romance and hardly any comic moments - the recipe for most Hindi movies.

In a nutshell, ROCKET SINGH - SALESMAN OF THE YEAR is a dull and dry experience.

Harpreet Singh Bedi [Ranbir Kapoor] has just graduated and his marks are, well, let's say a little embarrassing. But marks never stopped him from dreaming of an exciting and adventurous career, and they never will.

He takes a deep, positive breath and dives into the world of sales, rumoured to be an ultra cool career. It's everything he dreamt of, with its smooth dressing, smoother talking men and women who can sell ice to an Eskimo, dreams to an insomniac and a lifetime mobile connection to a dying man. But soon, his idea of success begins clashing with the strange ways of these 'professionals' and 'bosses' he looked up to.

ROCKET SINGH - SALESMAN OF THE YEAR may be based on a simpleton's life, but the viewer gets a hang of things only towards the second hour. The entire first hour is devoted to establishing the characters and also getting used to the way sales persons go about their business.

There's not much excitement in the first hour, barring a few attention-grabbing scenes that pop up intermittently. The story just flows, with the viewer not reacting much to the proceedings. But things change for better towards the post-interval portions when the protagonist and his colleagues' lives get complicated.

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