Gulaal - Review

A Rajputana uprising, a movement in the making, a revolution waiting to happen.....

Gulaal is a story of a young man Dileep (Raj Singh Chaudhary), who comes to Jaipur to study law. A very simple person by nature, Dileep soon gets caught up in a whirlwind of college politics, love & a fight within himself to figure out who is true & which battle should he wage.

Here he stays with one Rananjay Singh Ransa [Abhimanyu Singh], who, even with his blue-blooded lineage, is a ruffian of sorts & takes great pride in being a Rajput.
He also comes in contact with Dukey Bana (Kay Kay Menon), the main man in town, who runs the whole show. Dukey Bana's main aim, is to have a separate state of the Rajputs and restore the legacy of the kings & their families.

On entering Jaipur, Dileep encounters incidents where he gets ragged by Jadwal (Pankaj Jha) and in the ensuing rivalry, Dukey Bana makes Rananjay stand for the College elections. With Rananjays untimely death by the hands of a rival Karan (Aditya Srivastav), Dileep is promoted to the fore & eventually wins the election for the post of General Secretary.
Although one might think that petty college politics doesnt really translate into the big picture, there is a great story woven into this political saga, where money to run the Rajputana movement makes Dukey a man on a mission, eliminating whatever & whoever comes his way.
In this journey, the simple Dileep, falls in love with Karans sister Kiran (Ayesha Mohan), who eventually betrays him to take the post which he won.
Driven by rage, the final lap deals with how Dileep vents his anger on all he meets & eventually puts an end to it all.

One thing is for certian. Anurag Kashyap has delivered yet another sublime performance, with a gripping narrative in the first half, absorbing you into the story, which meanders slowly to a finish in the second. The dialogues are absolutely brilliant and this is a movie where the individual performances are backed by a strong story. Only a little tightening of the second half would have pushed this movie's experience many notches higher.
The music is not bad and lyrics are very witty & thought provoking.

Of the performances, Kay Kay Menon is fabulous. He delivers performance after performance, and this one is right up there, deserving an applaud.
Abhimanyu Singh, has a short but very impactful role & can be called the pick of the cast. The ease with which he plays the role, makes you feel its tailor made for him.
Mahie Gill, in her extended cameo is entertaining & delivers a few laughs. Raj Singh Chaudhary looks apt, Jesse Randhawa, non-existent & Piyush Mishra-brilliant.

Do yourselves a favour, go watch this film. It is 2.5 hrs well spent.

Critical - 4/5
Commercial - 2.5/5

Little Zizou - Review

Interesting promos, curiosity value, a seemingly fun movie one might think.
Well, not quite.
No Storyline, no direction, boredom.
Well, that's more like it.

When ones goes into this film , they would generally expect a mad tale woven around a fun Parsi community, some light-hearted humour & two hours well spent, but alas, that is not the case.

This is the movie narrated by a young boy Xerxes (Jahan Bativala), about his family & neighbors. His family comprises of his crazy father Cyrus II (Sohrab Ardeshir) & his reticent brother Artaxerxes (Imad Shah). Cyrus II is a self-proclaimed healer running a Parsi movement & doesn't care much for his kids or anyone else.
Artaxerxes is an artist in himself & has the dream of creating a simulator out of a junk cockpit along with two of his friends.

The other family in play is Boman Presswala (Boman Irani) who runs a newspaper serving the Parsi community, his wife Roxanne (Zenobia Shroff) & two daughters. They are a happy fun family & dont get along with Cyrus II & his ideologies.

The story in this movie, if any, is about how few people turn intolerant towards others, as they don't want the Zoroastrian community mixing with any other & how they slowly realise their mistake & a turnaround of sorts takes place.

The narrative is extremely sluggish, at times making you wonder what is happening on screen. The track moves back & forth from Cyrus II and his assistant Miss Patel (Shernaz Patel) who is in awe of him, to Xerxes not having a mother to care for him, spending time with Roxanne in whom he sees a mother figure.
One thing which is loud & clear here is that this movie is NOT a comedy. Unlike all the misleading promos, this movie has only a handful of laughs, courtesy some of the typical Parsi Gujarati language & one begins to wonder if this is yet another case like the movie Mithya, which was projected to be something it wasn't.

Another mystery one fails to understand is the title Little Zizou. Though they show that Xerxes is a big fan of Zinedine Zidane, hence calling himself Little Zizou, it in no way has any implication in the films context, thus the name failing to register a logical meaning.

Of all the performances, only a few are worth a notable mention. Boman Irani as the fun, family man Presswala is brilliant. He is funny in the light-hearted moments & does great even in the emotional ones. He plays the role straight from the heart.
Imad Shah as the wandering dreamer is also good. He underplays the character but does justice to it.
Finally Jahan Bativala as Xerxes does a good job as well, but unfortunately the script does not support these actors.
A string of cameos from various actors like John Abraham (wasted cameo), Cyrus Broacha (tries to hard), Kunal Vijaykar or Kamal Siddhu doesn't salvage any hope for this film.

The direction of veteran writer Sooni Taraporevala deserves hardly any mention. She fails to hold the audiences attention.

All in all, this movie looks interesting in the promos, but is unfortunately limited to that. Give it a skip, save some time, save some money.

Critical - 1.5/5
Commercial - 1/5

Dhoondte Reh Jaaoge - Review

Caution: Watch this movie only if you are really bored or just want to leave your brains somewhere and go de-stress with some stupid cinema.

This movie deals with the capers of Anand Powar (Kunal Khemu), a struggling chartered accountant & Raj Chopra (Paresh Rawal) a flop movie director.
They both have only one aim, to make some money & make it fast.
That's when they hatch the most ingenious plan of them all. To collect money (100 cr) from 20 financiers & make the worst film of all time. Make it for 5 cr and once the movie flops, go away with the rest of the money to enjoy the rest of their lives.
For this movie they take Aryan (Sonu Sood) an actor who wants to work with only the bigwigs, but agrees to the movie, opposite him they cast Anands girlfriend Neha (Soha) & take on Pervez Asharaff (Jhonny Lever) as the writer.
The story is a hybrid version of DDLJ, Gadar, Lagaan & ofcourse Sholay.

The first half of the movie is quite funny and some of the scenes are trully hilarious. Many moments have you in splits & actually build up some hope for the second half.
But the second half strongly disappoints for most of it, leave the pre-climax sequences which again, are absolutely hilarious. What this movie lacks is consistency.
When you look at the story at hand, they could have definitely gone all out and made it a laugh riot but they strongly falter at many points. A slow second half, bad jokes & utterly sad music.

From the actors, it is Paresh Rawal all the way. A special applause for him, as this genius shows yet again why his comic timing is absolutely flawless. He carries the movie on his shoulders, and whatever pride this movie salvages is credited to him.
Sonu Sood, Soha Ali & Kunal Khemu are strictly ok. Jhonny Lever too appears rusty.

All in all, this movie would make a good cable tv watch, you can definitely skip the cinema halls & wait next week for Gulaal.

Critical - 2/5
Commercial - 1/5