Tashan

Starring Anil Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan
Directed by Vijay Krishna Acharya
Rating: ** ½

The threesome on the way to god-knows-where need to escape from the cops. They get into blonde wigs and tight ‘American’ costumes and turn into item dancers for a Hollywood project called Holy Widows.

Holy shit! Tashan is so full of the milk of human zaniness that you feel it may at any moment topple over under the weight of its own cleverness.

If the bizarre brew of the cunning and the cool holds togther it’s mainly because of Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor who a create a kaleidoscopic chemistry of crime and no punishment.

There’s an ingrained energy in the proceedings, a ravishing rush of adrenaline and a whoosh of wunder-winks as though the man at the helm has a secret chuckle and a closet giggle underscoring every exaggerated swagger and every italicized moment in this story of four seemingly unscrupulous gold-diggers.

Three of them redeem themselves by the end of the film. As for the fourth, the villain played with feverish flatulent flamboyance by Anil Kapoor, you can’t win ‘em all.

Tashan is a winner in unexpected ways. First-time director Vijay Krishna Acharya spears the content to a dashboard that dashes all over the place.

Most of Tashan is a zany kookie ribald and riveting road movie about a naïve wannabe criminal Bachchan Pandey (Akshay Kumar), an English tutor named…er, Jimmy Cliff (Saif) trapped into a heist by a crimelord who wants to learn angrezi in haste, and an amoral pouty super-sculpted seductress Pooja (Kareena) who plays up the two men against one another and often breaks into steamy songs and provocative dances that suggest no link between the tale of the UP bhayya, angrezi masterji and the kanpuri coquette and the world that cultivates such freaked-out misfits.

Crime capers and road movies about characters who often get into outlandish costumes and foreign wigs at laconic locales have become a favourite at Yashraj.

Stories of small towners dreaming big have come and grown. Bunty Aur Babli worked. Jhoom Barabaar Jhoom did not. Tashan surreptitiously slips into the workable stratosphere, thanks to its super-motorized manoeuvres that take the plot into an area of utter originality.

Love or loath it, you’ve never seen a Hindi film like Tashan before.

Outrageous, over-the-top, opulent and audacious the debutant director turns formulistic conventions inside-out upside-down.

He pummels and tramples on the age-old material and emerges with images imprints and insignia that remind us that the global cinematic journey from Manmohan Desai and David Dhawan to Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone has come a full circle.

Tashan constructs a fool’s paradise of caper- wanderers in search of that pot of gold at the end of the studio-generated rainbow.

The splash of colours (art director Sukant Panigrahy and DOP Anaynanka Bose have as much fun with the art décor and locations as two kids doing water colour in kindergarten) and the swirl of delightfully and daring caper-adventures as the greasy characters travel across Greece and Hindustan in search of anything but peace, is quite a gravity-challenging achievement.

The actors seem to be having loads of fun. Whether we share it or not, is entirely our look-out. If the truth be told the only one who seems to catch hold of the director’s sur in totality is Akshay Kumar.

I’m not very sure why Kareena needed to re-sculpt her body to play the small-time schemer (was she playing Babli in search of a Bunty?) or the relevance of Saif Ali Khan’s dropping moustache (is he a secret member of Ming dynasty?).

In fact Saif’s relevance to the film escapes me. He rushes in as though to work over-time after Race.

He seems to have no idea of the rhythm and sur required for this extravagant take-off on Big Bad Bollywood’s meanest conventions, and his set-expressions are more annoying than illuminating.

Anil Kapoor’s Bhaiyyaji with his craving to master English is a monstrous aberration from the past. A mogambo from the stylized den in Mr India let loose in the city of the prowl to create a free-funded havoc.

Akshay steals the show in almost every frame.

Watch him in that tricky boat sequence with Kareena in Allahabad (yes we’re taken from Uttar Pradesh to Greece to Rajasthan to Leh in this jerky joyride from hear to eternity-gritty) where he gets to know she’s is his teenaged sweetheart from the town that was as frozen as the lakes of Leh and Greece.

Akshay takes this potentially trite and dangerously co-incidental sequence from level to level with a fluency that speaks volumes for his growth as an actor and his reverence for cinematic conventions.

You wish the director Vijay Krishna Acharya had shown some restrain in the action scenes.

The trouble is Tashan doesn’t know where to stop. The situations get out of hand and dialogues like chadhi-sukhana and aurat ki ganji make you wince with their wonky witticism.

You can’t blame Acharya for losing control. After a few reels of non-stop amorality the narration acquires its own volition.

It’s the madness of the moment capturing the awkward avarice of a generation that believes money makes the world go round….or is it wrong?…. that echoes the perverse passion-play of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers.

Expertly assembled and skilfully knitted together the episodes hold together mainly because the warm sunshine of the outdoors complements the bronzed and over-baked ambitions of the characters.

Sometimes the stench of immorality gets overbearing. That’s when Kareena’s overpowering beauty comes in. She’s partly Meryl Streep, partly Juliette Binoche.

What the film is, becomes harder to pinpoint. Just go with the four.

U Me aur Hum movie review

U Me aur Hum

Director: Ajay Devgan

Cast: Ajay Devgan and Kajol

After Aamir Khan who shined with his first directorial debut its time for Ajay Devgan too who has come out with a soul stirring movie like U Me aur Hum. UMAH clearly scores over Krazzy 4 this week with Ajay Devgan’s great direction and above all Kajol with a great performance.

U Me aur Hum is a love story about Ajay (Ajay Devgan) who falls in love at first sight with Piya (Kajol) on a cruise. In the first half of the movie we see a typical Bollywood romance with Ajay wooing Piya. The second half becomes intense which shows that marriage is only successful when both husband and wife stand for each in their times of distress.

Ajay is psychiatrist who is on a vacation trip with is friends and their respective spouses (Karan Khanna, Sumeet Raghavan, Isha Sharvani and Divya Dutta). Piya (Kajol) is a waitress in the cruise bar and when Ajay spots Piya he falls head over heels in love with her. Piya a strong-headed girl rejects Ajay’s advances. But Ajay is so much smitten by Piya that he tries every trick to woo her which includes trespassing into her cabin and reading her personal diary: Book of Possibilities. Psychiatrist by profession he uses the right tactics to win Piya’s heart. Piya finally falls for him but when he confesses her about reading her diary and using it to get her all hell breaks loose and Ajay is left alone.

But destiny brings them back together again and this time they end up marrying. Marriage for Piya and Ajay is like heaven and soon they become an ideal husband and wife for their friends. But as everything good comes to an end their marriage life starts getting complicated and another nail in the coffin is Piya’s illness: ‘Alzheimer’. How Piya and Ajay save their marriage and love forms the rest of the story.

The story of the movie is told in a flashback by Ajay Devgan, which adds charm to the movie. Aswan Whir does justice to the U Me aur Hum by rendering witty humorous dialogues to thought-provoking ones with great finesse. Ajay Devgan is terrific both in front of the camera as well as back of it. Kajol is as always awesome in her performance as an Alzheimer suffering young lady and is a strong contender for this year’s best actress award. Supporting actors irritate you a bit and there is nothing much to write about them.

Vishal Bharadwaj spins the magic of Omkara once again by rendering good music. The best song is the title track ‘U Me aur Hum’ and the peppy ‘Jee Le’ and the best thing U Me aur Hum is the great chemistry between real life husband and wife Kajol and Ajay. Ajay Devgan is the man behind direction and views but Kajol brought them to life.

U Me aur Hum will appeal to the younger audience, couples, couples soon to tie the knot and everybody else who is in love. The film has its share of drawbacks and mistakes but those can be forgiven ‘coz its Ajay’s first movie as a director. The movie will definitely force you and your better half to become HUM and make your relationship much better.

One Two Three

Starring: Suniel Shetty, Paresh Rawal, Tusshar Kapoor, Esha Deol, Sameera Reddy
Written & Directed by Ashwini Dheer
Rating: **

There’s this guy who comes quite early into this wacked-out comedy to serve Sameera Reddy, a car showroom owner, a notice.

He smiles and delivers his murderous missive, turns on his heels wears a frown and vanishes.

The thing about Ashwini Dheer’s flaky but frequently funny farce is that it’s got accomplished comic actors in the smallest of parts. Watch out for the seasoned Marathi actress who plays Tusshar’s mother. All she wishes for her son is that he excel in his work,namely killing people.

She sends him off on his first murderous spree in Pondicherry (where most of the acned, knock-kneed but never hackneyed action unfolds). Tusshar ends up at the doorstep of the wrong person, a loud Tamilian scrambled-brained lingerie designer (Esha Deol, cute and loud ).

Lingerie, or kachcha-banyan, as Paresh Rawal insists on calling them plays a big part in covering up the broadly exposed bases in this situational comedies where the best moments are those that the actors take over from the screenwriter and make their own.

Mukesh Tiwari displaying an unusual penchant for parody (forget the unfunny Buddha Mar Gaya) adding an extra ’s’ to every English word, is like Rakhi Sawant gone wrong.And Tiwari’s two sidekicks have their own subplots. One of them makes bombs that never goes off in time.

Luckily 123 gets its timing right most of the time.

It’s a war of nerves between the writer and the audience, as the one tries to outpace the…

Eventually the audience does get tired of watching three guys with the same name Laxmi Narayan getting mixed up in situations where the spoken words give nothing, and everything, away.

But our fatigue is slackened by the unslackened physical energy that the characters bring to the minutest of moments.

Ashwini Dheer comes from the sitcom culture on television. Nowhere does his framing or shot-taking give away his cramped antecedents. He enjoys the large open spaces that his crowded cast populates with parodic panache pouncing on the preposterousness in the plot with famished energy.

The cast is uniformly in-sync with the director’s vision, not allowing the shards of farce to be frittered away unused.

The smallest of cast member knows the job on hand. But Suniel Shetty gets as far away from his macho image as humanly possible as the timorous timid proper and punctual Laxmi Narayan on the run with a reined- in enthusiasm. We’ve seen Suniel do comedy before. But never so straight faced and sharp. He’s a surprise.

Tusshar Kapoor as Mama’s pet out to make his first kill is extremely accomplished. He labours over the loud comedy and gets the volume right. Paresh Rawal selling lingerie with uninhibited pride, is not the outright winner as he usually is in these comedies.

Has Paresh got complacent? Or have Suniel, Tusshar and co. got better at the funny stuff?

If only director Dheer had avoided the excessive crudity specially in Suniel’s prolonged sequence in the public loo with the cheesy hitman.

“Main nahin pukdunga,” he protests in a panic as the other actor (another small-time scene stealer in this festival of interesting actors) reaches into his pants.

Panic -attacks dominate the lives of these flustered characters. These lovable losers try to sell lingerie and cars while the director repackages the Shakespearean comedy of errors in a new auto-pilot manoeuvre that doesn’t quite have you holding your sides.

But the chuckles don’t stop.

Shortest role in the history of the comic farce goes to Upen Patel and Tanissha. They comes in with a song and go out with a bang. In-between they lose their grip over the giggle trip.

Director Ashwin Dheer quits while he’s ahead.

Krazzy 4

Starring Irrfan Khan, Arshad Warsi, Rajpal Yadav, Juhi Chawla, Suresh Menon, Rajat Kapoor
Written and Directed by Jaideep Sen
Rating: **

Stand-up comedian Suresh Menon playing one of four psychologically –disturbed protagonists utters barely one word in the film.

“Kidnap!” he stammers to tell his associates that the sweet doctor Juhi Chawla has been whisked away by an assortment of baddies who look like they could do with a spot of training in crime management.

Krazzy 4 is a refreshing if not riveting change from the risqué-driven innuendo-laden ha-ha-thons that have recently infested our theatres with parasitical passion.

This one has a point to make under the barrage of burlesque. And it’s all done in the spirit of give and tickle. Cinematographer Ajit Bhat shoots the streets and crowded places of Mumbai to signify the sense of freedom that the four institutionalized heroes feel even in the claustrophobic atmosphere outside the confines of their world within the stone walls.

So who’s the crazy one? The guy who thinks we’re still living in the era of Gandhian freedom fighters? Or the guy (Rajat Kapoor exuding suave viallainy with a slurpy stealth) who gets his sweet wife kidnapped for political gains?

Good question. And adeptly handled by debutant director Jaideep Sen as long as the audience doesn’t ask too many questions about the logistics of four men and a jalopy joyride one not-so-fine-day into intrigue, adventure and crime.

Sen with ample help from writer Ashwani Dheer knows precisely which frontiers to open to ensure the comedy doesn’t slip into farce. The initial scenes introducing the characters are well executed. And if the pace doesn’t slacken it’s because the actors wouldn’t let it.

Each of the four main actors invest a certain something beyond the precincts of parody to their characters.

Irrfan Khan as the literate cleanliness freak, Arshad Warsi as the inmate with an anger-management problem, Rajpal Yadav caught in Gandhian time warp and Suresh Menon as the tongue-tied repressed vagrant invest a definite direction to the wacked-out goings-on.

If you persuade a cine buff to choose one from the foursome it would have to be Rajpal who’s by now the maestro of mirthful manoeuverings. Watch him give his patriotic mouthfuls to several scumbags in the plot. Rajpal brings the house down.

Agreed some of the plotting and narrative transitions lack finesse. But when have mainstream Hindi films been known for extravagant bouts of finesse?

Amidst the rites of the road movie, the narrative packs in some seriously satirical and sensitive moments. Check out Arshad’s scene with his prospective father-in-law. It’s a superbly scripted encounter worthy of far more recognition than evident on ‘farce’-value.

Or that isolated incident of pathos when the hygiene maniac Irrfan repositions the bindi on his wife’s head.

Such moments, delicately drawn and deftly defined get drown in the din of devilish merrymakers on a rampage.

Krazzy 4 moves from one wacked-out adventure to another without sacrificing the sublinear message on the definition of normal behaviour in a social structure that has lost all its sense of proportion and is hurling into mayhem and anarchy.

Laughter, you might want to know, is the only medicine.

Krazzy 4 isn’t quite the tonic for our wounded souls. But you can’t help giggle at the goings-on specially when the cast is so finely clued into the cult of comicality.

A word on the two controversial item songs. Shah Rukh moves. Hrithik glides. And yes, Irrfan Khan tries to wipe Rakhi Sawant’s tattoo clean in her item song.

That’s where the laughter of the lewd is dispersed in the innocence of the ‘mad’. Krazzy 4 isn’t Milos Forman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

Priyadarshan did that in Kyun Ki.

Krazzy 4 goes cuckoo in different sometimes endearing strokes.