Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

*ing: Salman Khan, Sohail Khan, Zhu Zhu, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Om Puri, Shah Rukh Khan Rated: 4/10 It’s unfortunate and sad. But   Tubelight   lives up to its title, not its star. It is a slow, un-gripping drama with no sense of direction whatsoever, or any forward movement. Much like a fused tube light, it works too hard to light up the proceedings, but fails to do so. So linear it is in dimension that despite the star power of Salman Khan, the aerial landscaping of the film by Kabir Khan, some hummable songs and a   Hindi-Chini bhai bhai   theme, fails to capture your interest, let alone your imagination. There’s no fun in the film, absolutely no Sallu  bhai  stuff for which the public throngs to the cinema hall with  sitees  and  taalis  with that first-day-first-show mania. Instead of being that  chavanni uchhaal  superstar, Salman is made to look like one of those glycerine characters in a  saas-bahu ...

Cast : Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi, Rhea Chakraborty, Bhuvan Arora, Sahil Vaid, Vikram Thapa Rated : 2/10 Bank Chor  is like that upside down house showcased in Kuala Lumpur. Only, while the Malaysian property is a crowd puller, Ritesh Deshmukh starrer is a complete put-off. With such movies, you know the humour will be of a particular variety, the retarded forced slapstick kind but in Bank Chor, even that is forced on you from within the constrictive four-walls of a bank. It takes an era almost for the film to actually take off and in all that wasted time it scripts a treatise of blunders, bumbling aimlessly from one locker to other. By the time the director — and the plot — returns from its insane but inane trip, it is much too late indulge in “ der aye durust aye ” forgiveness by a totally cheated audience. Yes, amid all the troll-worthy inaction, there are sparks of Mumbai and Delhi humour capsules through the three main protagonists. While the brash ambien...

Star voiceovers: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker Rated: 3/10 A perfect holiday movie for kids and accompanying parents too, Despicable Me 3 is a perfectly scripted rollercoaster full of pace, colour, laughter, fun and frolic, not to mention a near-perfect animation story. Bru finds a long lost brother in Dru (both backgrounded by Steve Carell) and then all the action begins, after of course the mean-lean Bathalzar has re-stolen the pink diamond as big as that mountain you may have moved the other day at work. This third edition of the hit animated series sees Gru having turned from a super villain to a super detective with three angelic daughters and a love interest from the office. The ever popular minions and their tryst with a music reality show, a jail term and, of course, their return to loving Gru are the sidelights of this cute film with overly accentuated figurines stalking the screen to your delight. Gru’s twin brother is a blond breeze with an establishmen...

Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Connie Nielsen, Elena Anaya Rated: 8.5/10 In the entirely male-dominated superhero spectrum of Hollywood, Wonder Woman is a refreshingly gentle, story-oriented action drama around the Amazonian dame who first made waves in the 1940s as DC Comics’ only woman superhero and then splashed the small screen in the 70s to much acclaim. This is Wonder Woman’s first outing in Hollywood and she completely captivates you with her ethereal looks, endearing naivety and absolute power, traits that are truly much beyond human comprehension. The goodness of this engaging, humorous and languid action film works at various levels. The fact the film is directed by a woman gives it that special flavor missing from rugged all-male landscapes that DC Comics has made its money from thus far. Patty Jenkins keeps the womanly thing alive all through the movie despite her main character being dressed almost always in iron armour...

Cast: Vikrant Massey, Tillotama Shome, Gulshan Devaiah, Om Puri, Kalki Koechlin, Ranvir Shorey, Tanuja, Jim Sarbh Rated: 5/10 Death in the Gunj is more about life in the back-belly of Jharkhand-West Bengal than about a sinister murder which the title speaks of. Nevertheless, the film surprises you on many fronts, and pleasantly so sometimes. For a murder mystery which you think it is, it is much too old world and languid, merely sharing some happy, some tricky, some complicated, some simple moments of a Bengali family’s New Year eve get-together in a remote village house where the parents have chosen to retire despite the concern of their big city children. Those moments are no doubt real, happening and carefully constructed to bite into the realism of a typical modern Bengali family. There is an extra-marital affair thrown in between a brash Ranvir Shourey and a beautiful western beauty in  Kalki Koechlin. There is a dejected cousin, a run-of-the-mill couple with a pr...

Star voiceovers : Salman Khan, Javed Akhtar, Raveena Tandon, Vinay Pathak, Makrand Deshpande, Saurabh Shukla, Chunky Pandey, Kunal Khemu Rated : 5/10 The animation scores by twisting the story into a modern kind of world with which today’s children will relate. It makes you laugh a lot with very “today” jokes on the kindergarten world. It speaks of technology, it speaks of Google, it also speaks of a whole lot of CGIs that come in handy for the baby Hanuman to fly around the geographical boundaries of the Earth and pick up experiences which slowly and steadily chip away his childlike fears of the unknown. After all, he is Hanuman and is there to save Sita from Ravana, only that is one thing he does not do in this one. Here he is a child, taken away by a tornado, deposited in a faraway jungle with his lizard  chachi  and is groomed by a self-interested Garud. The stories behind all the familiar characters from Ramayana are hugely different but engaging. Only th...

Cast:  Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra, Alexandra Daddario, David Hasselhoff, Cody Martin Rated : 4/10 Wasn’t  Baywatch  always about certain portions of the woman anatomy than about any kind of crime and chase thrillers? That’s the way it should have remained because more the world matures, more it moves back into serenading, well, woman anatomy on the big screen, especially when it is localed around a beach, sea and some Sunday fun in the summers. The latest edition of  Baywatch , hijacked from the now aged David Hasselhoff by none other than muscle rippling Rock, is a muddle much like the beach and sea conditions during monsoons. It does not show enough of anything, not even skin as a true blood  Baywatch  franchise should have, and gets rather too complicated with fallen heroes, drugs, corruption and jurisdiction issues that are too commonplace for a  Baywatch  title to get stuck into. Come to think of it, the film i...