Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

No patch on Aashiqui Ratings: 5/10 Adiya Roy Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor That was 1990. The clan of Bhatts, in consonance with Gulshan Kumar, created a musical sensation riding on the brand new voice of Kumar Sanu and fresh faces of Rahul Roy and Anu Kapoor. The songs rocked then, they continue to rock now. The debutants stayed longer in the industry than they would have otherwise, thanks to Aashiqui.  The film became a cult — first with its pulsating romantic numbers and only then with its love tale. Aashiqui 2 is nowhere near this blockbuster and the Bhatts would  not be squeamish about admitting this. There are too many blocks in this one, starting from the unexplained presence of alcohol as virtually the main lead, to the end building up to become such an unexplained disaster. There’s a lot of mismatch  in the middle too, starting all the way from the missing chemistry between the lead pair of Aditya Roy Kapoor and  Shraddha Kapoor. She looks ...

Iron Man 3 Ratings:  6.5/10 Robet Downey Jr, Ben Kingsley, Gweneth Paltrow Robert Downey Jr is back, without the iron cladding in much of the movie this time. But there’s a lot happening outside of his trademark jacket — there’s the quintessential one-liners being thrown at you with wry humour, there is a mushy romance taking centrestage, there’s those Tony Stark panic stations and insomnia and — most importantly — there’s Sir Ben Kingsley as the most delightful villain in a long time. As Mandarin, the nutcase terrorist, America-hater of unspecified nationality, he towers over everything in Iron Man 3, even over the otherwise so lovable Mr Stark. Kingsley’s portrayal of a man with few words, no reasoning and a lot of action, his kohl-lined eyes, his dimunitive frame and his ruthless inhumanity is both stunningly real and alluring in the same go. Downey, on the other hand, is as much of an innovative genius of style as he has been in his former movies, bu...

Shree  Ratings:  3.5/10 * ing: Hussain Kuwajerwala Shree is an over-ambitious sci-fi murder mystery which would have been good to watch had it not gotten confused with all the mumbo jumbo it thought it needed to propel. Not that the production quality is bad, just that it comes across as a tad out of sync with the genre it dabbles in. This despite the above average presence of a bespectacled Hussain Kuwajerwala and his more than screechy girlfriend Anjali Patil. The end is predictable, the time wraps too unreal, the ledge jumps into future too unbelievable and the climax all too predictable. Bollywood is yet to reach the slickness and imagination excellence of Hollywood in this genre, what with special effects and gadgetry missing too starkly in this one. It could have been a good murder mystery if it did not come wrapped in time wrap. For a Bollywood debut of  extremely talented TV actor Hussain, this was a soft launch and no Mr Kuwajerwala...

The host Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Jake Abel, Max Irons, Diane Kruger Rated: 4/10 Diabetics beware! There is too much sugar being injected into your veins in this one — that too by sparkling souls all the way from lost planets. There is only this much you can take in the name of mushy romance — between a two-in-one being (read woman with glazed pupils) and two men — one for the human soul trapped inside the alien girl and the other for the alien herself. Almost everything here is beyond human — be it the extreme politeness of existence, the complete non-existence of crime, the absence of corruption and the absolutely clean environment in which this occupied Earth breathes its captive existence. There are sleek cars, guns and life serums too, which work both on humans and aliens the same way — forget the chromosomes issue! And, in between all this, there are survivor humans living and harvesting wheat in a Texan cave, well, just being human, undetected. It might seem a l...

Ek thi daayan Starring: Emraan Hashmi, Huma Qureshi, Konkona Sen, Kalki Koechlin Rated: 5/10 So Ekta ji  Kapoor ji ! There was a lot of paranormal activity going through in your head all these weeks, months — all those  pretaatmas  coming together to get their man (read pishaach ) back into their realm, all those sexy  choties  doing a snake dance, all those dilated pupils trying to drown you in a black pool, all those child sacrificing activities ordered to spook you out, all those dark, haunted alleys, those hells underneath the highrises and, of course, that dysfunctional lift that takes you all the way down to God only knows where! Yes Ekta ji , you do such kitsch in style so all the cinematography is faultless. The packaging, the muted lighting, the cobwebs and the spooky flat are apt too. So is the lizard, Ekta ji  and, yes, you do wonders with its twitter and its tail! But then, where was the soul? Yes, we know your characters in thi...

Nautanki Saala Starring: Ayushmann Khurrana, Pooja Salvi, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Evelyn Sharma At: DT Cinemas & others Rated: 3.5/10 A  nautanki  with hardly any drama — what could be worse than that? Despite the pleasant presence of Ayushmann Khurrana (probably the mis-spellings in his name are not working) and an earnest effort by Kunaal Roy Kapur to somehow not let this film emulate his ‘loser’ character, this one from Rohan Sippy falls flat on all its fours. From the word go, the film starts sagging, much like the spirits of Kapur who makes an entry with a suicidal attempt. There is absolutely nothing that happens throughout the movie even though the French film from which this one has been adapted was quite a sizzler with the same story. A jilted loser, low on self-esteem, leaking from the nose, the mucous all but jerking out of the screen, is saved by actor/director Khurrana to literally hang like a cross on his head — he takes him home, he feeds him, he pa...

Oblivion Starring: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Morgan Freeman At: DT Cinemas Rated: 4/10 There’s Tom Cruise, there’s Morgan Freeman and there is a whole lot of sci-fi ado. Yet,  Oblivion  turns out to be a too-stark and a too-slow post-apocalypse futuristic film in which there are no humans left on the face of the Earth. So if there are no humans, there is definitely no soul and the film lives up to the latter billing. It comes across as a well-designed but non-human film in which the drama — if any —emanates only from the awesome visuals that resemble some good photography staring out of a plush post-millennium design book. Around a stark landscape, hanging in a cloudy horizon, is Tom Cruise’s glass abode. Everything is picture perfect, including his shower cubicle and his swimming pool, not to mention his glider chopper in which he flies down to inspect mother Earth. But except for his groovy smile and a few romps in the bed with his commun...

Starring: Ali Zafar, Taapsee Pannu, Siddharth, Divyendu Sharma Rated: 6.5/10 Sai Paranjpe, I hear, is angry. But I can’t just stop laughing. So, please do not compare this one to the original  Chashme Buddoor.  That will definitely make you feel angry. The overriding emotion here has to be that of laughter, not anger. Arre bhai,  that was Sai Paranjpe. This is David Dhawan. That was a Deepti Naval-Farooq Sheikh romance — gentle, slow and very very  aam aaadmi  of the 80s. This is a rip-roaring comedy with just a skeleton of romance. It is also very 2013, in an unimaginable hurry and more about crazy  chuddy  buddies than about boy meets girl, more about  dhichkiyan dhoom dhoom  than about  kahan se aaye badra. It’s pure, unadulterated, unstoppable kitsch, very David Dhawan. But then,  dum hai boss , with all those pjs that make you forget you ever sported a stiff upper lip. The lyrics, very Dhawan — racy, rotten and oh-...

Commando: A One Man Army Starring: Vidyut Jamwal, Pooja Chopra, Jaideep Ahlawat At: DT Cinemas & others Rated: 6/10 This one is a surpise entry for the week, a cut above the more awaited  Nautanki Saala . Pegged on the muscled torso of Vidyut Jamwal, the film surprisingly holds on your interest for quite a while. This despite it being a single-track storyline. What helps is perhaps the realism that has been added to the proceedinigs, the Huma Quereshi-like charm of its lead actress and the carefully orchestrated action sequences that make of the backbone of this film. Of course, don’t miss the pupil-less eyes of the villain who does well with his santa-banta jokes and his Punjabi lingo.   Source: Sunday Pioneer, 14 April, 2013

Himmatwala Starring: Ajay Devgn, Tamanna, Mahesh Manjrekar, Paresh Rawal At: DT Cinemas & others Rated: 4.5/10 There is that age-old Ramgarh and an  angrezon ke zamane ka , well, ticket collector; then there is a  sher , a sherawali, a Sher Singh and, if you’ve still not had enough of it, a dialogue explaining why Project Tiger came into being (hero tells the  sher ‘itna maroonga ki  20  saal baad samaj mein ayega  Project Tiger  kyun hua’ ). Then there is Ajay Devgn too, in those big but not white shoes of the incorrigible Jitendra, doing all the maar dhar and mukkabaazi  as uncomfortably as Sunny Deol would, say, do a  tathaiya tathaiya  ho dance (he even punches a tiger into submissiveness!); there is Tamanna too, with her hunter and I-soooo-hate- gareebs  persona which is not a patch on Sridevi’s vivacious screen presence, or for that matter, even her thunder thighs! This one has all the curves and Karisma-lik...

G.I. Joe: Retaliation Starring: Dwanye Johnson, Bruce Willis, Jonathan Pryce, Adrianne Palicki At: DT Cinemas & others Rated: 4/10 What would you say about a male-male movie in which a woman stands out; what would you say about an action-action movie in which a diehard Bruce Willis is at best a sidekick. What would you say about an elite fighter force which gets done in by its commander-in-chief. What would you say about an American President who is a hapless hostage all through the film as some dark forces from a high-security prison manage to escape and get set to destroy the world through their own satellite monster called Zeus? Traditional wisdom would tell you that the casting is all wrong but still there is hope of action. Yes,  G.I. Joe: Retaliation  has its casting all topsy-turvy, it’s storyline too thin, its fighters too confused and its special effects just too insipid to have a hope for an adrenaline-pumping enjoyment. Adrianne Palicki as Lady ...