Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Grand masti Starring:  Vivek Oberoi, Ritesh Deshmukh, Aftab Shivdasani, Sonalee Kulkarni, Bruna Abdullah, Karishma Tanna, Maryam Zakaria, Manjari Fadnis Rated:  5/10 He chants ‘Rose, Mary, Marlow’ pretty often because, he says, once upon a time he had a Laura (his wife)! Then there’s a Hardick too, sometimes condoming umbrellas and sometimes pumping up the jewels in his underpants with a pressure pump! By the way, the bulges are as big under the male bellies as they are over the female stomachs. And there is fizz too, a lot of creamy fizz bubbling out of coke bottles! In between, there is a lot of in-your-face man force, thanks to the main sponsor being a condom company of the same name. Depending on how much of a prude you are, or how much of grossness you are willing to accommodate on a given day, or how much you enjoy the Dada Kondke type of sexing up, the verdict will go either way. If you are cringing already then they had warned you it will come without any f...

John day Starring:  Naseeruddin Shah, Randeep Hooda, Vipin Sharma, Shernaz Patel, Sharat Saxena Rated:  3/10 Naseeruddin Shah bids to do another  A   Wednesday  as  aam   aadmi  taking the law into his hands, this time to avenge his daughter’s death and a fatal attack on his wife.  Sadly, however, while  A Wednesday was a gripping thriller which garnered critical acclaim for not just its novelty of presentation but also the edge-of-the-seat experience it gave to viewers with its slick editing, this one gets warped, mindless and unnecessarily violent. Add to that a plot which is wafer thin and lacking in motive and you have good actors (both Nasser and  Randeep Hooda come across as seasoned) getting mired in a slim story handled slimly by the director.  One may ask why was Hooda who plays a rogue ACP, should be biting off other people’s tongues and dismembering heads after smashing them to pulp. Even Naseeruddin Shah i...

Horror story Starring:  Karan Kundra, Nishant Malkani, Ravish Desai, Hasan Zaidi Rated:  4/10 As scream flicks go, this one comes way down and is, at best, a quickie without much thought being put into it. Much like those regular Hollywood flicks that are churned and dumped on Third World nations, this one too goes into a hotel for no apparent reason and never comes out of it. In between, there is predictable blood and gore orchestrated by a not-so-scary bad spirit. Usually Vikram Bhatt does not go wrong with his horror stories, but this one has so obviously been done without much work that you feel free to leave much before the conclusion — which, by the way, is bygone and well worked out much earlier in the film. The scares are not too big and moments repetitive enough for you to relax as the movie unfolds around a group of youngsters trying to celebrate a farewell party in an unlit, haunted hotel. Now, if you can relax in a horror tale, obviously it is not the f...

Grown ups 2 Starring:   Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Salma Hayek Rated:  4.5/10 Adam Sandler films are often gentle comedies woven around a family replete with children problems and wife issues but soaked in a whole lot of love and play. This one is no different with Sandler doing the routine in his outback home where he has retired for some leisure time. As have his friends by the way and they are the ones who build up a confused kind of laughter riot with their antics hat are not at all gentle. The urine spraying antelope which assaults Sandler in his bedroom one morning sets the pace for all the funny drama to follow even though Sandler has the best intentions of spending some quality time with family, not crazy friends, in mind.  Grown   Ups , the original, was more novel because it was the first born. This one tries to recreate the magic but manages to do so only in bits and pieces. On a week that has  Grand   Mast...

Shuddh Desi romance Starring:  Sushant Singh Rajput, Parineeti Chopra, Vaani Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor Rated:  5.5/10 It is definitely  shuddh  (novel) in the way it presents romance. It is  baand   baajaa  kind of desi  too. And yes, despite the confusion it melts into by the end of it all, despite the commitment phobia it propels, besides the  kabhi yahan kabhi wahan kabhi kahin na  kind of  pyar , the film manages to score as a romance, a post-modern kinda love. The latest from Aditya Chopra’s production house has its high points and its low points. The idea is great — to lay out a post-modern wallah  love in a becoming manner. The girl is no coy bopper. She has flicked away relationships, she smokes incessantly and does her bed and boy-thing quite unapologetically. Parineeti is the perfect choice for this as she brings a dazzling brilliance to the character of a Guwahati girl living and loving in the rough and tumble o...

Zanjeer Starring : Ram Charan, Priyanka Chopra, Sanjay Dutt, Atul Kulkarni, Mahie Gill & Prakash Raj Rated : 3/10 As heartbreaks go, this one is pretty singular. As outrages go, you can call it second only to what  Ram   Gopal Varma Ki Aag  did to  Sholay . As remakes go, there can’t, or should I say shouldn’t, be any more such ones. That said, one will have to laud director Apoorva Lakhia’s courage in propelling something so far removed from the gravitas of the original that the final product falls into the realm of the ridiculous. Even bigger applause should go to Ram Charan’s misplaced bravado in trying to do an Amitabh Bachchan, that too for a film which had stamped the arrival of the legendary angry young man into Bollywood all those years ago. The crime that Lakhia has committed in remaking such an iconic film is that he has done it in the most cavalier way. The script sucks, the story is thrown at you with gaping jerks, the presentation is stacca...

Satyagraha Staring: Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Manoj Bajpai, Amrita Rao and Vipin Sharma Rated: 5/10 In one sentence, you can call Prakash Jha’s latest offering  Satyagraha  a very linear recap of a movement orchestrated on screen, by usual suspects. Usual suspects being his favourite men and women — both in real and on reel. So, you have Amitabh Bachchan as his hero Anna Hazare (with shades of Mahatma Gandhi in him of course), Ajay Devgn as his go-to man Arvind Kejriwal, an aptly quiet man essaying the role of Prashant Bhushan, Kareena Kapoor as the face of media activism and an Arjun Rampal type of local leader collecting all the crowds. All’s well till here. But Jha gets too ambitious in trying to point out everything that is wrong with the system through just one movie. So you have a side story paying tribute to whistle-blowers like Satyendra Dubey and also Manoj Bajpai signifying all the muck flying around in the corridors of pow...

Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters Staring: Logan Lerman, Brandon T Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Douglas Smith Rated: 5/10 It surprises you because it is not just any children’s movie full of adventure, fun and daredevilry by half-blood sons and daughters of Poseidon and Zeus. Besides carrying the fairytale props of colour and exotic locales, the CGI is impeccable as is the human element woven into the film in good measure. There is brother love, there is friend love, there is father-son love, there is hate and there is vengeance all rolling up into one exhilarating effort by Percy Jackson and his band of warriors on a mission to save their land from a deadly resurrection of their evil great grandfather. The film, and its 3D effects, keep you more than mildly engaged as the cherubic leader leads you through a vortex of action in sea and on land. The effort, you can say, is Olympian and the story a junction in a series of epic operations woven well into a fun-adventure film....

The frozen ground Staring: Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Vanessa Hudgens Rated: 7/10 It was the 70s through the 80s that a bumbling DEA office failed to round up one of the deadliest serial killers in American history — Robert Christian Hansen — a hunter who killed numerous of women by shooting them as animals after torturing and raping them and then flying them into the frozen Alaskan wilds to chase them down and kill them. Though, in the end, he was convicted for 421 years without parole, his reign of terror has been captured awesomely by first time director Scott Walker. There is nothing in the tightly edited movie to enhance the drama and yet there is this chilling feeling freezing you up all through. Besides Cage who plays to perfection the relentless sleuth on the killer’s trail, the film has a gripping story shown through the eyes of Hansen’s only victim who managed to survive and finally gave evidence to put him behind bars. Apart from the fact that enough research has b...

The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bone Staring: Lily Collins, Jamie Campbell Bower, Robert Sheehan Rated: 3/10 I am not mundane,” screams Lily Collins, a demon slayer girl whose skills have been blocked by her gifted mother to make her have a normal human life. Now, that’s ridiculous as the movie will tell you as it unfolds into a fullblown fight against evil by a band of well-meaning shadow killers. Yes, for those yearning for all those warewolves, vampires and similar other world beings it will be a good idea to visit one of the abandoned churches in the heart of New York to find a medley of paranormal existence. There are bad ones, there are good ones, they sing, dance and slay at discos, they turn into crows, they swoop down on you from pawn shops, they torture and they kill. Yes, very Twilightish, one can say, but without too much heartbeat in its romance, or mirth in its proceedings. Too wannabe, too normal to be arrestingly paranormal. Source: Sunday Pioneer, Septemb...