Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Dhoom 3 Starring:  Aamir Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Uday Chopra, Katrina Kaif Rated:  8/10 You thought  Dhoom3  would have a hard time competing with its predecessors; you thought there could not be anyone more dishy than Aryan of  Dhoom   2 ; you thought the bikes couldn’t get slicker than the ones vrooming onto the big screen in  Dhoom ; you even thought that Uday Chopra would change, that Abhishek Bachchan would work a wee bit on his trademark swagger and that this YRF franchise, too, could not be anything more than bikes, bods and babes swishing from Mumbai to London and to Brazil. Well, you thought wrong, entirely wrong. Because, the latest edition of this young speed wonder comes in a whole new avataar, this time all the way from a carefully filmed Chicago. If the original  Dhoom  was a tentative experiment in importing Hollywood’s heist thrills to Bollywood, mounted on the muscle bubbling anatomy of John Abraham and his swi...

What The Fish Starriing : Dimple Kapadia, Manu Rishi Chadha, Manjot Singh, Anand Tiwari, Sheeba Shabnam Rated:  5.5/10 What the Fish!  This one is full of promise and promises continue to dog you all through this now-interesting-now-promising film on an inane, run-of-the-mill situation. Dimple Kapadia, seen on screen after a pretty long long break, does a pretty good job as an ageing wife of a man who stares you down from a photo frame — and of course all the angst and abuses that the poor little still man hears from his wife from up there on the wall. The film, about Dimple’s house keys being given to a no-good caretaker whom she considers a bad suitor of her niece, looks sneakingly familiar to an old Hollywood movie but what the fish. Lifts are in vogue today — and in all forms! So, all the activity that goes on unhindered in this house behind Dimple’s back — which she says is allergic to anyone touching her bedspread or using her toilet (where she washes and...

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Starring : Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, James Nesbitt, Orlando Bloom Rated : 6.5/10 Hollywood has the knack of making you inordinately interested in overt make-believe. This  Hobbit , the second in a three-part series, holds you in your seat not by imposing visuals which are so much of a signature tune of such fantasy ventures but also due to the thriller sequence of events, many months after the first one in the series too wowed the audiences with its towering graphics and fertile imagination. This time round the mission is even tougher so thrills many more. Hobbit, the thief, has to steal a white sparkling stone for the dwarf king from right under the nose of the fire dragon. The journey is full of pitfalls as deep as the gorges and jungles these dwarfs have to pass in order to get their land and kingdom back. The desolation of Smaug is their only option to survival with the dark clouds of a ...

R...Rajkumar Starring:  Shahid Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Sonu Sood Rated:  1/10 Silent  ho ja  Shahid,  varna main  violent  ho jaoongi!  Yes, it makes you that desperate — this horrifying attempt at movie-making, this insulting the intelligence of the audience, this non-story story, this cacophony that bursts your eardrums and this mish-mash of nonsense that annoys you enough to tear your hair in frustration. That one mark you see up there is for sheer indulgence for poor little Shahid Kapur trying so hard to be accepted as a  goonda mawali  with a stubble and all that unkemptness that surrounds our screen desperadoes.  Gandi baat  Shahid! You can’t expect us to not say “uggh” to your slurpy attempt at romancing Sonakshi in this one. Actually, you could have been booked for sexual harassment, intimidation, stalking, and eve-teasing all in one go had you stepped out of the screen in the mode that you appear in  R…R...

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Starring:  Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland Rated:  8/10 Katniss Everdeen is back and in style, defying all doom talk not just about her existence in Panem but also in a sequel that turns out to be fiery enough to hold you by your breath — at least for a major part of the second part in the  Hunger Games  trilogy. It is totally to the credit of Everdeen and her gripping presence on screen that the sequel defeats all pitfalls, including the bloodbath (delightfully measured) second hunger games themselves. It is dark, it is haunting, the 12th District and the rest of them all are equally distraught and President Snow is older and more sinister than usual, gunning for Katniss and her growing popularity as the freshest hope for revolution. If the  Hunger Games  took away your breath by their bloodthirstiness pegged on children killing each other to ...

Gori Tere Pyar Mein Starring:  Imran Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Shraddha Kapoor Rated:  5/10 The  badi  meets  chhota  syndrome has become a frequent flyer not just with Bollywood but also on the small screen. And, considering that the age gap between Imran Khan and Kareena Kapoor had been well established in their previous film  Ek Main Aur Ek Tu , this one has done well to give public memory and the age gap issue a further push. The film though is a slow starter and continues to be that all through the two-and-a-half hours that it takes to establish the fact that Kareena is now a begum sahiba  and even if she does the  latka jhatkas chewing gum chaba ke , she is cautious about not revealing too much. Other than that, Imran Khan is his usual self, dancing awkwardly (giving Sunny Deol some moments of feeling good about his own dancing), and carrying on a romance the modern way — without much of a hungama . In this one, he is...

Singh Saab The Great Starring:  Sunny Deol, Amrita Rao, Urvashi Rautela, Prakash Raj Rated:  5/10 The dhai kilo ka haath  has added weight and is now  sadhey teen kilo ka haath!  Time, too has passed into newer pastures and perceptions since Sunny paaji last visited the Indian screen in right earnestness. So, the film looks somewhat out of sync — a 70s thingy in the new millennium. There’s a Bihari  raja saheb  going after an upright collector. The revenge for locking his factory and asking him to pay up his tax arrears is rather drastic — a murder, a long jail term and an incredible  badlaav . But in all this call for change — one thing remains constant — Sunny Deol’s  maar dhaad, his bad dancing and his blood curdling yells against injustice. He says and does things in all the vigour but somehow the world has moved on from such drastic revenge thrillers. It’s the age of Twitter and Facebook and injustices of this huge kind are ...

Last Vegas Starring:  Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline Rated:  6/10 Read the above starcast. Could it have gotten any bigger than this? Naaa! Could it have become any less engaging? Naaa! Last Vegas  gives you a heady punch, an all-inclusive ride to gratifying star power. Yes, the formerly ageless Michael Douglas looks too wrinkled post his cancer recuperation but that hasn’t dented his screen presence. And he’s here as the buddy of no less a star than Robert De Niro, flanked by an out-to-have-fun-with-alcohol Morgan Freeman and out-to-have-fun-with viagra-and-condoms (with his wife’s permission) Kevin Kline! No, it’s not yet another  Hangover  in an old guise though there is an impending marriage, four friends on a bachelor roll and Las Vegas’ drunken parties. But this is about De Niro and Douglas and Kline and Freeman — oldies out to have their last hurrah. It’s not meant to be serious so it’s aptly not. It’s not meant t...