Change Your Image
vbn_in
Reviews
2012 (2009)
what a waste of resources
This epic movie is Roland Emmerich's baby. This baby could have been as good as Godzilla, Independence day or The Day After Tomorrow. What happens? He screws it up with a lot of emotions, drama and god knows what superhero crap (pardon my language). The trailers had created so much anticipation in the audience but doesn't live up to it at all. OK, yes the CG was good. But you cannot use it as an excuse to cover up the emotional mess that was shown.
The movie starts off with showing the sun emitting some microwaves thats causing the earth's crust to heat up rapidly. This is detected by an Indian in a copper mine where he claims that sometimes the temperature in the mine goes up to 120 deg F. I wonder how the NASA never found out about the heating up of the Earth's Core earlier than the Indian.
The time skips to another place where Mona Lisa is being replaced by a fake to protect it from the destruction that is about to take place. So its apparent here that some super powers know about the 2012 disaster about to take place and we assume that just like Mona Lisa other treasured items are being replaced as well.
Jumping ahead again to 2012 we see a divorced John Cusack who is a limo driver and an author go get his kids in a limo for a camping trip. His ex wife Amanda Peet married to a Plastic Surgeon Thomas McCarthy.
During the camping trip Cusack meets a crazy Woody Harrelson a radio host addressing Mayan predictions and adding to that the almost dried up lake on his camping spot makes Cusack suspicious even though the government scientist Adrian assures him all is fine.
Soon enough the frequency of earth quakes increase and our Cusack puts 2 and 2 together (was he a limo driver or a scientist) and concludes that the Crazy radio host was right. Then we see some crafts dodging fireballs, poisonous smoke, uprooted buildings, cars, trains all dodged by the surgeon (flying is part of surgeon's course) flying the plane expertly whereas on the other hand you see air force one succumbing to the natural disaster.
It becomes a little too heroic when you see people around you dying and the only ones surviving are these few characters start to end. How lucky can you really be when a wave, 35000 feet high is racing towards you. Somethings evade common sense completely.
The upside of the movie is the CG. the earth quakes, volcanic eruptions and yes the 35000 feet high wave coming from the ocean are all very scarily impressive and you are forced to think, man can fight all odds to survive or kill anything or anybody for power, but you cant and don't mess with mother nature because when she gets down to spanking there is no safe spot for you to be in.
This movie is watchable just due to the special effects but it doesn't even come close to The Day After Tomorrow let alone Independence Day. I rate it 5/10.
Aladin (2009)
Aladin was impressive.
Aladin : Sujoy Ghosh Budget: INR 50 Cr This movie produced, directed and written by Sujoy Ghosh comes as a welcome change from the regular run around the trees. Yes its a love story as well but isn't almost every movie made in bollywood a love story? Now Sujoy Ghosh has had a impressive stint with Jhankaar beats and Home Delivery. The former being something very down to earth for a movie freak to relate to and the latter, although an outright copy from a french movie still made a good impression. In Aladin the story was completely revamped to suit the Indian movie enthusiasts. Somehow I have a feeling that Sujoy very well knew that this movie will not be exactly appreciated by majority of the crowd. But as you know he went ahead and took the risk anyway. The result? - Surprisingly impressive.
Let me justify why I was impressed. We had 2 huge names playing strong characters. Amitabh Bachchan playing The Genie - Genius and our very own Sanjay Dutt plays The Ringmaster - An Ex-Genie. Now some of us may question why would a guy like Big B of such high caliber be in a kiddie movie prancing around playing magical pranks. The answer is playing a genie required screen presence. The audience need to feel the Aura he normally emits in any movie. The same logic was applied to Sanjay Dutt playing The Ring Master. He had this evil aura around him every time he came on the screen that was very impressive.
Now I believe that is not the only reason these two extraordinary people where requested to grace the characters with their names. I think it was the chemistry they shared in Kaante long back ago.
As I mentioned the story is completely revamped to suit the Indian audience as in the original cartoon movie Jaffer dupes Aladin into looking for the lamp whereas here Aladin was destined to have it.
The movie starts off normally in a city called Khwaish (fictional city of course) showing Aladin (Ritiesh Deshmukh) a loser orphan being bullied by kids in school just because his name is Aladin. He is asked to rub fake lamps by the bullies every time he is spotted. His miserable life continues to be the same when he enters college as well. Enter lady love Jasmine (Jacqueline Fernandez - OMG she is soo cute) a friendly US return. Of course our protagonist falls in love with her on first sight. Aladin keeps making a fool of himself whenever she is around but somehow she finds it cute I guess.
At Alladin bday bash, held by Qasim (Sahil Khan - Lead bully) to impress Jasmine, Aladin is gifted yet another lamp this time by Jasmine from an antiques shop. Only this time its the real thing.
Enter Genius (Amitabh Bachchan) a cheerful lively genie who is eager to grant Aladin's 3 wishes and go on a vacation.
The rock-star Genius finds out its too late as our baddie The Ring Master (Sanjay Dutt an ex genie) is in town looking for the lamp as well.
We find out that The Ringmaster wants the lamp for himself to get back his powers from which he was exiled due to selfish reasons. The Ringmaster uses a mirror, he claims to be the Google in the magical world, and finds out that Aladin is destined to protect the lamp. And then we have the 2 genies display excellent martial art and war of words to defeat one another. Both the characters were played wonderfully by Big B and Sanju baba taking coolness and awesomeness to a new level.
The comedy/cheesy dialogues were well timed in the movie so yes there are a few good laughs for the audience as well.
Specially in the scene where The Ringmaster displays his joy rubbing the lamp and singing "Main dardi rub rub (rab rab) kardi" had us rolling on the floor laughing even though the whole darn movie theater didn't find it funny.
Sometimes I wonder if the Indian audience will ever grow out of KJo movies.
The special effects for good specially where Genius breaks the edge of a cliff diving down to save baby Aladin. When it comes to acting except the 2 genies none of them where impressive at all. Ritiesh needs to look for a new career soon if he doesn't do something about his pathetic acting skills. Jacqueline Fernandez, the Srilankan beauty, is just one film old and did a decent job. I fail to understand what actors like Ratna Patak, Victor Banerjee and Mita vahisht were doing or thinking.
All in all I can easily rate it 8/10
Dev.D (2009)
a good take off. a soft landing. could have been better
The Movie started off good. showing a spoilt brat and a feisty girl getting along , problems with authority at home so he gets the boot to UK etc etc. True to the book so far. Humor was good as it was situational comedy and not intentional, which is what i prefer.
Abhay deol projected Devdas in a different light altogether. The modern devdas. Smoking, drinking, doping etc. Abhay deol convincingly played the character well, easy for the youth to relate to. Good amount of swearing involved. Yes it was required and so it was given an A certificate. At no point of time you will feel sorry for the protagonist though as you know the story he screwed up so he has to face it.
Mahi Gill an average looking Jat girl playing Parminder (Paro) lacks the charisma but i guess her feisty nature may help you overlook that.
Kalki Koechlin the girl with a french heritage, parents were hippies who came to India 38 years ago and then settled here, playing chandramukhi (Chanda) lacks that charisma too required to convert our own devdas to a responsible or a good man (read obedient cute little puppy).
Having said that, Anurag kashyap made this movie keeping in mind The Youth today and incidents occurred in the recent past. So it becomes a little easy to watch and enjoy the movie or relate to it.
The end I liked it at first. Then it was pointed out that the end would have better if it was something else. The movie could have been ended conveniently within 120 mins but it had to be dragged for another 30 mins for no obvious reasons, or for some reason i don't understand. So watch the movie as a pop corn flick before you start reading between the lines