Review: Bobby Jasoos

Direction: Samar Shaikh

Actors: Vidya Balan, Ali Fazal, Kiran Kumar, Rajendra Gupta

Rating: ***

Bobby Jasoos isn’t an Indian version of Sherlock Holmes or James Bond. It’s not even attempting to be one. Bobby (Vidya Balan) — or Bilkis Bano — desperately wants to be a detective. But she’s not trying to emulate those suave, mysterious Hollywood heroes. She doesn’t even watch them on TV. Indian soaps play in her middle-class Indian home, so the girl from Moghalpura in Old Hyderabad has homegrown heroes drawn from that never-ending show, CID, and from an old Doordarshan series.

The fictional detective Karamchand played by Pankaj Kapur in the ’80s may, in fact, be responsible for a childhood fixation; the sort most kids gets over, but one that Bobby held on to.

The fixation, however, has a larger purpose, for Bobby must prove her independence and her worth in a conservative family where the men earn and provide and the women stay home and look to get married. That is why, with no training, little education, and in defiance of a vehemently discouraging father (“My house will not run on women’s incomes,” he says), Bobby holds on to her dream of becoming a jasoos.

She has little going for her in terms of work experience or capital. But things change when a mysterious rich man (Anees Khan, played by Kiran Kumar) seeks her out and offers her a case.

Bobby has a fair bit of wit, and more gutsiness than perhaps all the male characters put together. But her approach is more hit-and-miss than clinical, and she stumbles and goofs up on occasion. This only serves to make the amateur detective more credible. And it provides a few moments of humour.

The casting decision by director Samar Shaikh was a no-brainer. Bobby isn’t just a reversal of Moghalpura’s notions of the woman’s role in society, it is also a reversal of the stereotypical notion of the Bollywood heroine.

The men around Bobby serve as mere props and sidekicks. As she calls oblique romantic interest Tasawur (Ali Fazal, playing a TV anchor) into a narrow alley and puts a hidden mic and earphone on him, telling him what to do, she’s the boss, while he shows the kind of vulnerability normally reserved for female characters in our films.

Other than the father (played by Rajendra Gupta, credible as the old man rigid in his ways), no one else is fleshed out.

Balan, of course, has done such films in the past. She has toppled social barriers and battled stereotypes. She deserves credit for pulling it off again.

At times, the film moves sluggishly, and suffers such clichés as an aberrant dream sequence. The overall story, and Bobby’s escapades, remain simplistic. But they serve their purpose — of shining a light on a community that is underrepresented in Bollywood films, and extracting a positive story of hope. And, of course, of showcasing Vidya Balan.

 -Sarit Ray

Review originally published in hindustantimes.com (click here to see)

Review: Ek Villain

Direction: Mohit Suri
Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Shraddha Kapoor, Riteish Deshmukh
Rating: **

It is as true of chefs as of filmmakers: Even when you're being experimental, throwing ingredients together to make something new, you need a sense of what goes with what.

In Ek Villain, director Mohit Suri takes slices from a variety of genres - romance, crime, murder, revenge, all of which he's dabbled in previous films, with varying degrees of success - and tosses them in the blender. The result resembles one of those slushy green smoothies, where no one element stands out and the overall flavour is, at best, unpleasant.

 Some of the ingredients are actually decent - there's a well-executed domestic squabble, and some good action sequences. But in the overall blend, they leave no real impression.

Suri doesn't just borrow elements; he borrows actors from previous works too, and evidently gives them the same brief as before. So you have Shraddha Kapoor (as Aisha) playing the love interest with a knack for picking broken/depressed men and then trying to fix them (remember Aashiqui 2). This might have worked, had Kapoor's emoting range extended beyond that of a talking doll. But she runs through her lines monotonously, like an actor in a school play who remembered the script but forgot to actually act.

A tragedy, right at the outset, sets the ball rolling. A revenge story follows, with angry young man Guru (Sidharth Malhotra) trying to mete out punishment to the titular villain. A story of this sort requires pace and focus -- incessant flashbacks ensure that it has neither.

Surprisingly, the film has no mystery either. No effort is made to hide the identity of psychotic serial-killer Rakesh (Riteish Deshmukh), either from the audience or the protagonist. With what should perhaps have been a climactic meeting occurring instead before the interval, the story is stretched thin for the rest of the two hours, with flashbacks used as fillers, more fight sequences, and a serious dearth of new ideas.

The lead actor, too, seems confused about the director's vision (or lack thereof). He plays the stubbled, tattooed bad boy with a standard scowling expression, irrespective of whether he's exchanging kisses or kicks. Which is a shame, because Sidharth's brooding demeanour would have been apt for the thriller that the trailer somehow promised.

Rakesh, then, is the only engaging character. He's convincing as the doormat-like husband who is thrown out of the house by his wife and exacts misdirected revenge on other women, killing them and collecting their belongings as presents for her. He may not be original - think Chip (JimCarrey) from The Cable Guy. As the inconspicuous telephone repairman, he may also be a younger version of contract killer Bob Biswas from Kahaani. Yet it's tremendously refreshing to see Riteish in this role, a departure from the slapstick he usually chooses to do.

If the film had just focused on him, it might even have amounted to something. Unfortunately, it is crippled by a plot that ranges from the mediocre to the bizarre, including a leitmotif of smileys drawn on balloons, masks and even on frosted car windows. A sign of lurking evil? An ode to the Comedian's badge from The Watchmen? Who knows? You can never tell in those green smoothies, can you?

 -Sarit Ray

Review originally published in hindustantimes.com (click here to see)

Review: Humshakals

Direction: Sajid Khan
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, RiteishDeshmukh, Ram Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Tamannah Bhatia
Rating: 1/2

Humshakals opens with a 43-going-on-23 Saif Ali Khan trying his hand at stand-up comedy. He has a rich-boy name — Ashok Singhania — and lives in London, of course. What other city is worthy of a super-rich Indian who owns a Karan Johar-set-like mansion, to which he commutes in a private chopper with a tacky golden ‘S’ emblazoned on the side?

So Singhania is a hotshot industrialist, but is apparently also passionate about upsetting audiences with terrible jokes (told in Hindi, no less). Ironically, he is the perfect representative of writer-director Sajid Khan, whose own low-IQ films are peppered with sad, often offensive jokes. This latest seems less a work of cinema and more a social experiment to test the lowest threshold for what can be passed off as entertainment.

Logic exists hastily, along with Ashok’s audience, and the hero, his sidekick Kumar (Ritesih Deshmukh) and their heroines (in dresses one size too small) proceed to dance through the streets, to some terrible lyrics. Later, they will dance again, this time through Kumar’s mansion, in nightclothes.

Clearly out of new ideas, and having burnt his fingers with Himmatwala, Khan is now lifting set pieces from his own slapstick comedies, films that inexplicably had house-full runs.

A two-and-a-half hour assault on your intelligence, Humshakals was not content with just one Saif hamming and trying desperately to look young. Thanks to a shady scientist and some gobbledegook about chromosome restructuring, you get three Ashoks, three Kumars and three Ram Kapoors. Which brings us to Sajid Khan’s greatest feat as a director — being ambitious enough to try and fit them all into one frame.

The characters run around in circles, making stupid faces, cracking pathetic jokes and dressing in drag. Predictable confusion passes for plot.

What is truly baffling is why Saif would pick such a ridiculous role, again (wasn’t Bullett Raja a lesson?), and why Riteish continues to play the goofball in film after film.

Jokes rain down incessantly — increasingly unfunny, disparaging dwarves, the LGBT community, people from the north-east and the mentally challenged. Production values go down the drain; the filmmakers didn’t even bother to edit out the scenes where the lead is clearly wearing height-enhancing shoes while dancing.

As social experiments go, this one tests patience rather than intelligence. It takes every ounce of the former not to take the cue from Ashok’s audience at the outset and leave.

-Sarit Ray

Review originally published in hindustantimes.com (click here to see)