Rajeev Masand – movies that matter : from bollywood, hollywood and everywhere else

September 30, 2011

Cast: Jagrat Desai, Sasha Goradia, Vinay Pathak, Riya Sen, Sushmita Mukherjee, Darshan Jariwala

Director: Deepa Sahi

Tere Mere Phere is a loud and exaggerated comedy whose opening scene sets the mood and the tone for the roughly ninety minutes that follow. A man and woman seated beside each other on a flight get into a squabble over hogging a common armrest. It leads to something of a riot in the cabin when other passengers join in, throwing bags at each other, spilling food all over the place, and generally creating such a nuisance that even the pilots have to ditch control of the plane so they can try to break up the fight.

Actress-turned-director Deepa Sahi helms this awful film that tests your threshold for pain as it goes about its business trying to make you laugh at its pedestrian humor. The film is centered on a pair of newlyweds who find themselves getting on each other’s nerves – and ours – as they traverse the gorgeous Himachal landscape in a luxury trailer. The honeymooners (played by newcomers Jagrat Desai and Sasha Goradia) bicker endlessly through the journey, smashing crockery when they’re exasperated, and throwing mud at each other’s faces. Watching their romance turn sour, Vinay Pathak, playing a fellow passenger who’s hitched a ride with the couple, gets cold feet about eloping with his own lover, played by Riya Sen.

The film has no script to speak of, merely a string of arguments and quarrels in place of a story. To add to that, the performances are so embarrassing, it’s as if the four principal players were competing in a championship for bad acting. Tere Mere Phere offers no great insights into man-woman relationships, and neither are the couple’s clashes in any way amusing.

On the upside, there is some eye-pleasing cinematography of the Himachal landscape; and the only interesting character is the teenage brother of the male lead, who appears wiser than his years…and wiser than every other character in the film, in fact.

I’m going with one out of five for Deepa Sahi’s Tere Mere Phere. Carry cotton to protect your eardrums from the shrieking, shouting, and incessant arguing.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)

September 23, 2011

Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Supriya Pathak Kapur, Anupam Kher, Manoj Pahwa

Director: Pankaj Kapur

Pankaj Kapur’s Mausam is an unfortunate mess of a movie about a pair of young lovers who spend more time apart than together, because they don’t know how or where to reach one another when they’re repeatedly separated. The film opens in 1992 and spans roughly 10 years. In the age of email, answering machines, and mobile phones, these dim-witted lovers never leave forwarding addresses or contact numbers. To think Bhagyashree had better luck getting a love letter across to Salman Khan using a pigeon!

The romance in Mausam unfurls in a small town in Punjab where a cocky drifter, Harry (Shahid Kapoor), and Kashmiri girl, Aayat (Sonam Kapoor), find themselves falling for each other over quietly exchanged notes, and hushed whispers on a rain-soaked terrace. These early establishing scenes are the film’s best portions; a believable portrait of youth, in which lazy afternoons are spent chewing sugarcane with friends after sneaking off with an uncle’s impala, or stealing furtive glances at one’s crush during a noisy wedding.

Director Pankaj Kapur infuses his story and his characters with a delicate, old-fashioned charm that is pleasing and quaint at first, but gets progressively exhausting when logic goes out of the window. The romance is first interrupted by the events surrounding the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, and then repeatedly by such tragedies as the Kargil War, 9/11 in America, and finally the riots in Gujarat in the wake of the Godhra massacre. Far from giving Mausam a sweeping feel, these interruptions in their romance — and the harebrained suggestion that the helpless lovers have no means to communicate when separated — make a case for how passive these characters are.

At some point, Harry has grown into a proud, mustachioed Indian Air Force pilot, and Aayat into a graceful ballet student in Edinburgh. Harry postures like a Ray Ban model each time he’s standing against his jets, and Aayat only seems to speak in whispers. The problem with Mausam is that it’s shrouded in a cloak of self-importance; everyone from the actors to the writer-director appears to be taking himself too seriously, as if determined to deliver nothing short of an epic.

Plodding along for close to three hours, Mausam loses steam early on. By the time the film hobbles to its end at a riot-stricken Ahmedabad fair, all you can do is gasp. Gasp in complete shock at the inconceivably embarrassing climax that involves a Ferris wheel, a crying child, and a horse. This one scene alone hints at just how desperately this script was begging for a rewrite!

To be entirely fair, Mausam isn’t without its moments. The film’s first 30 minutes are fresh and enjoyable; and while he doesn’t quite cut it as a convincing IAF pilot, Shahid Kapoor is terrific as the small-town brat. Sonam Kapoor has a grace about her that’s charming, although she’s saddled with the kind of corny lines that would make even a thespian lose his nerve. But what both actors lack together, unfortunately, is sizzle — they have the chemistry of a pair of strangers.

I’m going with two out of five for director Pankaj Kapur’s Mausam. As you leave the hall exhausted from the sheer length of this misguided enterprise, you cannot help but note that despite its many flaws, this is a noble failure. The film doesn’t work, but not for lack of trying.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)

September 23, 2011

Cast: Vinay Virmani, Anupam Kher, Rob Lowe, Camilla Belle, Gurpreet Guggi

Director: Robert Lieberman

Speedy Singhs is a bargain basement version of Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham, borrowing the exact same premise but leaving out the sharp wit of that cross-cultural comedy. Newcomer Vinay Virmani stars as Rajveer Singh, an NRI kid in Toronto who clashes with his father (played by Anupam Kher) when he defiantly pursues his interest in ice hockey, instead of focusing on his blue-collar job at his uncle’s transport company.

It’s a harmless by-the-numbers underdog story that taps every cliché associated with the genre. Unable to secure a spot on the gora team, the hero assembles a local band of misfits who’re whipped into shape by a white coach (played by Rob Lowe) seeking his own redemption. In no mood to upset his father, the hero lies that he’s given up the game, then gets thrown out of the house when daddy discovers he’s been playing all along. Predictably the young chap falls for a white girl, whom he brings to an Indian wedding, where his family looks on disapprovingly. Speedy Singhs also raises questions about cultural identity and the freedom of choice, but these are both addressed and resolved in the kind of superficial, sanitized style that so many diaspora films before have mastered.

What’s crucially missing in this movie is a sense of drama in its sports scenes. You barely see the team practice or strategize for their games, which is why their sudden proficiency in the final matches appears contrived, and their underdog status repeatedly mentioned but never justified. What’s more, given that Speedy Singhs is intended clearly as a starring vehicle for Virmani, who wrote the script himself, you’re not surprised the film spends barely any time establishing a bond of friendship or sportsmanship between the teammates, choosing instead to focus on Rajveer as the central force of the team.

On the upside, the film benefits from some clever banter between Rajveer and Russell Peters, who plays the obnoxious fiancé of his cousin. The soundtrack has some hummable hits, and leading man Vinay Virmani has a likeable presence. But the film delivers no more than time-pass entertainment because it offers nothing that you haven’t been served before.

I’m going with two out of five for Speedy Singhs. It’s old wine in an old bottle.

(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)