Life Partner & Paying Guests

Life Partner - novel concept, loosely handled

Rumy Jaffery as a director gave us the horrendous 'God Tussi Great ho' which was such a bad remake of Bruce Almighty that Jim Carey's aatma will tadpofy for ever. Apart from that he has written scripts for numerous David Dhawan flicks.

Life Partner is a step in the right direction but there is still a huge scope of improvement for Rumy. The idea behind the script was wonderful to show love marriage and arranged marriage as 2 faces of the same coin.

Karan and Bhavesh, played by Fardeen and Tushhar are best friends. Karan has a steady girlfriend in Sanjana (Genelia) and Bhavesh is saving up his romance for his would be wife Prachi, played by Prachi Desai.

Jeet(Govinda) is a common friend who is a divorce lawyer. After several admonitions from Jeet, the 2 guys decide to get married. The couples face differences and this leads to their divorces in 6 months.

The plot continues as to how these couples sort out their differences. Surprisingly unlike most of the movies, this movie has its best portions in the middle. The movie is at its weakest in the starting few reels and the climax is simply poor.

Govinda provides some humor in the middle portions but he is no where near his old self. He looks horribly misfit for the role. The background score for him which goes like "Mr Lawyer Lawyer" was funny. It reminded me of the bg score from Mujhse shaadi karogi "wicked Sunny.. churalega rani" for Akki.

The best things about the movie were Genelia and Tushhar. The worst things about the movie were Genelia and Tushhar. Depending on which side of the fence you are on, when it comes to liking these 2, you will either love them or totally hate them. Personally I loved Genelia in this movie. FK was irritating as usual. Prachi was nice.

Direction is a little poor and the weight of the movie can be seen in Govinda's eye bags. Music is horrible. This script had ample potential to become a laughathon. Maybe Rumy should have handed the reins of direction to David Dhawan.

A TP flick which can be caught on TV.


Paying Guest - very funny

I watched this movie yesterday, long after its release, and boy was I surprised. It's one of those brainless stupid comedies which are stupid but howlarious. The punch lines were just too good and even the comic timing.

Shreyas Talpade, Javed Jaffery, Vatsal Seth and Ashish Choudhary are 4 friends who are in need of an apartment. Desperate needs call for desperate measures and 2 of them have to disguise themselves as the wives of the other 2. What follows is a plot full of comedy and awesome punch lines.

There is some repetitive stuff in the movie. For instance, Shreyas plays a woman again and does a damn neat job again. The climax is totally inspired from 'Jane bhi Do Yaaro' but is well done in the end.

Performances were nice. Especially Shreyas and Javed Jaffery's comic timing rocked it. Paritosh Painter's direction was good too. Songs were of fast forward variety.

All in all a very entertaining watch.

Kaminey - Dhan Tan Na

Its been one week since I saw Kamminey last friday and I still cant seem to get it out of my system. I can still remember the movie as though it was etched in memory. I will be watching this movie several times more for sure. Its one of those movies that will grow even bigger with time Ala Satya, Rang De Basanti etc.

Vishal Bhardwaj is definitely heading in the right direction, getting even better with every movie that he finishes. Makdee, Maqbool, Omkara and now Kaminey. The music of Kaminey is mind blowing too. This has to be Vishal's best work as a music director, I believe, after Maachis.

Kaminey is totally a collective effort. Everything from the story, screenplay, acting, music and lyrics rocks in this movie. The plot could have been easily written between 2 siblings but Vishal decides to make those brothers twins to introduce more drama and suspense. Intelligent screenplay keeps the audience involved the whole time. You cant leave the theater for a quick leak or drink hoping that you wont miss much.

The main plot revolves around Charlie and Guddu who are twins with speech impairment. Charlie is a grey character working with criminals while Guddu is a goody goody boy. Guddu has a brat of a girlfriend played by Priyanka who I think is the new Kajol of Indian Cinema. She plays a marathi 'mulgi' with ease as if she was born marathi.

Charlie gets stuck into a mess with a certain gang who are dealing with drugs. Guddu gets into a mess because his girlfriend (who apparently is the sister of a mumbai don) gets pregnant. What follows is chaos, confusion, crime and drama beautifully put together.

This has to be Shahid and Priyanka's best performance till date. Shahid shows a new side of him with lots of 'kaminaapanti' in his acting. Especially the glare he gives when playing Charlie in the penultimate sequence where the two brothers clash is superb. Priyanka is OUTSTANDING. This one is surely a winner for her. Amol Gupte is too good. Cant believe the guy wrote such a heart touching story(TZP) after seeing him here. Tenzing Nima as the other don is outstanding too.

This film belongs to Vishal Bhardwaj. Music and direction are top notch and he brings out fabulous performances from every one. The story telling style is very different from his previous movies and innovative.

Music by Vishal and lyrics by Gulzar is a lethal combo. Awesome work. Although I was disappointed not to see some numbers which were put in the background. Ofcourse the script demanded them to be in the background but I personally would have liked to see the Mohit Chauhan number as a part of shahid-priyanka romance.

Rating: Due to some agitated remarks from people around, I will no longer rate movies in stars. Also I believe that stars do not tell the true story every time.

This is a cult film. Don't miss it. Watch it while its there on the big screen.

Personal Input: I thought Charlie's character was gay. It was not shown in the end but that's my assumption. :P

Love Aaj Kal - recreates DDLJ magic.

With every movie that Imtiaz Ali makes he raises the expectations for his next movie and raises the bar for his competitors. If you thought he couldn't better his last outings Jab We Met and Socha Na Tha, think again. LAK is all about a simple story through some brilliant story telling via excellent script, screenplay, dialogues and direction.

The best part that I liked about LAK was that its characters are so real and so today. To go with that Imtiaz decides to tell his story in two threads. One in Aaj and One in Kal. The inference is that times may change, approaches may change but the one thing that doesn't change is Love. The dialogs make you laugh and avoid an all out mushy gushy moment. This movie really has some repeat value.

Jai(Saif) and Meera(Deepika) meet in a bar and start going around. After a year both decide to part their ways as Meera has to move to Delhi and the both believe that long distance relationships do not work out. They break up on a good note, or so they believe.

Its only when an interfering Veer Singh (Rishi Kapoor) pushes Jai that he opens up and starts realizing that he actually misses Meera. Veer shares his love story which takes us back in time into eastman color and a younger version which is played by Saif again.

Its Jai and Meera's journey of realizing how much they love each other which culminates the rest of the movie.

Acting front Saif is brilliant in both the roles. I liked the Aaj wala Saif slightly better though. Deepika looks stunning and does a very decent job. Rishi Kapoor is likable as always. Giselle Monterio (who I just found out is a Brazilian actress !!!!) played Harleen, younger Veers love interest, to perfection. Rahul Khanna is nice in his cameo.

This movie has an Imtiaz Ali stamp all over it. Not only is the story and screenplay awesomely written, it has been equally well executed which would have been difficult BTW. The opening 15 minutes confuses the hell out of you. But like an orange, the good stuff comes after a little peeling. As the story moves ahead everything falls into place beautifully. I officially mark Imtiaz Ali as a genius in my book after this movie.

The music is really up to the mark. Pritam does it again. Until we find the source, credit has to be given to Pritam. The songs fit into the movie like fish in water. The "Yeh dooriyan" number by Mohit Chauhan is mesmerizing. I loved the way "Mai Kya Hoon" was shot. Truly brilliant.

Rating: **** (Do Not Miss it !!! Watch it Aaj ya Kal !)

--Added Incentive to watch it in theaters is that we get to see the Aladin promo.

Spoiler: One dialog was really funny. Saif goes like, "We are the mango people" which is like literal translation for Aam Aadmi. LOL.