Bharathi Pradhan

The tough part about the fourth season of a popular series is the fear of ambience fatigue defeating the charm of what began five years ago. Additionally, it’s election time in Phulera, the village where government official Abhishek Tripathi (Jitendra Kumar) has settled down comfortably as the Sachivji (panchayat secretary). It’s therefore daunting for directors Deepak Kumar Mishra and Akshat Vijaywargiya and writer Chandan Kumar to keep the appeal alive especially when politics at any level is awash with the familiar. Between Pradhanji Brijbhushan Dubey (Raghubir Yadav) alongside wife Manjudevi (Neena Gupta) and the rival camp led by Bhushan (Durgesh Kumar) with his wife Krantidevi (Sunita Rajwar), the campaign gets ugly. One-upmanship over cleaning campaigns, restoring electricity, trading seva-meva charges and ego tiffs over laddoos and kachoris are strewn all over the campaign trail. In the fray are also political godfathers, coteries of loyalists and regime change upsets. Sympathy votes and politicising a son’s death are disturbing realities. “But it’s all a part of politics,” Pradhanji periodically reminds everyone.

Sometimes, what a story says is more important than how flawlessly it is narrated. Director RS Prasanna and writer Divy Nidhi Sharma’s Indianisation of the Spanish film Champions (2007) exemplifies the significance of what a film ultimately delivers. Swag and insolence combine to have assistant basketball coach Gulshan Arora (Aamir Khan) suspended while reckless, drunken driving has him hauled up before a judge. He gets three months of community service as punishment, as basketball coach to a team of intellectually challenged people. “And ready them for a national championship,” adds Kartar Singh (Gurpal Singh), the man in charge of the association where Gulshan has to report as coach. His initial dismissal of the special people as ‘pagal’ which has the judge raising his fine every time he utters the word, sets the tone for comedy that tickles the funny bone and unmissable messages that reach the heart.

There’s a germ of a promise when the credits open with how his parents, Sherni and Dilbag named him Sherdil and a peppy rap follows. But genius in the guise of eccentric sleuths is such a familiar central character that when Sherdil (Diljit Dosanjh) punctuates other people’s dialogues with music from his harmonica, his studied cool grates. The setting too is familiar though it is pleasing to the eye. Murder in a billionaire’s mansion in Budapest. Sherdil is like James Bond, vacationing between cases. “Bade bade cases solve karta hoon aur chhote chhote vacations gift karta hoon.” But when Indian-origin billionaire Pankaj Bhatti (Boman Irani) is assassinated in his car, Sherdil is piqued.

The setting is lavish. But murders aboard a cruise are not novel. Nor is the mystery over who’s Jolly, the true successor of a dead billionaire. In this case, 100-year-old birthday boy Ranjeet (played by villain Ranjeet) who’s succumbed to a heart attack. As the trailer suggests, Jalabuddin alias Jolly (Riteish Deshmukh), Jalbhushan alias Jolly (Abhishek A Bachchan) and Julius alias Jolly (Akshay Kumar) turn up, each claiming to be the real inheritor. An Amar, Akbar, Anthony trio, in case you’ve missed the point. Producer Sajid Nadiadwala who credits himself with the story and screenplay with help from Farhad Samji for screenplay and dialogue, attempts Priyadarshan style mayhem. The doctor aboard (Akashdeep Sabir) who can test their DNAs and find the real Jolly is killed. A couple of crew members who are suspect are also bumped off.

The spiel amounts to thuggery: director Mani Ratnam and actor Kamal Hassan took 38 years to come together again after Nayakan (1987) because it took them that long to find a subject that would match the class of their iconic outing. Additionally, there’s a tale about how many decades Kamal took to write one of his favourite stories which was put on the backburner until Mani and he collaborated on it. Mani rewrote and polished it, the two cinematic geniuses from Tamil Nadu put their heads together and finally pooled their names to produce their next ‘gem’. It was to be titled Kamal Haasan 234 as it would be his landmark 234th film. But voila, it became Thug Life and here it is. But you wish they’d prolonged the 38 years of separation by never coming together again if the weary story of a Yama-defying gangster is all they could come up with.

The centipede is a multi-legged, predatory anthropod. Writer-director Chandan Arora substitutes Israeli title Magpie (prisoner-turned-police informant) with the Hindi word for centipede to narrate an Indianised version of the drama series. Set in Goa, Ashu Gaonkar (Roshan Mathew) is the bechara of the party where he’s out of jail after serving a sentence for murder while older brother Max (Mohit Raina with dimples) is well settled with pretty wife Nisha (Sarah Jane Dias), daughter Ira (Kurangi Vijayshri Nagraj) and friends-turned-colleagues Shardul (Mahesh Shetty) and Pedro (Ninad Kamat). Max and co have just landed the biggest construction contract of their lives which will change the landscape of Goa. Ashu weakly attempts to re-enter their lives but Max shuts the door on him. Here’s some money, stay out, lead your own life. Before you can begin to feel sorry for Ashu, his twisted, manipulative mind which is not beyond sudden spurts of violence, gives him a dangerous dimension. Using his seeming innocence to prise a confession or two from prime suspects is DSP Leena Naik (Heeba Shah).

It’s a cosy situation for surgeon Dr Raj Nagpal (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) with separated wife Anju (Surveen Chawla) in the apartment across the floor and girlfriend-cum-nurse Roshni Saluja (Asha Negi) in his house to take care of fragile daughter Ira who suffers from Aspergers Syndrome. His mom Gurmeet (Sohaila Kapur) is around too, happy to go along with Raj’s unconventional arrangement. After an eventful 13th birthday party for Ira, the idyllic world is shattered when the housemaid walks in to find Raj holding the bloodied dead body of Roshni in his arms. One scream from the maid and Anju from across the floor comes rushing in. Whodunnit and why?

Cacophony establishes the families and friendships of Titli Mishra (Wamiqa Gabbi) and Ranjan (Rajkummar Rao) as a botched elopement lands them all at the police station. “Papa” (Zakir Hussain), petulantly uttered by Titli, won’t allow her to marry the unemployed Ranjan until he gets a sarkari job. Writer-director Karan Sharma gets the decibel right (loud, louder, loudest) with Banaras as the backdrop for his entertainment whirl that winds up on a noble note. Ranjan’s arc that goes from personal pursuits (naukri, chokri, shaadi) to discovering what the gods intended him to do and thereby understanding what life should revolve around, is a potent plot for a joyride with a social message. Add to it Rajkummar Rao who can switch from fun and frolic to sober-serious without losing a beat. It’s the ideal playground for Karan to have the viewer rollicking with amusement before slipping the conscience into the fray. There are plenty of situations too for dance, song and merriment (romance, pre-wedding ceremonies, comic moments, drama, Shiv mandir, masjid and Allah too).