Bharathi Pradhan

It was a blood splattered Baisakhi on April 13, 1919. When a jashan (celebration) turned into a janazaa (funeral) for the hundreds gunned down at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar. General Dyer went down in history as the butcher. He was the cruel perpetrator, also the puppet. But mastermind, ringmaster and puppeteer Lieutenant-General Michael O’Dwyer was never formally indicted. (Udham Singh did shoot him dead more than 20 years later.) Is it time for an unwritten chapter to be brought to the fore? Director Ram Madhvani who had shown glimpses of how well he can segue imagination into history when he made the short film That Bloody Line (on how Sir Cyril Radcliffe cut off bits of India on the west and on the east), goes down the same path, same era.This time to recreate the Amritsar of 1919.

The Principal’s dying to be cool. The acronym-loving kind of cool that says YOLO, You Only Live Once. That’s a hat tip from debut-making director Shauna Gautam to mentor Karan Johar in whose debut film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Archana Puran Singh had played the same ditzy role. The rest of the film too, continues to be Johar territory, revisited, recycled. I’m going to cut some slack for the freshers behind and on screen. This is a new start for the director and for new hero Ibrahim Ali Khan (playing ‘Noyyda’ boy Arjun) while it’s a third attempt for Khushi Kapoor (Pia Jaisingh).

It’s a motley bunch of characters. Hari (Bhupendra Jadawat) wants a posting in Germany. Wife Raji (Shalini Pandey) and he pretty much talk of Germany more than anything else. Hari’s mother, the Gujarati saree-clad Ba (Shabana Azmi) is more the onlooker than a participant. Only the book she’s reading ‘Poisonous Shadow’ is at odds with who she seems to be. Ravi’s harried boss Shankar (Jisshu Sengupta) makes a stylish, upper crust couple with wife Varuna (Jyothika). Her ambitious garment venture ‘Sitara’ is fashionably losing money. She does seem the nose-in-the-air rich man’s wife living it up on husband’s funds. Shankar and Ravi are a part of the Viva Life building and company, a pharma company that’s been dodgy with a now-banned product called Modella.

The Sohum Shah filmmaking banner comes with a suitcase, currency notes blowing out of it. Start and Finish come misspelt. It’s a wonky world. Tall, suited-booted surgeon Dr Abhimanyu Sood (Sohum Shah) strides towards his Range Rover, a duffel bag stuffed with cash is stashed in the boot. Rs 5 crore, you soon learn. There’s menace hanging in the air. Inside the car with White Coat calling, hyper and bossy. “I’ll be there on time,” the surgeon assures White Coat. Outside, a wheelie-performing two-wheeler dashes across the Range Rover, the rider cheekily showing a blurred middle finger. Our doctor is hot-headed. Must give it back. Chases the two-wheeler, returns the finger gesture before resuming his drive to God-knows-where. A man with a mask leers at Abhimanyu from the window. Currency notes have been peeping out of the bag in the boot, prompting the mask to leer some more. The scene is set for the unexpected.

In 2019, a production house went into the slums of Dharavi, into the lives of Murad Ahmed (Ranveer Singh), his ladylove Safeena (Alia Bhatt) and the gully-origin rap music that emanated passionately from their mohalla. It was Zoya Akhtar’s delicately unobtrusive look at a troubled family in a community which is in no conflict with any other. Safeena, she cast, as a surgeon in the making. Six years later, Zoya’s filmmaking partner Reema Kagti replicates the community in a different setting, driven by a different passion. Doffing her hat to Faiza Ahmad Khan and her crew for their 2012 documentary ‘Supermen of Malegaon’, which is the springboard for Varun Grover’s feature film screenplay, the camera moves to Malegaon, a small town in Maharashtra, earlier known for its (hand) loom factories.

Ankur Chaddha (Arjun Kapoor) has nightmares about ex-wife Prableen (Bhumi Pednekar), long after they’ve been divorced. Closing a real estate deal for his dad (Shakti Kapoor) in picturesque Rishikesh, Ankur bumps into the glamorous Antara Khanna (Rakul Preet Singh) who was out of reach for him in their college days. She is rich, swings between teaching handgliding and practising sports physiotherapy, and she’s single. He goes into flashbacks to tell her (and the audience) what happened with the bhootni incarnate in his nightmares. Antara and Prableen have history too, flashing back to college days, to friction in a queue to pick up a form. Memories of the taunts at Antara’s leg-revealing shorts and her retorts to Prableen, haven’t faded with time. A second jab at happiness beckons when romance blooms. Ankur even overcomes his fear of heights to propose to Antara dramatically, dropping from a parachute in front of a mall. But Prableen with her menacing “Baby, Baby” has returned, her memory conveniently blanking out their divorce.

You’ve seen Broken News. You know how rival channels work, ethics versus TRPs. You’ve seen Dhamaka and newsroom ambitions that prevail over national security. You’ve seen Despatch, the print medium giving way to digital. You’ve also seen umpteen movies and shows centred around a dreaded criminal, cops, journalists and politicians. You know that cops on the take, on the payroll of businessmen, ministers and opposition leaders, contribute to regular cinematic fodder. The show begins with someone with a huge following stepping out. Binny Chaudhry has surrendered, scream assorted TV anchors. And Binny is shot. The rest is a flashback to return to this moment at the end. Sudhir Mishra who takes the credit as showrunner and director (along with Sanjeev Kaul), picks up a book titled The Price You Pay and proceeds to build Binny Chaudhry (Rahul Bhat) as an uncatchable criminal with hawala rackets, kidnappings and ransom money that he showers like confetti over Indirapuram, the place he grew up in Delhi.

It’s a far-from-humorous arranged match between Koyal (Yami Gautam) and Veer Poddar (Pratik Gandhi), both looking way past the inexperienced young, eligible bachelor girl or boy stage. It’s even more like an unfunny caricature when parents talk glowingly on their behalf, the ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ nodding like bovine. Veer is a ‘veterinarian’, the families can’t pronounce it as they grapple with ‘vegetarian’ and ‘veteran’. Laugh, guys. It’s followed by over-enthu families crowding ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ who get no chance to get to know each other until their wedding night. Director Rishab Seth’s scenes calibrated for chuckles, don’t work so far. Worse follows as writers Aarsh Vora, Aditya Dhar and Rishab Seth give awkwardness to the groom who fumbles with initiating first-night proceedings, like it’s the height of humour. He even apologises to Koyal for a packet of condoms in his pocket.