Bharathi Pradhan

A shawl. A beard. And traffic-stopping dementia. Perhaps the onset of early dementia. Whatever it is, Kaalidhar (Abhishek Bachchan) is less verbose and a lot more endearing than Nana Patekar was as Deepak Tyagi in Vanvaas last year. The comparison is kosher because the premise is similar. Greedy family members yearning to get their hands on the elderly patient’s property; deserting him in a far-off crowded place where he will neither be recognised nor know how to head home. Tyagi’s children took him to Banaras where an orphan turned conman lavished more care on him than his own family. Traffic-stopping Kaalidhar’s brothers, along with a nasty, foul-mouthed sister-in-law, leave him penniless at the Kumbh Mela. There’s a scene where the sis-in-law even argues that ‘Bhaiya’ has brought home the disease of the rich, “amiron ki bimari”, which they can ill afford.

Holi pukey, it’s Chumki (Sara Ali Khan) who’s had a bit too much of festival revelry. She’s staggered into somebody else’s apartment and caught its resident Parth (Aditya Roy Kapur) in the shower. Misunderstandings ensue with her boyfriend/fiancé. Director Anurag Basu along with co-writers Samat Chakraborty and Sandeep Shrivastava zooms into the lives of four couples for an update on their status. Chumki’s sister Kajol (Konkona Sen Sharma) has stumbled upon a secret interest that husband Monty (Pankaj Tripathi) indulges in – cosy chats with other women. Not quite leading up to a full-bodied extra-marital affair, Monty’s forbidden forays are most amusing. Chunki and Kajol’s parents, Shivani (Neena Gupta) and Sanjeev (Saswata Chatterjee) have settled down in domestic comfort, the wife clearly under husband’s thumb. A class reunion that she’s been invited to will be her break-free moment especially when she steps into the life of old friend Parimal (Anupam Kher) to help him sort out a rather unusual problem he has with his widowed daughter-in-law.

It takes off with the right atmospherics for horror with masks, frenzied dancing, a sprawling haveli and monstrous trees. Topped with the chilling sacrifice of a newborn female infant. Written by Ajit Jagtap, Aamil Keeyan Khan and Saiwyn Quadras, director Vishal Furia sets the supernatural horror in Chandrapur, a village in Bengal. And packs it with actors who are snug in a Bengali setting. Ambika (Kajol) and Shuvankar (Indraneil Sengupta) have studiously avoided visiting or even mentioning the horrific secrets of his birthplace to 12-year-old daughter Shweta (Kherin Sharma). But when Shuvankar gets a call that his father has passed away, he has to revisit the eerie family home. With it, the horrors are unleashed. Beginning with Shuvankar’s unnatural death. And, a few months later, Ambika and Shweta being forced to drive down to dispose of the property. Trees with faces, trees with octopus-like limbs that reach out, strangle and suspend victims in mid-air.

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.