Shubhra Gupta

Superboys of Malegaon is inspired by Faiza Ahmad Khan’s terrific 2008 documentary ‘Supermen of Malegaon’, on a subset of residents of Malegaon who had become famous for turning their home-grown spoofs of Bollywood blockbusters into a profitable cottage industry. The filmmakers give credit to the original at the end of their film, which in essence, is a feature film with many elements borrowed from the documentary, which in turn was based on the remarkable enterprise on display in a small Maharashtra town afflicted by communal tensions and poverty, and about the power of dreaming.

Reacher is many things. Ex-US Army. Tall. Large. Loner. Drifter. But he’s no grifter: he means what he says, even if sometimes he comes off as pedantic. But when he tells wealthy rug merchant Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall) that wherever he, Reacher, goes, trouble seems to find him, he is just stating facts. In a sedate university town of Maine, trouble once again finds our favourite former military cop, and Season 3 of the eight-part show called, simply, and aptly, ‘Reacher’, is off and away. This one is based on Lee Child’s seventh bestseller ‘Persuader’, developed for TV by Nick Santora, and written by Scott Sullivan. Good cops, bad guys, shoot-outs, car crashes, sudden kills, the staple elements of the best-selling author’s page-turners, all show up.

The film has a catchy title. You go in with a bit of hope, given that director Mudassar Aziz’s previous ‘Khel Khel Mein’ had a few nice moments, but that one was a remake. Here it has been written by the director, and you encounter, over two-and-a-half hours, tropes, flat scenes, and characters who come and go. Which is a pity because the lead characters appear to have taken their jobs seriously. It is no surprise that the two ladies playing romantic rivals, Bhumi Pednekar as Prabhleen Dhillon, and Rakul Preeti Singh as Antara Khanna, make you look. Plus, and this is a surprise, Arjun Kapoor as Ankur Chaddha isn’t half bad as the hapless guy stuck between the two loves of his life. They just needed a better film.

At the end of 161 minutes of Chhaava, based on the high-points of the life of Sambhaji Maharaj, the son of Shivaji Maharaj, you are left with two chief thoughts. How do you pull off a film which talks up a historical figure not as well known as his illustrious parent, without us wondering: how much is fact, and how much fiction? And the other, which is the reason you manage to sit through this ultra-loud, ultra-violent re-creation of a slice of the 17th century Hindustan is the total commitment on display by its lead actor to the titular character: Vicky Kaushal becomes Chhaava (‘son of a lion’), whose story the film adapts from the Marathi novel of the same name by Shivaji Sawant.

If you married ‘Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin’ with a zillion iterations of the odd-couple and lovers-on-the-run and heist movies, you would get Dhoom Dhaam, a film which borrows from all these elements, while straining every nerve to be novel. The trouble with skimming tropes is that your film, even with a fresh pairing, and despite a few flourishes, ends up more or less trope-y.

To make a modern rom-com remains the bane of Bollywood: Loveyapa proves all over again just how difficult it is to create a cracking love story which truly captures the essence of today’s swipe-right-and-left generation. The real film kicks in well into the second half, much after the listless toing-and-froing of the pre-interval portion between the two leads who cutely call each other Baani Boo, and Baboo. Ooo. You think you love each other? Ok, exchange your phones for a day, and see where you go with it, declares Baani’s stern shuddh-Hindi spouting daddyji (Ashustosh Rana). Consternation on faces, and dread in hearts, Baani Sharma and Gaurav ‘Gucci’ Sachdeva hand over their phones to each other, and thus begins loveyapa, love plus ‘siyapa’, that untranslatable Punjabi word whose closest meaning is trouble.

The distance between these two contradictory statements — the smell (khushboo) of the kitchen is sexy, and, you smell (baas) of the kitchen, do you expect me to be turned on — is measured by, who else, a man. The man who has deposited the woman he has married and brought to his home, where he lives with his parents, in the kitchen. Where she is expected to be an uncomplaining slave to everyone’s time and moods: the doctor husband who runs a clinic while constantly complaining of overwork, expecting his wife to serve ‘garam phulkas’ when he sits down to eat, the father-in-law wanting his slippers placed just so for him to slide his feet into, the mother-in-law using the sil-batta to grind the chutney, because the mixer-grinder is not loving enough.

The spiky relationship between a father-and-son, which shapes the narrative in ‘The Mehta Boys’, leads us to predict a resolution in which things will get better. The theme has that familiar predictive tilt built into it, but what lifts ‘The Mehta Boys’ are the little spurts of unpredictability built into the script of Boman Irani’s directorial debut. That, and the performances, which are all pitch perfect.