Suhani Singh

Seventeen years after he tugged heartstrings with Life in a… Metro, Anurag Basu and Pritam are back navigating love in the big city, or should we say cities. The stories this time shift between Bengaluru, New Delhi and Calcutta. For Metro… In Dino, Basu adopts a less-seen, interesting narrative device to lure viewers into the world: characters introducing themselves by way of sing-song dialogue delivery. There’s Sara Ali Khan’s Chumki professing she’s confused and unsure; there’s Konkona SenSharma’s Kajol discussing her insipid marital life; there’s Anupam Kher, playing a widower, opening up about losing his loved ones in an accident; there’s Ali Fazal’s aspiring singer sharing his struggles. And there’s Pritam, Papon and Raghav Chaitanya, the travelling troubadours in the backdrop. Offering a peek into a character’s current state of mind and establishing their world, the first half breezes past.

Mothers are a resilient lot. Harm their kids, then be ready for a battle. In Maa, Kajol’s maternal instincts face their toughest test as she contends with superstitions as well as a girl child-feasting, tree-residing monster who has eyes on her adolescent daughter. Kajol’s Ambika is an ordinary woman trapped in extraordinary circumstances, but then the film’s title isn’t just a nod to her but also to the powerful and dangerous deity who should not be messed with—Kali Maa. Mining India’s mythology and religious beliefs to craft a horror that’s contemporarily relevant is a nifty idea that’s been attempted before, but to do so frighteningly well is another thing altogether. Maa takes the tried and tested not-without-my-daughter formula and spins it round and round until audiences are left frustrated at the actions of characters.

An Aamir Khan film is a bit of an anomaly in the current landscape of Hindi cinema. Here’s an actor whose superstar credentials have come not courtesy testosterone-heavy action spectacles but by championing narratives that espouse for a better society and celebrate the inherent goodness of mankind. Good intent, though, doesn’t always translate into an equally good film. Sitaare Zameen Par is that feel-good film that tries so hard to be likeable that it begins to feel cloying and underwhelming. Few jokes fly, many forced. But by the end, it’s pushing for tears. Khan has played this script before, and it’s worked wonders at the box-office. There’s the Rajkumar Hirani-directed 3 Idiots and PK and the Khan banner’s Taare Zameen Par (TZP) and Secret Superstar. Sitaare Zameen Par is cut from the same social-moral fabric. It has even been billed as a spiritual sequel to TZP, only that it feels laborious in execution.

The more the merrier’ goes the saying. In the case of Housefull 5, a comedy franchise that refuses to end, it’s more the painful. The parrot shtick returns and it’s still agonisingly bad and unfunny. So is the gag with Akshay Kumar and monkeys indulging in a slapfest. The most distasteful bits though are when women’s bodies are fetishised upon—again and again—for cheap jokes. Again more embarrassing than rib-tickling. This time the gang of ludicrous men is on a cruise and there’s a killer on the loose. It’s dressed up in a silver Squid Game-like mask and has the slasher skills of the Scream killer. That alone, it appears, is reason enough to give the fifth instalment of Housefull a blood-soaked scary font. But Sajid Nadiadwala, who here apart from producer also gets story and screenplay credit, forgets the killer for significant chunks of this comedy, which runs far too long. The plot’s to do with who’s the real Jolly, the heir to a throne of billions. Is it Akshay Kumar’s Julius, Riteish Deshmukh’s Jallabuddin or Abhishek Bachchan’s Jalbhushan? The three men come aboard with their partners (Nargis Fakhri, Jacqueline Fernandez and Sonam Bajwa) in tow. It doesn’t take too long before there’s infidelity and lying and some old-fashioned tomfoolery.

Ranjan (Rajkummar Rao) and Titli (Wamiqa Gabbi) want to get married. Time won’t allow them to. Funnily, it’s running time which the makers struggle to move along in this comedy about Ranjan’s tryst with time to reach his final destination. The plot is the least of problems for Bhool Chuk Maaf. In fact it’s the only ingenious bit in the film. It’s the characterisation of the lead hero, Ranjan, which makes this a hard pill to swallow. If one is to root for this guy’s predicament, one’s unable to because on paper there’s not much appealing about him. His ambition is simple: get a government job so as to marry his sweetheart; the means to go about it are questionable and ultimately off-putting. It makes Titli’s penchant for him all the more puzzling. Love does have mysterious ways, but surely idiocy isn’t one.

The heroes of Malayalam sports comedy Alappuzha Gymkhana are more laughing punching bags than lean and mean fighting machines. In the adept hands of co-writer-director Khalid Rahman, it’s what makes them worth rooting for. Never has following failure been this much fun and worth reflecting on. Jojo Johnson (Naslen Gafoor), Cheruth (Franco Francis), DJ aka David John (Habish Rahman), Shanu (Shiva Hariharan) and more are a bunch of good-for-nothing fellows struggling to clear school grade 12. Failure, though, doesn’t dent their confidence. Jojo comes with a bright idea of taking up boxing to get into college through sports quota. Little do the boys know what they have signed up for. So begins a film where Rahman lands more punches of the humorous kind as he follows guys big on ambition and short on experience, and in a few cases boxing talent, struggle in the ring.

There’s something pitiable, even desperate, about Sikandar’s attempts to glorify its titular hero. He is Sanjay (Salman Khan), a beloved raja, whose people worship him because of his philanthropic (read ‘being human’) ways. Writer-director A.R. Murugadoss sticks to a bland, predictable template for the narrative. An action sequence, followed by a romantic sequence with wife (Rashmika Mandanna); throw in a song, stir up some random conflict that necessitates an action sequence again where Sikandar, the eternal saviour, rises. The rallying call? “Raja sahab, mujhe bachalo!”. If there’s one flaw in the infallible hero, it’s that he’s got little time for his Mrs. It’s another thing that scenes featuring the Mr and Mrs are entirely devoid of romance or chemistry, making it perhaps one of the most sterile jodis of cinema. Preference for praja over wife comes at a heavy price for the protagonist. Where Murugadoss hopes to make Sikandar stand out in the Bhai genre of films is by showcasing him as a grieving husband and also a Gujarati with a ginormous heart. It’s a load that the stone-faced star struggles with.

For nearly two hours, Chhaava runs like a mishmash of the testosterone-heavy Marvel and DC universe action spectacles. Here, it leads to one battle after another, as Maratha king Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj (played by Vicky Kaushal) duels against a lion (cue Russell Crowe in Gladiator), excels in aerial fights and takes on the Mughal army, often single-handedly. Accompanied by a bombastic background score by A.R. Rahman, the historical extravaganza comes alive in the last half hour, when the punches are not literal, but verbal. With the protagonist captured and chained, audiences finally get to see the daring hero and his enemy, a haggard Aurangzeb (Akshaye Khanna), in one frame. “Mughalon ki taraf aa jaaao. Zindagi badal jaayegi. Bas tumhein apna dharm badalna hoga (Join hands with the Mughals. Your life will change. All you have to do is convert to Islam),” says Khanna’s Aurangzeb in a final offer of freedom to the brutalised Chhaava. The Maratha king, his spirit untethered, retorts, “Humse haath mila lozindagi badal jaayegi aur dharm bhi badalna nahin padega (Join hands with Marathas. Your life will change and you won’t even have to change your faith).”