Sukanya Verma

You know how the Hallmark holiday movies are designed to fill its target audience of sentimental fools with a warm fuzzy feeling? Meethe Mein Kya Hai is a bit like that. Set against the backdrop of Diwali, its slice-of-life enthusiasm aims for a low key charm. The problem is, only the low key bit registers. First-time director Radhika Bansal’s drama, centred around a family reunion, is about nothing in particular except follies and foibles of its folk unraveling against the festival of lights. Hosting this annual gathering at her sprawling Lucknow bungalow is the head of the Rastogi family (Rohini Hattangadi) even as her children, their partners and grandchildren lounge about devouring mathris with pickle, dissing pesky uncles and aunts while platters full of samosa, kachori and chai are slipped into the frames to lay bare its snack over storytelling momentum.

Two parts Wonder Woman’s feminist ethos, two parts Game of Thrones-inspired bloody, backstabbing fervour, a garnish of Milan Luthria’s school of retro kitsch in the vein of Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai, The Dirty Picture and what have you, Akka, a five-part series by writer and director Dharamraj Shetty, chronicles the administrative chops of a matriarchal society standing up to the vendetta of a shunned sister after she enlists the aid of spiteful gangs and resentful tribes. Created under the YRF banner, Akka’s lavishly scaled, visually sumptuous yarn fetishes the idea of female leadership. But its wishy-washy feuding over matters of business and bloodline neither justifies its male loathing nor makes a strong case for women as superior leaders. On paper, a self-governed sisterhood’s patriarchy-smashing ideals carry immense weight. Reducing it to a cliched catfight mars its potential quite a bit. All the same, Akka isn’t without its attractive attributes.

Conscience awakens, corruption collapses and justice is served over the course of a night in Ritesh Shah’s Gajab Raat. Co-written by him and Producer Neeraj Pandey, Shah’s directorial debut captures flawed characters and grim realities through social structures and sardonic eyes leaving Manoj Bajpayee to hold the fort. There’s no cinematic style or technical wizardry to be found in Shah’s storytelling. Dialogues are his strong suit and he uses peppery exchanges to fire up drama on OTT screen. Inspired by the Neeraj Pandey school of corridor strolls, the screenplay engages in prolonged scenes of walking and talking on phone and in person at hotels and hospitals.

It looked too good to be true. A mainstream hero of a stirred-up democracy championing a contentious padosi mulk’s cause is as brave as Ayushmann Khurrana’s oeuvre of out-of-the-box characters gets. But Udta Teer’s flight of fantasy goes only thus far and no further. When the choice is between Pakistani intelligence and Indian patriotism, the verdict is as clear as day. All works should be seen as a whole but writer Akash A Kaushik’s directorial debut is akin to watching two movies in one – the first half is doused in goofy irreverence having a ball without batting an eyelid, the other is an exercise in appeasement at the cost of jarring tonal shifts.

I am not sure what kind of movie Nayyi Navelli wants to be, but it’s definitely not a good one. It’s as though certain projects are commissioned to embed a sentiment and not as a product of organic, artistic productivity. There’s nothing remotely fun about this half-hearted mumbo jumbo, oscillating between a sitcom’s cancelled pilot episode, woke public service announcement and Avengers-ripped off Ram vs Raavan conflict. Known for his work in Tamil films like Maari, Director Balaji Mohan makes a forgettable Hindi film debut over a story penned by Himanshu Sharma (continuing his downward streak after Raksha Bandhan and Tere Ishq Mein) while Divy Nidhi Sharma pitches in the dialogues and screenplay. Only Nayyi Navelli’s over-the-top mix of mythological, horror and social commentary struggles to find its bearings in a haphazardly imagined scenario. Before it collapses into a full-fledged fiasco, Nayyi Navelli starts out in a stereotypical shaadi environment of Meerut acquainting us with as many quirky members of the Awasthi family as possible.

Inspired by true events surrounding illegal sand mining, Dhruv Tripathi’s directorial debut co-written with Mihir Jadhav means to shed the light on how those wielding power conceal the truth and suppress the voice of dissent to fulfil their ambitions at the cost of human life and safety. Until a pair of daredevil journalists make it their life’s mission to bring out the blatant abuse of power out in the open. Not too many whistleblower stories get told in Hindi films, which would make the premise of Reporting Live an exciting affair. Except shoddy treatment of a serious concern results in a staggeringly bland drama.

Vijay Salgaonkar’s mind hasn’t stopped ticking for over a decade now. Thinking two steps ahead of the law every living second, he expects the Damocles sword hanging above his head to drop any day and destroy the people he so intently protects. It’s a dysfunctional dynamic to function in but the Salgaonkars don’t mind so long as they survive the storm as a close-knit family. At what cost? The makers of Drishyam do not ask. Over the course of these 11 years, they’ve started to resemble apparitions going around in circles and conning the cops as a team. The ghost of Sameer Deshmukh’s unresolved mystery continues to loom large over the franchise, which arrives at its conclusion in the final instalment of the trilogy.

Don’t Be Shy is a misleading title. There’s no holding back the central character of writer-director Sreeti Mukerji’s college romp and her manipulative drama queen ways as she flits between lies and last-minute guilty conscience to suit her agenda. Like 90% protagonists of a young adult story, Shyamali ‘Shy’ Das (Aarushi Bajaj) has her life all figured out. And if you have watched even 20% of fluff the genre churns out, you have its tropes down pat even before its spunky college going heroine wakes from her precious, overachiever dream in a room full of pink, to-do slogans and a pet turtle called Bulby.