Sukanya Verma

Ashok Kumar…hot? His tone smacks of surprise but there’s a glint of hope in it. Perhaps the sweet, sober fella too stands a chance with a lady who finds Dadamoni hot. His confidence grows as they test if their cute girl-meets-nerdy boy can be turned into a recipe for a rom-com whilst giving into the magic of the movies inside a cozy Kolkata theatre playing Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi. Director Vivek Soni’s charmingly crafted Aap Jaisa Koi wears its old-fashioned heart on its sleeve but is also quick to dismiss outdated relationship ideals thriving in the shadow of patriarchy. Even though Aap Jaisa Koi begins with a song from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (and not the Qurbani banger of the same name), it draws inspiration from Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani for its social commentary wrapped in a romcom.

When Anurag Basu made Life In A…Metro in 2007, Bollywood anthologies were still a novelty for moviegoers. Add to that, its musical roots by Pritam’s sutradhar in rock band mode lend the storytelling a refreshing momentum. By the time he created Ludo in late 2020, his maverick multi-narrative crime drama was another stylish addition in the genre that hit the overkill mark during the pandemic. Circa 2025, audiences have grown increasingly picky with a poor attention span flitting more towards streaming than screen. Metro…In Dino, Basu’s soul sequel to its mid-2000s predecessor, is a reflection of this fuzzy mind chronicling a dozen or so protagonists caught in a clutter of chaos and conflict. Slice-of-life, coming-of-age, rom-com, couples therapy, love triangle, teenage woes, mid-life crisis, Metro…In Dino’s mish-mash of themes across Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Pune is a hurricane in need of calmer hands. Instead, Basu’s trademark whimsy revels in sending his characters round and round in circles until they’ve spun long enough and collapsed in a tizzy.

Falling back on the done-to-death down Agatha Christie template of a rich man’s mansion, one murdered dude and multiple suspects opening the way for a maverick detective to solve the mystery, Detective Sherdil’s bag of twists and tricks have little intrigue and zero cunning. But the silliness it packs in the guise of humour not only trivialises a likeable star but squanders its ensemble cast into one-note distractions. Its stale and dull suspense, set in Budapest for visual novelty, kickstarts when a moneybags (Boman Irani) is brutally bumped off, setting the stage for Sherdil – a blend of Sherlock-meets-Karamchand-meets Byomkesh, strictly by his own standards – to crack the case concerning muddled inheritance and greedy claimants.

Ask me the plot of the last four Housefull movies and all I can recall are crowded frames filled with cringey, racist humour glorifying dumb blokes, dim-witted women, scowling fathers, random animals and rampant innuendoes designed to appease the lowest common denominator in the audience. Like or loathe, the shtick is raking in the moolah and now there’s a fifth film in the franchise keeping up its tradition of revelling in stupidity and birdbrain imagination. Only Housefull 5 is so rubbish, you’d think none of the actors, 17 or so of them, have any inkling as to where the script is heading and take the extempore challenge too far. Out of ideas for a while now and resorting to gimmicks like two endings – luring viewers into double viewings and ordeal – this Tarun Mansukhani directed fool fest, is the most idiotic thing I’ve watched this year so far.

In a country bursting at its seams, where dissatisfaction is a perennial feeling among the underclass and prospect is solely reserved for the privileged, sanity hangs by a thread. And when all hell does break loose, it’s not just those numb to the pain of being brushed off but even the blameless that will find themselves crushed under the aftermath of blind rage. There’s no justifying mob lynching. There’s no understanding it either. What triggers a large group of people to attack a single person, in most cases not guilty of the alleged crime, and unleash their dormant animal and defend it as justice?

It’s only fitting that Rajkummar Rao’s newest comedy should be about him being stuck in a time loop and unable to find a breakthrough. Lately that’s how watching the actor feels in one interchangeable performance after another wherein he’s a perennially exasperated small town lad grappling with rom-com crisis. A similar air of déjà vu envelops his character Ranjan Tiwari in Karan Sharma’s Bhool Chuk Maaf as well as the viewer while beholding familiar sights and stock. Only this time the setting is Banaras teeming with visuals of ghats, genda phools and gobar.

When a prince of a dippy, strapped-for-cash royal family meets a pushy possessor of a hospitality start-up, foreplay makes way for a financially profitable proposition. Creator Rangita Pritish Nandy’s modern-day fairy tale, directed by Priyanka Ghose and Nupur Asthana, is tailor-made for rom-com vibes. While the makers embellish the couple’s ‘blow hot and cold’ equation with ample of visual razzmatazz, their wet blanket chemistry and dowdily-crafted scenes of ‘opposites attract’ prove to be a buzzkill for its eight scatterbrained episodes. Add to that a cliffhanger ending and unresolved issues that follow once skeletons pop out of the closet, the prolonging seems unwarranted.

Whether or not a film is crying for a sequel is decided by its box office success or an actor’s desire to return in a role promising sure shot glory. Audiences rarely have a say in these matters. When Raid, Rajkumar Gupta’s moderately budgeted tribute to the income tax department’s unsung heroes came out in 2018, it offered a welcome change of pace from Ajay Devgn’s brooding, bashing heroes. Watching him peacefully pursue the path of justice in a tax-defaulting MP’s home along with a battery of officers, while the mood continually shifted between humour and hostility, rendered Raid an unshowy strength. A muted Devgn is back on the fore as the 1980s’ IT star Amay Patnaik in Raid 2 with bigger targets in mind. Though he is as nonviolent as ever, there’s little originality by way of script, which is a classic case of more of the same.