Mani's Calssic of all; Vilan movie review

The Mani Ratnam’s film Ravan in Hindi, has evoked lots of hype right from the day he announced the film. The film was simultaneously made in three languages. The Bollywood version had Abhishek Bachchan as Villain and Vikram as hero, while the other versions i.e., the Tamil and Telugu films had Vikram in the villain’s role and Prithviraj was opted for the hero’s role. However, Aishwarya Bachchan is the female lead in all the versions.

Buzz up!

Suhasini has penned the dialogues for Tamil version and Sri ramakrishna for the Telugu version. It is a socialised version of the epic ‘Ramayan’. Mani Ratnam has made an attempt to show villain in a heroic role and the hero with a cruel tendency.

Dev (Prithviraj) is a tough police officer who is appointed to catch Veeraiah (Vikram). During the marriage of Veeraiah’s sister (Priyamani), Dev attacks him and injures him. Meanwhile, Veeraiah’s sister gets detained by the police for interrogation, but gets gang raped by the police men. This irks Veeraiah who wreaks a vengeance against the police.

As Dev was responsible for everything, Veeraiah kidnaps Ragini (Aishwarya), wife of Dev, to teach him a lesson. Dev sets off to the forest in search of Ragini and Veeraiah. A forest guard (Karthik) comes forward to assist Dev to capture Veeraiah. With the help of the forest guard, Dev was able to trace Ragini. Ragini, who makes several vain attempts to escape from the clutches of Veeraiah. The latter don't harm to Ragini. She realises that Veeraiah’s act is justified. What happens next should be seen on screen.

Plus:The performance of the lead artistes including Vikram and Aishwarya are the major plus points of the film. National-award winning artiste Vikram has given an ultimate performance in this film Aishwarya Rai, who is very popular across the world, played in a little de glamorous role in the film. She has given excellent performance in the film. Prithviraj is okay as a police officer. Priyamani, though flashed on the screen for a few minutes, has given a graceful performance and won the hearts of audiences. Prabhu, Karthik did justice to their respective roles. Cinematography by Santosh Sivan is another major plus point for the movie. He was able to picturize the forest beauties with his camera perfectly. AR Rahman’s music is yet another plus point for the movie. The re-recording is ultimate and many scenes in the film were elevated because of the music. Action choreography is another department which has given an excellent support for the success of the film.

Minus:The only draw back of the film is the unimpressive dialogues and songs. Though versatile writer, the late Veturi penned the songs, none of them are impressive. Likewise, dialogues by Sriramakrishna were also pale and lacked any punch. The dialogues appeared artificial and gives you the feeling of watching a dubbing film.

Analysis:The first half is a little boring as the story runs with forest in its backdrop and the heroine trying to escape and the villain recapturing her. However, the second half run with nail-biting suspense and action and made the audiences sit tight to their seats. It is absurd to review a film by a great director like Mani Ratnam, as he had high directorial capabilities and the style he shows in picturizing the film is impeccable.

Cast: Vikram, Pruthviraj, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, PrithivirajKarthik, Prabhu, Kishore, Priyamani and others.

Credits: Dialogues – Sriramakrishna, Lyrics – Veturi Sundararama Murthy, Music – AR Rahman, Cinematography – Santosh Sivan and Manikanthan, Editing – Srikar Prasad, Art – Sameer Chanda, Action – Shyam Kaushal and Peter Heynes, Producers – Mani Ratnam and Sarada Trilok, Screenplay and direction – Mani Ratnam.

Banner: Madras Talkies

Released on: June 18, 2010

Housefull: review

Anupama Chopra reviews: Housefull
(Comedy)

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Jiah Khan, Lara Dutta, Riteish Deshmukh, Arjun Rampal Music: Shankar Mahadevan/Ehsaan Noorani/Loy Mendonca Director: Sajid Khan

In Housefull, director Sajid Khan has only one purpose: he wants to make you laugh. Does he accomplish this? Not often enough.

Housefull belongs to the same school of comedy that gave us Welcome, No Entry, Golmaal and All the Best. There is no craft or narrative or characterisation to speak of.

Random events and characters, lies and misunderstandings, serve to create a low-IQ comedy.

Perhaps Sajid has a bigger budget than Rohit Shetty. So, the stars are A-list and instead of Goa, the locations are London and Italy. But the comedy is the same: broad, farcical and mostly dim-witted.

Which in itself is not a bad thing. There are plenty of cheap laughs to be mined from people slapping each other.

But Housefull, about the misadventures of a singularly unlucky man named Aarush, played by Akshay Kumar, is exhaustingly inconsistent. There are a few laugh-out loud moments here and some sparkling asides. I found Lillette Dubey’s over-sexed Urdu spouting widow and an exchange on night suit pajamas very funny.

There is also a great answering machine message that Boman Irani playing the farsan king Batuk Patel has on his phone. It simply says: Beep pacchi Bako.

But Sajid, who also wrote the film, strains too hard to add humour to every frame. He resorts to the usual gay and Gujarati gags. The film feels laboured and many of the jokes, like Chunky Pandey as a half Italian named Aakhri Pasta, are flatter than Deepika Padukone’s stomach.

Sajid, who prides himself on being a voracious film watcher, has also cheerfully copied moments from films like Night In The Museum and The Hangover.

We even have Arjun Rampal re-creating Robert De Niro’s over-watchful intelligence officer from Meet the Parents.

Strangely, Sajid also bungs in moments of high emotion but it’s impossible to take these characters seriously. The half-a-dozen leads here all seem to be having a good time.

Akshay Kumar works well as the ace loser. He seems to have perfected the sincere geek act and he has a nice chemistry with Ritesh Deshmukh who plays his best friend.

For the women, the biggest challenge is wearing resort wear well and they carry it off with aplomb. But eventually, the writing in Housefull is too mediocre and the film is, at best, a below average entertainer. Keep your expectations low and see it if you