Delhi Belly (2011)

Aamir Khan’s film offering Delhi Belly has done supremely well. Low budget, fast paced with crazy street lingo, some have called it a breath of fresh air, but it is a essentially a film that breaks wind literally and metaphorically.

Delhi Belly mixes up the lives of three lads in a small one room apartment with the comic ruthlessness of a diamond smuggling ring and throws in bowel movements for extra laughs. Unfortunately, the copy one got a hold of was a dubbed version. The film is mostly in English peppered with a bit of Hindi. Either way, it was hilarious in a low brow, under grad humour kind of a way. Critics have said that the film is stylish – I beg to differ. Delhi Belly is not stylish at all. However it is loaded with a ton of in your face A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E.

Starring the very good looking Imran Khan in a grimed up role as a lowly reporter called Tashi Malhotra, Delhi Belly gives him two buddies, one photographer Nitin (Kunal Roy Kapoor) and a rookie at an ad agency Arup (Vir Das), one airhead of a girlfriend Shenaz Treasurywala and an enticing other woman Menaka played by Poorna Jagannathan. The blokes swear a lot, one of them gets an upset stomach at the beginning of the film and is tortured by it throughout and all three of them pass a certain package given to Tashi by his airhead girlfriend to deliver. Eventually it is delivered side by side with a stool specimen and the mix up creates a hysterical comedy of errors when some gangsters led by the brilliant Vijay Raaz (PK Dubey from Monsoon Wedding) enter the picture.

There is nothing remotely Shakespearian about Delhi Belly. The Quentin Taranatino/Roberto Rodriguez parallels are being drawn, but really, while Delhi Belly may borrow shock value from Tarantino’s black comedy capers and the high on thrills, low on budget ethos of Rodriguez there is nothing hard hitting about it. It’s a film about the youth for the youth with the lingo of the youth. Great fun but that’s it. It doesn’t delve any deeper nor does it claim to. The prize for that mindblowing genre of fast paced action packed filmmaking that leaves you breathlessly saying Wow! in India still goes to the excellent Kaminey directed by Vishal Bharadwaj. Even Tarantino hardly gets absolute exhilarating madness so bang on right!
With Delhi Belly, Aamir Khan has taken yet another risk after Dhobi Ghat. He’s gone with a relatively new director Abhinay Deo whose directorial debut Game with Abhishek Bachchan was a spectacular flop.

However the backbone of the film is Akshat Verma’s script. He’s new to the game and had written it as part of his screenwriting class at the UCLA. The LA based writer came to Mumbai and was unsuccessful at pitching it to anyone. So he submitted one last draft to Aamir Khan Productions and flew back to LA. Apparently it was Kiran Rao who picked it up from the pile, started reading and laughing hysterically. Then, husband Aamir read it and Akshat Verma’s script was given the green signal.

While a number of lyricists were involved in writing the music of the film, so was Akshat Verma. Using ‘DK Bose’ was his idea and the super hit controversial song is by far the most successful on the soundtrack. Other numbers include the super funny ‘Ja Churail’ an angry number break up song that freely borrows most of its tune from Billy Idol’s ‘White Wedding’ and ‘Nukkadwalay Disco, Udhaarwalay Khisko’. While full blown videos have been made for these songs, starring the actors and not the singers in true Bollywood tradition, in the film they are a part of the narrative. Delhi Belly ends with the song ‘I Hate You (Like I Love You)’ with Aamir Khan prancing around as the quintessential Disco Dancer, a definite ode to Mithun Chakraborty. It’s a flashy ending reminiscent of Farah Khan films, though Delhi Belly breaks all the rules of making clean cut Bollywood fare that Farah strictly adheres to notwithstanding sexy item numbers like ‘Sheila’.

Delhi Belly could easily have done without this last number, but that’s Aamir Khan for you. No major stars, no big sets, no glamour. A racy, filthy script, witty songs and an in your face attitude have made Delhi Belly one of the biggest hits of the year. In India’s tinsel town, that entitles anyone to put on flashy clothes and bring on the pelvic thrusts.

A must watch for all Aamir Khan fans its a laugh a minute time riot. However, this is not a family film where you take your kids, unless you want them talking dirty. I’ll happily watch Delhi Belly as it was originally intended, mostly in English with a smattering of Hindi. Hopefully they’ll get a print of that soon — Muniba Kamal

Rating – 3.5 out of 5

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2011, Genre – Comedy, Country – India, Language – English / Hindi, Producer – Aamir Khan, Ronnie Screwvala, Kiran Rao, Director – Abhinay Deo, Music Director – Ram Sampath, Cast – Imran Khan, Vir Das, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Shehnaz Treasurywala, Poorna Jagannathan, Vijay Raaz, Paresh Ganatra, Raju Kher, Rahul Singh, Rahul Pendkalkar

Double Dhamaal (2011)

There are movies that will always make you regret wasting precious hours of your life. Double Dhamaal is one of them and I’m not even being critical here. If you think you have a slightly refined taste in movies, stay away from Double Dhamaal at all costs. However, if you enjoy pointless and cheesy Bollywood movies, you might just appreciate a few parts of it, but that’s it.

Incase you haven’t seen Dhamaal, the first few minutes of Double Dhamaal will give you a brief recap. Roy (Riteish Deshmukh), Adi (Arshad Warsi), Manav (Jaaved Jaaferi) and Boman (Aashish Chaudhary) had given in all their money to charity. Two years have passed and they are still waiting for an easy way to make big money.

Just when they are cursing their luck, they come across their accomplice Kabir (Sanjay Dutt), only to discover that he is living a luxurious life. The film doesn’t reveal how, but he owns a Mercedes, has a posh office and that’s not it. He even has two ladies by his side – Kamini (Mallika Sherawat) and sister Kiya (Kangana Ranaut) for company. Looking at his lavish lifestyle, these four guys get jealous and plan to mug him. What begins then is a game of twisted plots and mistaken identities, as the gang of boys once again try their luck at making some easy money.

Indra Kumar is known for making fun films with a good dose of light moments but I wonder what happened to him when he was working on Double Dhamaal. The film is supposed to be a brainless comedy and should technically make you laugh several times if not throughout but it turns out to be an absolutely unfunny disaster. Double Dhamaal is extremely silly. In fact it’s silly to the point of being ridiculous, which can be good at times, but this is on the sad side of ridiculous, and that is not exaggeration.

The director and crew have tried very hard to make the film funny. So much so that Riteish Deshmukh puts on black face paint and an Afro wig to transform into a West Indian and allow everyone to make lots of racist jokes which don’t even induce laughter and are extremely lame, not to mention in bad taste. The fact that the crew is desperate to make Double Dhamaal hilarious is evident because Ashish Chaudhary dresses up as a rather ugly woman, Barbara Gori, who lunges for men with money. While Ashish makes a fool of himself, Chaudhary goes to the extent of wearing a gorilla suit and kissing another gorilla to make the audience laugh! Out of all these desperate efforts, the only one that made the audience laugh was the gorilla act.

There is a short spoof of certain films like Taare Zameen Par, Peepli Live and Guzaarish (I wonder why Aamir Khan related films were picked for parody) but these fail to amuse too.

The major reason why the film fails to entertain is its plot. Dhamaal might have had an entertaining plot but Double Dhamaal’s plot seems too forced for a sequel. Its narrative improves slightly in the second half but I doubt the audience will be able to survive till then.

As far as the performances are concerned, Arshad Warsi is the saving grace of the film. He reminds us why we loved him so much as Circuit back in the days of Munna Bhai. Even though Sanjay Dutt doesn’t have anything to do with comedy in Double Dhamaal, he has performed his role well enough. Javed Jaaferi manages to give a few light moments to the film but his performance becomes redundant after a while. Ashish Chaudhary is forgettable while Kangana Ranaut seems to be completely out of place. As the credits roll, one wonders what the hell she was doing in the film apart from screaming and speaking in a squeaky and annoying voice. She probably thought of this movie as a chance to embark upon a good shopping trip. Mallika Sherawat is alright throughout and her item number ‘Jalebi Bai’ too is okay, though its nothing groundbreaking or even mildly close to ‘Munni’ or ‘Sheila’.

There is no doubt that making a sequel to a film is a very difficult task but the filmmaker should only attempt to make a sequel if they know they can pull it off decently or try and forget all about it if the only way they think a sequel will work is by planting cheesy jokes and disastrous attempts at humor in the storyline. Double Dhamaal completely forgets this fact and ends up being a double disappointment. As if these two hours of torture weren’t enough, the closing scene of the movie promises a third part called Total Dhamaal too. Time to cross our fingers and hope that it never actually materializes — Hafsah Sarfraz

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2011, Genre – Comedy, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Ashok Thakeria, Indra Kumar, Reliance Entertainment, Director – Indra Kumar, Music Director – Anand Raj Anand, Cast – Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Jaaved Jaaferi,Riteish Deshmukh, Aashish Chaudhary, Kangna Ranaut, Mallika Sherawat, Satish Kaushik, Harry Josh

Turning 30!!! (2011)

“When you are in your twenties, you don’t know if you are a silk person or a chiffon person; a BMW person or a Volkswagen. You live it up hard, you have everything going your way. Thirty is a point where you sit down to take stock of where you are headed. In that way, 30 today is a thinking woman’s 20” – Gul Panag on Turning 30!!!’s significance.

Turning 30!!! Is the movie I have wanted to club over the head with my four year old Pumas all my life. Observe lead actress Gul Panag’s, who plays Naina in the film, statement above. 30 is the thinking woman’s 20s? What does that even mean? But sadly enough the statement also sums up what you should expect from Turning 30!!!. Which basically means you should expect lots of frou frou statements that make no sense.

Okay, so our girl Naina is totally freaking out at the possibility of turning 30, but she has things sorted out for her. The boyfriend, the career, the best friends from college. But within the first 20 minutes of the film, everything comes crashing about Naina, the boyfriend leaves her for someone his parents pick for him, she is on the brink of being fired and her best friend’s husband is having an affair. Is nothing sacred anymore, even marriage? Naina wonders. She does get her answer by the end of the film but by that time I couldn’t care less. And also the answer is as trite as the rest of Turning 30!!!.

Every cliché you have ever heard of about anything makes up the Turning 30!!! script. “The journey is more fun than the destination,” claims Naina’s ex Jai. The answer to a breakup is a haircut, says Naina’s best friend. “You’re turning 30!” squeals her mom. “I’m getting a boob job to surprise my husband,” Naina’s colleague tells her in a bout of TMI. Incidentally, the colleague has also found Naina a great match on Shaadi.com, which Naina politely laughs away.

Assuming that Indian culture is much like Pakistani culture, I would like to applaud Alankita Srivastav for taking a step to delve into the psyche and life of the almost 30 girl. But really? Just because Naina is 30 she needs new underwear that will make her look like a newly hatched chick? Seriously? Okay, that could also be brushed away as something quirky that girlfriends do together. As could their penchant to sit in a spa with face packs on talking about life and love. And yes, people who know girls in their mid to late 20s think it’s okay to comment on their single status. That can get old fast. And all of this could have actually made for a great film if the writing wasn’t so bad. Also the acting. And the character development. Every character in this film is half baked. The only character that has been focused on seems to be Naina’s, the rest of them are just there are afterthoughts. Which could be fortunate as Naina is one of the most annoying celluloid characters ever. If I knew her in real life I would probably be slashing her car tyres everyday.

Naina seems more like she is 16 than 29. Nobody understands me, she thinks at one point, not even my friends. She turns up at her most recent ex’s engagement and gets plastered and acts like a douche. She meets her “college sweetheart” Jai, who likes knotting kerchiefs around his neck he is and hooks up with him all over again. This is a girl who defies both convention and wisdom. When they say in the film’s synopsis that Naina has a lot of growing up to do, they aren’t kidding.

As one of the afterthoughts of the film, and perhaps in order to show exactly what a tangled web the life of an urban Indian woman is, one of Naina’s friends comes out as a lesbian.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the plot. She does egg on Naina to write a book which is as bad as the movie in which it exists, so I suppose she had her function.

The script of Turning 30!!! seems to have been conceived in English and translated to Hindi. The dialogue doesn’t have the punch it sets out to deliver. The actors delivering the dialogues often do so with little or no emotion. If you are in fact turning 30, and are deeply anxious about the fact, perhaps you could watch this film and tell yourself that at least you are not quite the sack of douchery that Naina is. But really, it’s just not worth it – Amina Baig

Rating – 1 out of 5

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2011, Genre – Comedy, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Prakash Jha, Director – Alankrita Shrivastava, Music Director – Siddharth, Suhas, Cast – Gul Panag, Purab Kohli, Siddharth Makkar, Tillotama Shome, Jeneva Talwar, Anita Kanwar, Rahul Singh, Sameer Malhotra