Star Cast: Akshay Kumar, Trisha Krishnan, Rajpal Yadav, Johny Lever and others
“Khatta Meetha” is one more Priyadarshan comedy; but this time with some social message. This is a remake of Priydarshan’s own blockbuster movie “Vellankaludu Nadu” in south. Akshay Kumar yet again joins hands with the comedy guru. Priyadarshan always delivers entertaining light hearted cinema. In Khatta Meetha he tries to combine comedy and drama together.
Sachin(Played by Akshay Kumar) the only member of his family who is yet to do well in his profession of road making contractor. Everyone around him thinks he is a loser including his family. He goes on to make one blunder after another. Meantime his brother and brother in laws who are corrupted are responsible for making a bridge which fell down in only few days of making and kills 100’s of people. Instead of taking responsibility of the disaster they try to cover it up by framing their driver and killed him too. Will there be justice? Will Sachin ever going to be successful?
For me movie is entertaining as any Priydarshan movie; but he could not blend comedy and drama as well as he should. All the acting performances are almost perfect. Akshay Kumar and Rajpal Yadav excelled everyone else by far. Trisha Krishnan looks beautiful I her Bollywood debut movie. It was refreshing to see her in Bollywood. But her acting performance wasn’t impressive enough.
If I have to rate this movie it will be 6 out of 10.
Star Cast:Aamir Khan, R. Madhvan, Sharman Joshi, Boman Irani, Omi Vaidya, Kareena Kapoor, Mona Singh, Javed Jafry and Others
“3 Idiots” had high expectation even before it release for many reasons. To list few, the movie was supposedly based on Chetan Bhagat’s popular book “Five Point Someone”. It was next release of Aamir Khan after ‘Ghajini’ which was we all know was block buster hit. Then it was next project of Rajkumar Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra after “Munnbhai Series….” Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor paired with each other first time. Movie has excellent ensemble cast.
Sometimes this big hype before movie release cause downfall of many movies. But “3 Idiots” fulfilled all the expectation beyond imagination. “3 Idiots” is ingenious acting performances, direction, and script. Once again Rajkumar Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra comes up with highly entertaining movie with social message.
Movie criticizes Indian education system and Indian students learning style. Today in India knowledge is secondary to numbers or marks. Movie tells us to learn the books acquire knowledge, experiment with it, and try new things rather than just mugging up or following path laid by others. Make your own way, live life on your own terms.
Although the movie has superstar like Aamir Khan, other actors like newcomer Omi Vaidya and Boman Irani stand out. All of us surely going to love these 3 idiots immensely and going to remember not only Rancho (played by Aamir Khan) but also Chatur (Played by Omi Vaidya) and Prof. Sahastrabuddhe (Played by Boman Irani) for long long time. I can see producers of this movie making sequel of “3 Idiots”.
If I have to rate this movie I will give it 9 out of 10.
Special Appearance: Bharat Jadhav, Sanjay Narvekar
“Nishani Dawa Angatha” is a film based on a novel of same name. Author of this book is Ramesh Ingale. As per Marathi film industries ritual this film is a comical farce on very serious issue. This film talks about why there are so many illiterate people in rural areas although Indian Government runs so many literacy programs over the years. And which had been very successful on papers. “Nishani Dawa Angatha” shows the loopholes in such government programs.
The story happens in a village name ‘Savargaon’ in Buldhana district in Maharashtra. In the village there is a school run by six male and six female teachers. Principle of school is played by Ashok Saraf. One day principle received a letter from government announcing that adult literacy program is started and all the teachers are expected to do extra duty for the same i.e. they will have to work after their normal working hours and teach illiterate adults at nights 8 to 10 pm. Although everyone is irritated with this, they had to do this as it is governments order.
But as it happens in any government work, people start find loopholes to miss the work. Everyone involved in the program right from teachers, supervisors, officers tries to save their skin. They run this program for three years and without creating anyone literate, the village bags the award for the excellent work in literacy program. That is what movie is all about.
The movie got excellent storyline. But there is much more scope of improvement in screenplay, and direction of movie. Director Purushottam Berde tried to be true to the novel all along but little bit of cinematic liberty could have added charm to the movie. All the actors were brilliant. If I have to rate this movie I will give it 7 out of 10. But it is still a must watch movie and highly entertaining too.
Education is one of the biggest money making business today and it is getting bigger and bigger every passing day. We know many politicians turning into Educationalists or vice versa. There is nothing wrong in making big education empires. It only provides opportunities for students in higher studies in India itself. But trouble is that these so called Educationalists are more interested in making money rather than providinghas become a big business. Educationalists are more interested into making money than passing on knowledge to deserving people. This movie ‘Mastar Eke Mastar’ is exactly tells the story of an ordinary Mastar (teacher) who becomes an educationalist with the help of all immoral and illegal ways.
Movie is about the Bappa More, played by Ashok saraf. He is a primary school teacher in government schools. He has all the bad habits of drinking, gambling and scheming mind on top of that. He makes students do his personal work. Just to get benefited from government’s policy to help divorcee women by giving them teacher’s job. He divorces his wife. This is how his story starts and he ends up being a wealthy man with two wives and big education empire.
I really like the core concept. And I was expecting a lot from this movie. As I said idea of the movie was brilliant, movie has Ashok Saraf as lead actor, and Sanjay Surkar as director. But movie failed in all departments. It has weak script and above all weak direction. After movies like ‘Choukat Raja’, ‘Tu Tithe Mi’, ‘Satchya Aat Gharat’ this movie is really a mediocre performance by sanjay Surkar. Without the presence of Ashok Saraf the movie would have been too dull to watch.
Lately the Marathi movies I watched had good subjects, good acting talent, and enough technical support; but they are lacking directorial and script level proficiency. So people making Marathi movie should really buck up. As I am sure they will not want the flow of audience to Marathi movies to dry out again. As for this movie if I have to rate it, I will give it 4 out of 10.
Cast: Makarand Anaraspure, Sayaji Shinde, Nagesh Bhosale and others
Released: 2009
Another Makarand Anaraspure film which had lot of promise but fail to deliver. There were lot of expectation from this movie as it was based on political scenario in a village of Maharashtra. And at this time when election process is going on India, we hope they could have extracted more of this situation.The movie had brilliant concept, it also had formidable cast like Sayaji Shinde, Nagesh Bhosale and Makarand Anaraspure; but the acting talents of the cast totally wasted due to the weak script and weak direction for that matter.
The movie is about corrupt politicians played by Sayaji shinde and Nagesh Bhosale who are fighting aimlessly and ridiculously. In order to gain control in their constituency, they create unreasonable chaos in their village or lane (Gallit Gondhal). But at the same time easily succumb to the high command in Delhi (Dillit Muzara). But while these two fights a small but smart party worker played by Makarand Anaraspure take advantage of the situation. Not only he extracts money from both of them but eventually goes on to become MLA. And in the end we come to knoe he is no different than the other two guys.
The movie was an attempt to comment on the state of politics going on in India or say rural India. It is full of sarcasm. It shows the cut throat rat race for power between politicians, disinterest in election process by voters, change of loyalty of voters and party workers for money or rather to watch “Lavani” played by a fair skinned foreigner.
The concept of the movie and presence of Makarand Anaraspure demands non-stop humor and good dialogues. The movie failed to deliver that. Only saving grace of movie is Makarand Anaraspure who makes us laugh never the less on some gags but whenever he was not present on the screen movie seem to be sluggish and slow. It is not only due to bad script and dialogues but also because of naïve direction as movie does not seem to flow smoothly from one scene to another.
Movie has only one which is also a title song and good enough. For last few years we can see that Marathi films are improving technically also. But in this movie background score was very harsh to ears. People now prefer Marathi movies over Hindi movies; so producers and directors could not lag on any technical aspects at least. As for actors everyone did their job very well. We are watching Makarand Anaraspure in same sort of role from movie “Kay dyach bola”, althoght he is still enjoyable. He is getting little monotonous in every film. He is busiest and most successful actors in Marathi alongwith Bharat Jadhav. They are the comedy kings of Marathi film industry.
As for the film if I have to rate the movie, I will give it 5 out of 10.
Cast: Robin Williams, Jonathan Hyde, Kirsten Dunst, Bradley Pierce, Bonnie Hunt, Bebe Neuwirth, David Alan Grier and Others.
“Jumanji” is a name of a Board game which is at the centre of the film so the movie is called by its name “Jumanji”. The movie is based on a picture book story of the same name written by Chris Van Allsberg. Movie will easily rank in top 20 entertaining movie I watched ever in my life so far. It has everything contents of Adventure and Action, bit of Comedy, Fantasy, Thriller, lot of Special Effects. But most of all it will be classified a movie for children. But I enjoy the movie every time I watch it although I am all grown up now.
Movie start with two kids burying the “Jumanji”(a board game) in ancient time. Then movie skips forward when Alan digs out the game outside his father’s shoe factory. And he decides to try his hand with his friend Sarah. And after that as the tagline of the movie says “Roll the dice and unleash the excitement”. That’s what we get, as Sarah rolls the dice thousands of Bats flies out of the game. And if that wasn’t scary enough when Alan rolls the dice, he gets sucked in the game itself. And he has to be there for next twenty six years of his life. Sarah needs treatment for her insanity.
The story again skips forward by twenty six year when two kids Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter come to live in Alan’s home with their aunt. They also found out that the game is calling for them, when they get to the game they also decide to try their hands on the game. And they also discover the fun of the game when Judy rolls the dice Mosquitoes attack them, next roll some crazy monkeys come out of the game, next roll the lion comes out and when they roll again Alan himself comes out of the game. But this time he is all grown up. But real action starts when Alan and kids realized that they are playing the same game which Alan started twenty six earlier. And if they want to undo everything done by the game they had to finish the game. So they need all the four participants including Sarah. They make Sarah to participate in the game once again. After that movie gets even more adventures because as they roll the dice they encounter even more scary things like a Hunter with big gun, wild man eating trees, Animal stampede, big deadly spiders, crocodiles and crazy jungle monsoon.
So story takes you to the end how they manage to overcome every obstacle and manage to finish the game. And eventually able to undo all the disaster created by the game.
After watching the movie the person who should be admired is Director of the movie Joe Johnson. Because in Special effect movies like this it is very easy to overdo the special effect to make it more glamorous. But in the process story might lost which didn’t happen with “Jumanji”. The special effects may be at par with the time when the movie released but we can see movies are coming out with better special effect. In the movies like Jurassic Park, Twister, Godzilla, Narnia. But I really enjoyed the sequence of stampede and the cute hippo lagging behind them. On the whole all the actors did brilliant job. Movie will surely be enlisted in my Must watch movies before you die.
If I have to rate the movie I will give 9 out of 10 for this pure entertainment movie.
