All The Best Release Date : 16,Oct 2009

Film: “All The Best”
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgn, Fardeen Khan, Bipasha Basu, Mugdha Godse
Directed by: Rohit Shetty
Rating: ** 1/2

In his first really decent and meaty role since “Munnabhai”, Dutt gets into the satirical groove effortlessly and fluently playing a visiting Bade Bhaiyya from abroad whom his kid brother Fardeen Khan (tolerably befuddled) must fool into believing he’s married and decent.

The guys in Rohit Shetty’s comedies are anything but decent. Rascals and rogues of the first order, Devgn and Khan are splendidly supported by a sparkling cast of comic actors ranging from Asrani to Johnny Lever to the wonderful Ashwini Kalsekar (remember how cheesy and charming she was in Rohit Shetty’s “Gol Maal Returns?”) to Sanjay Mishra (as a zonked out wannabe householder who says ‘Just chill’ as though his tongue had just been through a sugarcane-juice machine).

The screenplay (Robin Bhatt) juices the material for all it’s worth. The constant flow of cheesy-breezy dialogues is littered with high-school humour but blessedly no vulgarity. This is one comedy you could take your mom to see without once walloping a wince into the wanton soup.

The burlesque is fast-paced though surprisingly restrained and has room galore for PJs. The one-liners are so silly and graffiti-like in their basic humour, you can’t but titter at the trivia wrapped in gloss that makes welcome room for Pritam’s pacy music without getting in the way of the one-liners.

So ok. This one doesn’t leave you… er blue in the face. The comedy is purely situational and the style purely ‘Rohit Shetty’. That means a bit of slapstick, a bit of that rapidly-moving tongue in the cheek, and a lot of Ajay Devgn.

And if you add Sanjay Dutt to the bubby buncy comic brew… man, you’ve got a show that’s on the road from the word go. This time the setting, if you must know, is Goa.

Shetty doesn’t use the touristic spot as a character. You suspect he places his colony of characters in the Goan location so they could all be camera-framed into a streamlined stampede.

There are only three female characters in the show, the rest are all guys playing conmen, goons, gangsters, wheeler dealers, warriors and worriers all of whom display an exemplary comic strength.

Sanjay Dutt gets it right after a long time. He has a lot of fun doing his part and he lets us share his enjoyment. Ajay Devgn’s comic timing has gotten rapidly dead-on under Shetty’s tutelage. He gives Dutt tit for tat, and then some more.

Not all the material is uniformly amusing. Towards the finishing line you do begin to wonder how much longer it would take this wonky wacky world of wispy and reparable wickedness to set itself right.

Blue Release Date : 16,Oct 2009

The visual splendour of the sea has never been captured before in any Indian film like it is in Blue. The opening reels of the film will have a viewer’s mouth agape with awe and beauty of the water world, caught on camera brilliantly by underwater cinematographer Pete Zuccarini, who has ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ to his credit.

But a sinking feeling begins to set in as ‘Blue’ steers into the second half and one notices that between the numerous stunts, both on land and under water, there’s hardly any depth or grip in the story to keep you glued to ‘Blue’. Thankfully, there is Akshay Kumar, once again working his charm with that flashy gummy grin of his. And, of course, there is Lara Dutta in those eye-popping bikinis to kick the hormones amid all the adrenaline rush….Enough of what one can expect for the cost of ticket and time spent on this aqua-adventure thriller.

Much of ‘Blue’ is set over land, in Bahamas. Aarav (Akshay Kumar) and Sagar (Sanjay Dutt) are good friends who bond over fishing and boxing. Aarav, who is rich and looking to be richer, seems particularly interested in a sunken ship called ‘Lady in Blue’. Why? Because it carries a treasure lost in 1949 when the ship sank on its way from England to India.

Before one wonders that how on earth did a ship from England to India ended up going down in Bahamas (which is way far off), one sees that Sagar has some emotional strings attached to the sunken ship. He won’t go there for any temptation, any except brotherly love.

Which brings us to Sam (Zayed Khan), Sagar’s younger brother, who’s left the home and is flaunting his attitude and bike-speeding skills in Bangkok. He gets into a mess with a local mafia don (Rahul Dev) and flees back to his brother Sagar in Bahamas.

From then on, Sagar is pushed into a set of situations where he’s got no option but to go looking for the sunken treasure trove with Aarav and Sam.

In this adrenaline burst of macho men, speedsters, and deep sea divers who swim with sharks, some glamour and titillation is thrown in in the shapely forms of the bikini-clad Lara Dutta and deadly-looking Katrina Kaif. There’s also Kylie Minogue, the Aussie pop icon, chiggy-wiggying with Akshay in a club song.

But what’s missing is a nice and tight story that could make the movie work besides its action, stunts and glamour. Pardon the little spoiler but the whole hunt for the treasure is justified in the end by a flimsy reason about preserving the family honour.

Watch the film for Akshay, who rocks once again. Sanjay Dutt looks tired, Lara Dutta hot. Zayed Khan does better than what we’ve seen from him in the past. Rahul Dev has a lengthier role than Katrina who’s there only for a few minutes.

Debutant director Anthony D’Souza, also the co-writer of screenplay, makes a fine debut but leaves a lot to be desired. If he had a tighter story and believable reasons to justify the motives of the characters in ‘Blue’, the film could have been an absolute delight and an edge-of-the-seat experience.

Such as it is, ‘Blue’ is still worth a dive.

Rating: 6/10

Main Aurr Mrs Khanna Release Date : 16,Oct 2009

Main Aur Mrs Khanna is heaps of romantic mush that tries too, too hard to pull your heartstrings but fails miserably. PERIOD.

Remember all those romantic dramas from the 1990s that had countless dialogues about bura waqt, farz, pyaar ka ehsaas and more of such romantic guck. ‘Main Aur Mrs Khanna’ has tons of it. One such dialogue that Salman Khan mouths more than once in the film is: “Achchey waqt ki ek burai hoti hai: woh badal jaata hai. Aur burey (bad) waqt ki achchayi hai ki woh zyada der nahin rahta”. True indeed. Because the experience of watching Main Aur Mrs Khanna ends after just a little over two hours.

The film tells a story of a married couple buffeted by financial crises. Samir Khanna (Salman) first spots Raina (Kareena Kapoor) at an orphanage in Dalhousie and instantly falls in love with her. After a little wooing, he wins her love and marries her.

CUT…the next thing we see is a pale faced Raina sitting on a couch in a swanky apartment in Melbourne as Samir walks in shaking off his morning sleep and asking for a cup of coffee. The reason why she’s pale is because of Samir’s nose-diving career in financial market. It’s clear that love has fizzled out between the couple. No matter how hard she tries to please or comfort Samir, he has a stern expression on his face, looks in empty space while she talks to him, and walks out of the room even as she longs him to be with her.

The SOLUTION - change the place if you can’t change bad times. The self-centered Samir decides on his own to shift to Singapore and pack his wife off to Dalhousie. In justification he mouths a few lofty dialogues about “financial stability” being crucial for a marriage, and, of course, the aforesaid dialogue about “bura waqt”.

But Raina doesn’t board the flight to Delhi. At the airport she meets Aakash (Sohail Khan) who works as a waiter in a café and falls for her at first site. Thereafter, starts a new track between Aakash and his Mrs. Khanna. He loves her, but she keeps daydreaming about her loveless hubby who’s chalking out a new career for himself in a distant galaxy, it seems. And just when Aakash decides to pour out his heart to Raina, Mr. Khanna walks in.

‘Main Aur Mrs Khanna’ is so very behind its times that it appears that writer-director Prem Soni gleaned most of the scenes from the scrapped scripts of the unmade movies from the previous decade. The worst is its juvenile humour which is supported by background sounds of grunts, growls, slurps and whip lashes. Ouch! To still top it, there’s an overdose of dramatic background score that breaks in every now and then, as if trying to tell the audience how to feel in a particular scene. Hey, Mr. Soni! The audience ain’t dumb. If anything was left, there’s a pointless guest appearance by Preity Zinta, as a Pakistani singer who tries to entice Salman in the song ‘Happening’ that’s clearly inspired by ‘Kajra Re’. The less spoken about the performances the better. Salman Khan almost seems to sleep-walk through his part. He’s uptight, stiff-necked and has an inexplicable beatific smile on his face even in dramatic scenes. It’s a pain to see Kareena Kapoor’s talent being wasted in a role that’s neither properly written nor fleshed out. Sohail Khan capers about as a fun-loving guy for most of his part, but flounders when he has to get emotional. Director Prem Soni gives no reason to look forward to his next work. His writing and style of direction is outdated. Yes, there are some beautifully cinematographed shots where lighting changes in split seconds and there are also some hummable songs, but that doesn’t gloss over the plot holes so wide that a dozen Salmans can walk through them. Sample a few - Mrs. Khanna is dressed in designer outfits but has no cellphone. Within few days of her job at the airport, she’s able to afford a swanky house of her own. Months pass by and Mr. Khanna refuses to take calls from her. Then he shows up out of nowhere one day. The chemistry between the couple revives and just when they are about to jump in bed…wham…they begin to fight again!