Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge ? Release Date : 05,Mar 2010

Story: Puneet and Munmun, an archetypal nuclear family, find their ordered life being shaken apart when they have a visitor, Chachaji, who refuses to leave their house, despite an extended stay. Will they miss him when he goes?

Movie Review: Neat. Subtle. And softly funny. Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge is quite unlike the hysterical laugh acts that have been trying terribly hard to make you laugh in recent Bollywood. More of a chuckle-and-a-smirk drama, this one doesn't even try to convince you that life is all ha-ha-he-he. Instead, it creates situations and characters that fill you with warmth and make you smile with the familiar quirkiness of recognisable situations.

Now when was the last time you pulled your hair out when your `unwanted' relatives from Gorakhpur, or any other small town, landed in your pint-sized flat with their pet peeves and infuriating habits. Like gargling before the break of dawn, creating man-made floods in your tiny washroom or converting your favourite window into a make-shift clothesline...Well, that's what our avuncular Chachaji (Paresh Rawal) does when he arrives unannounced at friend Putani's son, Pappu's (Ajay Devgn) house. Pappu's uptown wife (Konkana Sen Sharma) is soon forced to fry pakoras and play hostess to his neighbourhood friends who are naturally drawn irresistibly to this friendly old man who has a grandma's remedy for all their cures and a bhajan for all their woes. It doesn't take long for anger to be replaced by genuine warmth, as Chachaji carries with him a whole culture into the antiseptic flat which had hitherto housed a family that was simply running in a rat race.

Paresh Rawal leads the gentle humour brigade that finds great foot soldiers in the likes of Devgn (restrained and likeable), Konkana (earthy and grounded), Satish Kaushik (watchable) and Sanjay Mishra (impressive). Is it truly back to the 1980s for Bollywood comedies? Wait and watch out for some more of the Basu Chatterjee-Hrishikesh Mukherjee brand revival.

A word about:
Performances: Paresh Rawal's pitches a picture perfect Chachaji, while Ajay Devgn and Sanjay Mishra are immensely watchable.

Story: Robin Bhatt and Tushar Hiranandani pick up a familiar tale and give it a refreshing twist.

Dialogues: The humour is gentle and subtle and never tries to drown you with its desperation to make you laugh.

Styling: Upper middle class Mumbai fashion meets mofussil town chaddis and dhotis.

Inspiration: The 1980s family-ishtyle comedies of Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

Hello Zindagi Release Date : 05,Mar 2010

Starring: Mrunmayee Lagoo, Milind Gunajee, Kitu Gidwani, Neena Gupta, Kanlwajeet Singh

Directed by Raja Unnithan

A rebellious teenage daughter Kavita of a traumatized couple doesn’t know what to do with her life. So she takes off on a journey away from home with a lonely neglected but brave middleaged woman to Goa where Kavita saves turtles…and herself.

Kavita goes home redeemed. We are not so sure about ourselves. We remain partly involved with largely distanced from this ambitious but flawed look at life through the eyes of teen rebellion.

Director Raja Unninathan has his heart at the right place. He creates a world of gossipy aimlessness sweaty parties tacky repartees and, ahem, one-night stands for Kavita. But the words sound more like replications of the emotional outbursts associated with the generation gap rather than actual situations created in a specific crisis.

A more authentic parent-child crisis would be the one in Ayan Mukerjee’s Wake Up Sid or better still the television soap Ladies Special where two very talented actors Shilpa Tulaskar and Sandeep Kulkarni played harassed parents grappling with a rebellious teenage daughter.

We empathized with their helplessness.

In Hello Zindagi Neena Gupta and Kanwaljeet Singh specially the latter are in fine form as Kavita’s parents.

The writing constantly lets all the actors down. The one performer who manages to hold her head above the material provided is Kitu Gidwani, Playing the dignified unloved but outwardly well-to-do wife Gidwani epitomizes grace under pressure.

Her section of the film with her indifferent though not cruel husband (Amit Behl) have some interesting moments, like the one where Gidwani goes into the kitchen to get coffee made by her husband, and then pours it quietly down the sink.

Gidwani’s journey to Goa with the rebellious Kavita is charted with affection. Very rarely do we get to see a movie so gentle and warm about female bonding over differing generations.

What Kitu Gidwani shares with the debutante Mrunmayee Lagoo echoes Jessica Tandy’s bonding with Brudget Fonda in Deepa Mehta’s Camilla.

Except that Gidwani and the girl don’t go skinny-dipping. The blackest spot in the film is its lack of sexual energy.

The character’s are almost unvariably frigid in their thoughts and desires. A thwarted indecisiveness runs across the narrative -profile rendering the characters weak and unconvincing.

The save-the-turtles message at the end seems forced.

Nonetheless there’s enough tenderness and warmth in the relationships shared by Mrunmayee with her screen-dad Kanwaljeet and with Kitu Gidwani to make the film worth a watch.

Hello Zindagi doesn’t bowl you over. But it makes you smile even when the debutant director displays that trite and selfsconscious social purpose that makes the film look like a documentary on how to save teenagers and turtles when they don’t want to be saved without drowning in the attempt.

Rokkk Release Date : 05,Mar 2010

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Director: Rajesh Ranshinge

Producer: Sumeet Saigal, Krishan Choudhary, Vipin Jain

Banner: Ikon films

Story Writer: Rajesh Ranshinge

Star Cast: Tanushree Dutta, Udita Goswami, Sachin Khedekar, Shaad Randhawa, Ashwini Kalsekar, Murli Sharma, Arif Zakaria, Nishigandha Wad

Release Date: March 5, 2010

Horror films made in India follow standard rules and guidelines. Every possible ingredient that viewers have witnessed since the Ramsay era automatically finds its way into horror films even today. ROKKK too borrows everything available on the shelf.

ROKKK hinges on a half-baked script, but what saves the film from complete breakdown is the execution of the material by debutante director Rajesh Ranshinge. The proceedings may be far from innovative, but keep you hooked nonetheless.

Anushka [Tanushree Dutta] weds an elderly man Ravi [Sachin Khedekar], who has remarried after the death of his first wife. Anushka's mother [Nishigandha Wad] refuses to accept their relationship.

Anushka and Ravi begin their journey in a beautiful home that Ravi gifts Anushka. However, strange and quirky things start happening there. Anushka tries to share her experiences with Ravi, who in turn thinks that his wife is hallucinating. They decide to move back to their earlier home, but the incidents don't seem to stop.

Anushka seeks advice from a healer [Arif Zakaria] and tries to discover the motive behind these unexplainable incidents. The story takes a turn when Anushka murders her husband and sister-in-law. Ahana [Udita Goswami], Anushka's sister, begins her journey to rescue her.

Horror movies ought to have a great start and a pulse-pounding finale. Unfortunately, ROKKK has a lacklustre start and a convenient finale, with the makers leaving scope for a sequel, if the film works. The film suffers due to inept writing, with several questions remaining unanswered till the end.

No reasons are offered why Tansuhree marries a man much older to her, except a fleeting reference by Udita. No reasons are offered when Tanushree enquires about the circumstances that led to the death of Sachin Khedekar's first wife. That's not all, Tanushree even manages to escape from the asylum even though the spirit almost gets her. Now that's difficult to gulp!

But things do stabilise in the post-interval portions. The spirit now set her sights on Udita and the sequence in the elevator sets the ball rolling. Ditto for two more sequences - [i] Arif Zakaria wanting to free the mansion from the spirit and [ii] Ashwini Kalsekar's story of how the blood-thirsty spirit came into being.

With the film holding your attention in the second hour, you expect the finale to reach its zenith, but it does an about-turn and touches the ebb. Tanushree's re-emergence on the scene is formulaic and ruins the impact. If the writing is patchy, the effects are tacky and the background score relies on the same sounds that one has come to expect from horror films.

Both Tanushree and Udita try to make the proceedings watchable. Udita is efficient, while Tanushree uses her eyes effectively to express fear. Shaad Randhawa is decent. Sachin Khedekar is okay. Ashwini Kalsekar is the best of the lot. Murli Sharma and Nishigandha Wad don't get much scope. Arif Zakaria is perfect.

On the whole, ROKKK is ordinary at best!