Vantage point




Monday, June 28, 2004

Yawn Movies

Here are my thoughts on some forgettable Hindi movies I have seen in the last month or so. What I am writing would not necessarily be a review....more of what went through my mind after watching it.

Murder - A very typically Bhat-ish movie, with pretences of upper class liberal viewpoint. Pretence, because despite all these claims about being modern, the Bhats still felt the need to provide justification for the woman cheating on her husband. They went through the trouble of bringing back an ex-boyfriend from her past, married her off to her sister's husband, and then made that husband ultra-busy. The Bhats, for all their bravado, refuse to cross the boundaries of political correctness.

Aan: Men at Work - Not everyone can straddle the two worlds of parallel and mainstream cinema. Madhur Bhandarkar, of Chandni Bar fame, is the latest example of this. Aan is one of the most hackneyed movies ever made. There is an overdose of stunts, and the actors are all miscast.

Dev - The only message I could derive from the movie was, that secularism is not a right, but a privilege that we have bestowed upon minorities. Again, it is distressing to see Govind Nihalani churn out such a muddled film. However, the positives are the performances of Fardeen and Kareena, both of whom are sliding lower and lower in my "Most Irritating" ranking.

Girlfriend - It is a bad movie. But everyone who is lambasting the movie saying they have not portrayed lesbianism in the right perspective, I have a simple question for you. How many films, Indian or Hollywood, portray heterosexual relationships in a realistic perspective? Hardly any. Why do we expect a deeper base for a movie about lesbians?