Damp spark

Chingaari

Director: Kallpana G. Lajmi
Cast: Sushmita Sen, Anuj Sawhney, Mithun Chakraborty, Ila Arun
4/10

Love with a postman in these times of SMS can take place only in the realms of fantasy or the pages of a story, as in the weakly scripted Chingaari by Kallpana Lajmi from Bhupen Hazarika’s story, The Postman and the Priest, which is about a postman, a priest and a prostitute, and what happens when they get tangled in each others’ lives.

Among other things, the best that happens is love. Which, when the postman is as charming as Anuj Sawhney is in this film, was bound to happen. As it does between him and the most beautiful prostitute in Rangpur, which the narrative begins by saying could be any village in North India, in any period of time since time immemorial.

With that fairytale once-upon-a-time statement, one could be forgiven for hoping that it did turn out to be one, with the charming prince (read: postman) on his rickety bicycle sweeping his pretty woman off her feet onto his bicycle handle, to ride into the glorious sunset. But before one gets misled by the colours and mela songs, it’s not a Palekar’s wishfulfilling Paheli. It’s Lajmi who has travelled from the starkness of Rudali to a feminist cry which is louder, but destined to get lost in the now overdone sindoor bhari maang act she has thrust upon Sushmita. The latter does what she can to salvage the drama, which includes putting up with a Mithun Chakraborty falling all over her, as a very stereotyped, evil panda, who fails to live beyond his screen hours. That, too, just about.

Something which Sushmita and Anuj manage to a better extent, between whom no real sparks fly, but who by themselves do spark in many sequences. If Lajmi had bothered to squeeze together this with tighter editing and cutting down film time by an hour at least, she could have left a deeper impression.

Deepali Singh

English, Dhawan

wedding crashers

Director: David Dobkin
Cast: Christopher Walken, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn
4/10

Ever wondered how a David Dhawan movie in English would look like? Well, more or less like Wedding Crashers, with slight changes, of course, like the men wouldn’t be bedding the girls after all. Desi values, you see. A last year summer release in the US and a bridesmaid (No. 2) at the box-office, the movie is pure slapstick. Owen Wilson (remember Jackie Chan’s partner in one of the Rush Hour capers?) and Vince Vaughn (in the news as Jennifer Aniston’s prospective beau) are divorce attorneys by profession whose favourite timepass is crashing weddings. Why? To sleep with classy girls for free.

Pallabi Biswas

Fights of fancy

Fight club

Director: Vikram Chopra
Cast: Sohail Khan, Zayed Khan, Dino Morea, Aashish Chowdhry, Riteish Deshmukh, Amrita Arora, Dia Mirza, Neha Dhupia, Rahul Dev, Ashmit Patel, Suniel Shetty
4/10

The brightest idea in Fight Club is a Fight Club: a place where people can settle disputes with boot and knuckle without being restrained by interfering peaceniks. It saves the tedium of thinking up a plot to build up to the dhishum-dhishum at the climax. Instead, shirts are off early as men of every size and shape battle it out for fanciful motives. There is even a catfight, with fearsome threats to the bra straps, to deflect any charge of sexual discrimination.

The Fight Club is promoted in Mumbai by a group of friends who spot a good business opportunity in people’s passion to rearrange each other’s faces. However, around the interval they all hare off to Delhi and become bouncers of a nightclub. Then follows another phase of battles, mainly with villains seeking to take over the premises for reasons not quite clear. In between, there are three sets of rapid romances featuring shots of the Maldives, mountains and waterfalls, possibly as an afterthought. By and large, it’s all love or fight at first sight.

Despite two stories, three heroines, half a dozen heroes and plenty of bad guys, the audience doesn’t really get its money’s worth. The acting is confined to chests and biceps ? in some cases a bit skinny. The humour is weak, the songs fail to stick and the fights are Bollywood style. As a film, Fight Club should go down in the box-office with no more than a muted moan.

Sudip Mallik