Slowly...to nowhere

ahista ahista

Director: Shivam Nair
Cast: Soha Ali Khan, Abhay Deol, Shayan Munshi, Murad Ali, Saurabh Ardeshir
4/10

Under class boy meets upper class girl. He is one heck of a Good Samaritan. She is in one heck of a jam. He helps her and she allows herself to be helped. And ahista ahista, the two fall in love. Director Shivam Nair was serenely proceeding on these well-worn lines when suddenly, he decided to inject a shot of realism into the story. Trouble is, he miscues it completely. His ‘realism’ comes too late and is so completely out of sync with the tenor of the movie that you actually wish it had ended the way it had promised to — in a haze of dewy-eyed wish-fulfilment.

Abhay Deol, a rootless mohalla type, plays Soha Ali Khan’s saviour when she gets stood up by her betrothed at a marriage registrar’s office in Delhi. She is alone in a strange city — she has run away from her home in Nainital — and Abhay protects her, sets her up in a job and gradually falls in love with her. Soha too doesn’t seem to be indifferent to him. She inspires him to lift himself from his shiftless existence. When he bags a bank job, she even agrees to marry him.

Abhay’s nondescript looks sit well with his character here, but one wonders if the youngest Deol’s ’ornery appeal will get him too many roles as leading man. Still, when Soha’s runaway lover reappears, Abhay makes his almost comic desperation to keep the two from meeting seem believable. Soha, though, is all tremulous grace and little else besides. Ahista Ahista could have been a touching short story. But in Nair’s hands, it’s just a slow road to nowhere.

Shuma Raha

Bringing the house down

big momma’s house-2

Director: John P. Whitesell
Cast: Martin Lawrence, Nia Long, Emily Procter, Zachary Levi, Mark Moses
5/10

Big Momma’s house turned out not to be Big Momma’s at all, but that of a shady computer wizard Tom Fuller’s. It’s a house with all the necessary trappings. A three-year-old cutie who does not talk, a young girl whose sole ambition appears to be getting into a junior cheerleading squad and a wayward 15-year-old, a father who does not stay home, a depressed dog, and an over zealous mother. Big Momma puts it all right in a jiffy while shadowing the father. She is a he, Malcolm the FBI agent. The movie is good fun. The comedy tends to slapstick very often, but bawdy laughter is laughter all the same.

Obvious shades of Mrs Doubtfire are easily detected and the scene where Big Momma rescues the wayward teenager from the clutches of undesirable male attention seems very similar to Baghban. Perhaps, people are really not very different from one another. A modernday fairytale.

The characters created by Don Rhymer are delightful and the performances are satisfactory. All in all, good family entertainment except the scene at the spa. But our audiences are by now used to so many semi-clad people dancing in all sorts of unlikely locations in family movies, they wouldn’t surely mind a few half-dressed women at a spa! Enjoy.

Sunayani Ganguly

Visual treat

cars

Director: John Lasseter
Cast: (Voices) Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, George Carlin, Bonnie Hunt
5.5/10

It’s little difficult to understand why John Lasseter, who could give such a credible twist to a tale revolving entirely around cars, couldn’t think of a more imaginative title for his film. But those who are going to give the film a blink because of the rather uninspiring title, are going to miss a good visual treat.

There’s nothing original about the story though. A rookie racecar Lightning McQueen, absolutely bloated by its own importance, loses its way to the sleepy town of Radiator Springs while on its way to California for the grand Pixton Cup, and learns a thing or two about being down to earth.

At this point, the film in fact slows down, and one gets impatient to move on. But what keeps one glued is the way every car has been characterised and turned into a credible character, specially the old, rusty, tow truck, Mater.

Deepali Singh

Quiet and ‘steady’

Priyotama

Director: Prabhat Roy
Cast: Jeet, Swastika Mukherjee, Shreya Panday, Labony Sarkar, Arun Banerjee, Aloknanda Roy, Rajatava Datta
6/10

It may not be the best thing going in Bengali mainstream cinema, not even the best thing ever made by Prabhat Roy, but the best thing about Priyotama is that it does not descend to the lowest common denominator. Like, there is no imbecile comedy track. Though it is too quiet a film for the BO, maybe, with no thundering dialogues or catchy music or even chakmak dance sequences. But, then, at least it’s a film, not Jatra.

For the ‘comedy’ bits, there are a few clever lines and Rajatava lends some finesse (though he should watch his weight) and Swastika shows great flair for the funny. Jeet, too, brightens up in her company, when she appears in the main track, after a listless start like he was either missing his fees or his fiancee (in the film). As the film steadily moves to the denouement, and it’s time for the emotional track, Swastika again displays a neat control over her range, with Jeet too maintaining a subdued trait.

Prabhat Roy, known for introducing striking new ‘second female leads’, this time falters badly with Shreya Panday and a poorly written part for her. Or is that the max she was capable of?

Anil Grover