Slowed down thrills

garfield 2

Director: Tim Hill
Cast: Voice of Bill Murray (Garfield), Brecklin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt
4.5/10

Garfield our pussycat goes to London and does try to meet the queen, but the queen doesn’t give a damn. Understandable, just being able to wiggle one’s fat, and well, cute bottom, is not enough to melt hearts. Forget the queen, even his owner Jon, and his girlfriend Liz, do not seem to be much in awe of his antics or threats and there is little he can do to prevent them from cosying up, even though he follows them to London.

But still, Garfield is very much in control, queen or no queen. Till the plot takes a very Bollywoodish twist and Garfield finds himself in the castle of Carlyle, as its crown prince, where his death is being plotted. While the real prince is lording over Jon and Liz over a dinner of Lasagne!

No thrills follow this twist in Garfield’s fat, lazy life. And the presence of the other animals merely slow down matters, with none of them really coming to life. A little more of Jon or Odie would have been more welcome.

Deepali Singh

Maashimas’ wet hankies

Praner Swami

Director: A. K. Sohail
Cast: Ferdous, Rachana Banerjee, Ravi Shankar Pande, Subhasish Mukherjee, Dulal Lahiri
2/10

The title is revealing. The film is for those patibratas who believe that “Swami-r otyachar streer kachhe phuler shaman” (The husband’s torture is like a flower to the wife). In case somebody is careless enough not to take it literally, the wife (Rachana) appears with unscathed palm in the scene immediately after she had it forced into boiling oil by her brutal hubby. Eventually, of course, she has both her hands chopped off by her pati and dies with devotion.

This A.K. Sohail fare is something for the folk music fans, too, because there is a folk-tune based number every 10 minutes. The lovers of classics shouldn’t be disappointed either, because Praner Swami is, in some ways, a modernday Othello. The only exception is that here the Iago (Ravi Shankar) gets penitent and confesses his crime. He literally sticks out his neck which our Othello (Ferdous) faithfully severs.

Ferdous’ mouche adds ruggedness to his usual chocolaty look, while Rachana weeps her way through the film. Maashimas will have their hankies wet, for sure.

Arnab Bhattacharya