Tag Archives: 2022

Movie Review: Ponniyin Selvan – Part 1 & Part 2 (2023)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

This is a review of the Tamil versions of Ponniyin Selvan: Part 1 and Ponniyin Selvan: Part 2, both available on Amazon Prime.

Mani Ratnam’s two-part historical epic Ponniyin Selvan is a stunner. The adaptation of Kalki Krishnamoorthy’s novel is full of tremendous performances and an absolute delight to look at.

Since I waited to watch Ponniyin Selvan: Part 1 until Part 2 was also available on streaming — and because both films are of similar quality — I’m reviewing the two of them together.

The Chola Dynasty rules over South India in the 10th century, but a blazing red comet in the sky portends calamity. While Aditha (Vikram) — crown prince and eldest son of Emperor Sundara Chozhar (Prakash Raj) — expands the empire via military campaigns, other noble families plot treason. They aim to use Madhurantaka’s (Ramesh) legitimate claims to the throne to install him as the new emperor, but only after killing Aditha, Sundara Chozhar, and his younger son Arulmozhi (Jayam Ravi), who is nicknamed Ponniyin Selvan.

Aditha suspects there’s funny business afoot, so he sends his comrade Vallavaraiyan Vandiyadevan (Karthi) to gather information and pass it along to the emperor and to Aditha’s politically savvy sister, Kundavai (Trisha). The first half of the first film is mostly a road trip adventure, with Vandiyadevan getting into trouble alongside his new pal Nambi (Jayaram), a pot-bellied holy man. The two make for a very funny duo, but Vandiyadevan is the real star of the films. Karthi plays him with a mischievous twinkle in his eye and an irresistible charm. He pledges his undying devotion to every pretty woman he meets (and there are a lot of them), and they all take him into their confidence anyway. He’s a terrific character played perfectly.

One of the beautiful women he meets is Nandini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), whom Nambi knew when she was a young temple servant. When Nandini and Aditha were teenagers, they fell in love, but his family disapproved and she was driven out. Years later, Aditha ignored her pleas to spare the life of the man who took her in, driving a permanent wedge between the former lovers. Vandiyadevan agrees to act as messenger for her as well, even though her loyalties are initially unclear.

With so many characters — many of whom have additional nicknames, titles, and family affiliations — it is hard to keep track of everyone and their relations to one another. There were a few things I didn’t understand until seeing the Part 1 recap that starts Part 2. The source material is dense enough that this could’ve easily been a television series, so some confusion is perhaps unavoidable. Still, it made it a little hard for me to get fully into the story until well into the second film.

That said, Ratnam gives viewers more than enough to keep them hooked. Ponniyin Selvan is stunning to look at, with the director using the natural environment to compose shots of incredible beauty. He also knows how to make his already very good-looking cast look exceptionally good-looking at all times. Many of Rai Bachchan’s scenes take place in dim, candlelit rooms, yet her face is always bathed in an angelic glow.

Rai Bachchan’s reserved but emotionally expressive performance is the perfect counterpoint to Vikram’s intensity. He plays Aditha like a tiger in a cage, pacing back and forth and ready to lash out. Vikram displays some impressive horsemanship in a couple of scenes where he circles a vanquished foe on horseback or guides his mount in tight loops, essentially having the animal do the pacing for him.

That’s an example of another thing that Ponniyin Selvan does well — so much of the world is created from real, tangible things. Living things like horses, elephants, and hundreds of extras, and real objects like bamboo scaffolding for characters to run on and hats decorated with dozens of peacock feathers. The tangible stuff is so good that it makes the instances of CGI stand out as such (at least on a television screen).

For all the excitement of battle sequences, chase scenes, and musical numbers, the most memorable parts of the films are the quieter moments filmed at smaller scale. For me, the absolute best scene in either film is a meeting of the emperor’s three children. Aditha punctuates his conversation with his brother and sister by pulling Kundavai and Arulmozhi in for hugs, with the actors perfectly hitting their marks so as to not block each other’s faces in the shot. It’s a very precise kind of choreography that allows the audience to experience the emotions of the scene to its fullest. Even in a movies as large-scale as Ponniyin Selvan: Part 1 and Part 2, the details make all the difference.

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Movie Review: Faraaz (2022)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Director Hansal Mehta’s engaging film Faraaz presents a straightforward depiction of the horrific terrorist attack on Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2016, with a special focus on one young man who exhibited moral courage in the face of grave danger.

Though it is inspired by a true event and based more specifically on the book Holey Artisan: A Journalistic Investigation by Nuruzzaman Labu, Mehta and his screenwriters acknowledge taking liberties with some of the details in crafting their narrative. This doesn’t discredit the story in any way, just clarifies why some of the details in the attack’s Wikipedia page don’t line up with the events in the film.

The film’s early scenes bounce between six young men as they prepare to head to Holey Artisan Bakery on a fateful July day. In one crowded apartment, five guys in their late teens and early twenties bicker over breakfast. Rajeev (Godaan Kumar) — an older man who is ostensibly in charge — chides the five for their immaturity before loading them into a school transport van and dropping them off near the bakery. It’s impossible to miss Mehta’s point that these guys are barely adults. Only when they slit the throat of a security guard does it confirm that they are terrorists.

In a mansion across town, Faraaz Hossein (Zahan Kapoor) and his mother Simeen (Juhi Babbar) argue over her insistence that he head to Stanford University for graduate school instead of starting his career in Dhaka. A filmmaker with less faith in his audience would have Faraaz storm out of the house after the argument, manufacturing emotions later when mother and son realize that their last conversation was a fight. In this version, mother and son makeup in the hallway on his way to join friends at the bakery. She tells him she wants him to be happy, and he says he’ll make her proud.

The siege of the bakery is terrifying and gory, with the five men from the apartment shooting patrons and employees who are obviously foreign first, then testing those who remain to identify and spare those who are Bangladeshi Muslims. Nibras (Aditya Rawal) leads the terrorists inside the bakery. (Their handler Rajeev is safely off-site, letting the young guys do his dirty work for him.)

Faraaz and Nibras recognize one another, having played football together while in university. This connection proves a useful distraction, as one of the women Faraaz is with is Hindu. She’s allowed to sit with him and their other friend without having to pass the religious test.

Mehta is not exactly sympathetic to the local police who try to mount a response to the hostage situation. They’re portrayed as overly aggressive despite their lack of protective gear and information about things as simple as the layout of the bakery.The SWAT team that eventually arrives is similarly ineffective.

As the police fumble their response on the outside, tension builds in the bakery because no one understands what the terrorists want. They don’t make any demands or offer any conditions for the hostages’ release. Everyone is forced to sit and wait, with no end in sight. Faraaz’s mother discovers that her political connections can’t help when her son is trapped by people for whom violence is the only point.

The choice to make Faraaz the title character is interesting. He’s not superhero material, and Kapoor spends most of his performance looking like he’s on the verge of tears. But Faraaz is loyal, brave, and protective of his friends. He demonstrates a kind of low-key heroism that all of us can hope to emulate.

While effective at recreating the events of the attack, Faraaz is almost too subtle in its execution. It lacks a strong narrative point of view, relying on the circumstances to keep the audience invested in the characters. The performances and cinematography are competent. Mehta’s trust in his audience to understand why the story is important is commendable, but his approach makes the film feel overly educational.

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Movie Review: What’s Love Got to Do with It? (2022)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

Buy/Rent What’s Love Got to Do with It? at Amazon

The romantic drama What’s Love Got to Do with It? is unconvincing. The characters seem like they popped into existence just before the events of the movie, and they don’t act like real people.

Lily James stars as “award-winning documentary filmmaker” Zoe. Shazad Latif plays her lifelong pal Kaz, who’s a successful doctor. Zoe’s mom Cath (Emma Thompson) still lives next door to Kaz’s family, and the treehouse where Zoe and Kaz played as kids still sits in the Khan family’s backyard.

Cath is cringe personified, and not in an amusing way. She emerges from the Khans’ house after attending Kaz’s brother’s wedding and declares, “Wasn’t it so wonderfully exotic?” Keep in mind that Cath has known the Khans for at least two decades and has attended multiple family weddings and holiday parties thrown by her Muslim neighbors.

The “exotic” remark is thankfully a one-off, but Kaz has to explain to Cath and Zoe other racist indignities experienced by Pakistani-Brits that his lifelong white neighbors should know by now. It is a huge missed opportunity (and a crime against cinema, frankly) that legendary actors Emma Thompson and Shabana Azmi — who plays Kaz’s mother Aisha — never share a meaningful scene together, which could have provided a chance to address cultural and social issues in a more organic fashion.

Zoe and Kaz are both in their early thirties, and while Zoe is committed to staying single, Kaz is ready to settle down. Having failed to find a girlfriend on his own, he asks his parents to find him a bride via a matchmaker. Zoe pressures Kaz into letting her film the experience for a documentary about arranged marriage tentatively titled “Love Contractually.”

Even this move to film Kaz’s matchmaking process is exotifying. Would Zoe and the bros at the production house providing the funding find white people filling out eHarmony profiles or going on speed dates prestige documentary material? Unlikely, yet that’s what the early stages of Kaz’s process amount to. At best, it’s reality show fodder — and even then they’d have to compete with Indian Matchmaking.

When Kaz fails to click with any British women, he is introduced via Skype to a law student in Lahore named Maymouna (Sajal Aly, who played Sridevi’s stepdaughter in 2017’s Mom). Maymouna is utterly disinterested, but Kaz thinks she’s the one — mostly because she’s 22 and pretty. The Khans, Zoe, and her mom head to Lahore for the nuptials.

The movie takes the long way round to the inevitable conclusion that Kaz and Zoe are the ones who should be together. The meandering path involves a subplot where Zoe dates her mom’s dog’s veterinarian James (Oliver Chris), who she finds underwhelming even though he’s perfectly nice and cute. Zoe makes some equally questionable choices about her film that she springs on Kaz and his family without warning during a screening party. Why she would publicly ambush people she’s known and cared about her whole life is baffling.

For all Kaz’s complaints about not having chemistry with any of the women he’s met, he and Zoe have as much fizz as two-liter bottle of soda that’s been open for a week. Latif’s performance lacks energy, and James is undermined by a character who’s confoundingly written. What’s Love Got to Do with It? is as flat as its central romance.

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Movie Review: Joyland (2022)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Rent or buy Joyland at Amazon

A seemingly content family in Lahore disintegrates when they fall back into patriarchal patterns in the film Joyland — an ironic title if there ever was one.

Haider (Ali Junejo) and his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) live with his elderly father (Salmaan Peerzada), Haider’s older brother Saleem (Sameer Sohail), Saleem’s wife Nucchi (Sarwat Gilani), and their four young daughters. Mumtaz is a talented makeup artist who works outside the home, while Haider cooks and helps with his nieces. It’s a slightly unconventional setup for this otherwise traditional family, but it works.

Everything changes when Haider’s friend finds him a job. Running the household is too much for Nucchi to manage alone, so Father decides that Mumtaz will quit her job and stay home. Mumtaz’s objections are ignored, and Haider is too timid to stand up to his dad.

The thing is, Haider’s new job isn’t exactly “respectable.” He’s a backup dancer in an erotic dance theater. He tells his dad that he’s the theater manager, but he’s honest with Mumtaz about what he does.

What Haider fails to tell his wife is that he’s infatuated with the starlet he dances behind — a transgender woman named Biba (Alina Khan). It’s not just that Biba is beautiful, but she has all of the self-respect and willpower that Haider lacks. She’s learned how to stand up for herself because no one else will. Her confidence — coupled with the freedom Haider experiences upon being liberated from his oppressive house — inspires him to act more boldly than he ever has, including starting an affair with Biba.

The fallout from Haider taking his new job is a mess of isolation, secrecy, conservative gender expectations, and unmet sexual needs for multiple members of the family. Trapped in the house, Mumtaz becomes all but invisible to everyone, including Haider. She goes through the motions of being excited when she finds out she’s pregnant with a boy — all of the accolades for said feat go to Haider — but she longs to escape.

No one in the family is happy, even with the household operating exactly the way Father wants it to. Rigid adherence to expectations makes everyone miserable when it requires erasing individual identities to do meet them. Biba is unique in asserting her own identity, but it comes at an enormous cost to her as well.

Saim Sadiq’s writing and directing of his first feature film are excellent, as is Joyland‘s talented cast. All the women in the ensemble are terrific at eliciting sympathy for their characters, particularly Rasti Farooq as Mumtaz. Ali Junejo’s job has an extra challenge because Haider is legitimately frustrating at times, but he’s a man ill-equipped to live as his authentic self within the confines of his family. No matter how exasperating his behavior, the root of everyone’s problems is a strict set of social norms that punishes individuality for no discernible benefit.

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Worst Bollywood Movies of 2022

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While plenty of the Hindi films that I reviewed in 2022 could be described as bland but inoffensive, there were still enough stinkers to warrant making a list of the biggest duds. Without further ado, here are my eight Worst Bollywood Movies of 2022.

Ram Setu makes the cut as an example of what happens to a potentially good film when you target it for the lowest common denominator. There’s lots of evidence that writer-director Abhishek Sharma knows what a better version of his Akshay Kumar adventure flick would have looked like, but Sharma takes the easy way out to avoid hassle.

Plan A Plan B and Cobalt Blue both suffer from awkward dialogue delivered poorly. The juvenile sex jokes of Plan A Plan B sound like they were from the screenplay’s first draft, while Cobalt Blue‘s characters speak as though they are reading lines from the novel from which the film was adapted.

I’m a little conflicted about putting Heropanti 2 on this list because it is 100% the most fun Hindi film of last year, but it’s also a complete mess. The plot makes no sense and neither do the characters, yet it’s a raucous and silly good time. I’ve re-watched the scene where Tara Sutaria shatters a mostly full bottle of Champagne by tossing it onto the ground rather than setting it on a table like a normal person god knows how many times.

Govinda Naam Mera is what happens when twists and attempts at audience misdirection go out of control, resulting in a muddled story populated by inscrutable characters.

The dingy thriller Cuttputlli winds up on the list for fetishizing violence against women and for being hypocritical about police brutality, which is only bad until the hero of the story wants revenge on a suspect. Then it’s okay. Also, 54-year-old Akshay Kumar plays a character who’s supposed to be 36.

Double XL is easily the biggest disappointment on the list (no pun intended). I had high hopes for this comedy starring Huma Qureshi and Sonakshi Sinha as a pair of women who overcome weight prejudice to pursue their dreams, but the screenplay feels like a rough draft that offers little insight about an important subject.

By the time the credits rolled on the final film on this list, I knew it was going to be my worst movie of the year. I had trouble imagining any other film that could come from such a morally corrupt place, and thankfully I was correct. My Worst Bollywood Movie of 2022 is Hurdang.

Hurdang stars Sunny Kaushal as a violent, privileged cheater whom the film positions as a poster-child victim of an affirmative action policy that seeks to redress caste discrimination. The movie contends that because some students might have to alter their paths to stable, desirable middle-class government jobs, it’s better to perpetuate a discriminatory system. In Hurdang, there’s no contradiction between the meritocracy that the film contends exists and a hero who steals exam answers. It’s a garbage movie that’s truly the worst of the worst of 2022.

Kathy’s Worst Bollywood Movies of 2022

  1. Hurdang – stream on Netflix
  2. Double XL – stream on Netflix
  3. Cuttputlli – stream on Hulu
  4. Govinda Naam Mera – stream on Hulu
  5. Heropanti 2 – stream on Amazon Prime
  6. Cobalt Blue – stream on Netflix
  7. Plan A Plan B – stream on Netflix
  8. Ram Setu – stream on Amazon Prime

Previous Worst Movies Lists

[Disclaimer: my Amazon links include an affiliate tag, and I may earn a commission on purchases made via those links. Thanks for helping to support this website!]

Best Bollywood Movies of 2022

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While I didn’t give any of the Hindi films from 2022 a perfect 4-star rating, there were a lot of great titles to choose from. (I did rate RRR 4-stars, but I’ve decided to limit this year’s Best list to just Hindi movies. I know, I named Baahubali 2: The Conclusion my best film of 2017. Chalk it up to website owner’s prerogative.) So, here are my ten Best Bollywood Movies of 2022!

Let’s start with a possibly controversial pick. I liked the growth of the socially deviant main characters in Ek Villain Returns, which is much more morally consistent than the original Ek Villain. There’s some interesting stuff happening with Disha Patani’s character that I enjoyed, though I don’t want to spoil it by going into detail. Ek Villain Returns knows what kind of movie it wants to be and executes its vision.

Qala and Brahmāstra Part One – Shiva both earn their spots for being visually stunning — Qala via its lush period sets and costumes and Brahmāstra via its thrilling special effects.

The family drama Maja Ma treats a very complicated subject with the care it deserves and considers it from all angles, reminding the audience that it’s not possible to distill a person down to a single adjective.

Thar shook things up as the rare Hindi neo-noir western, shot in an evocative landscape and with nuanced performances that suit the harsh environment.

2022 has two very fun comedies about characters who’ve gotten by as the big fish in their small ponds who painfully realize just how much they have to learn about the world. Dasvi takes a family-friendly approach to a clever story about a disgraced politician whose position is usurped by his wife. Tamannaah Bhatia plays my favorite character of the year in Babli Bouncer, a delightful fish-out-of-water tale about lovable tomboy who needs to grow up.

I’ve been anticipating director Vasan Bala’s feature followup to Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (which topped my Best of 2019 list), and Monica, O My Darling did not disappoint. Bala builds an eye-catching, offbeat world for his characters, and the dynamite cast takes advantage of the opportunities he gives them

Alia Bhatt gives the standout performance of the year as Gangubai Kathiawadi. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali brings his trademark flair and visual style to the picture (resulting in the year’s best song picturizations), but Bhatt carries the film, playing a character who is complicated and conflicted but always self-possessed.

Like Ek Villain Returns, my top film of the year is another sequel that improves upon its predecessor. My Best Bollywood Movie of 2022 is the action drama Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 — Agni Pariksha.

Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 isn’t just better than the original Khuda Haafiz. It builds on the first story, providing its characters with growth arcs that span two films. Shivaleeka Oberoi didn’t have much to do in the original picture, but she carries the first part of the sequel as a rape survivor trying to reintegrate into society and her marriage. Martial arts master Vidyut Jammwal changes his fighting style throughout the film as blind rage transforms into targeted revenge. And Sheeba Chaddha plays my favorite villain of the year. Filmmaker Faruk Kabir takes his characters and their struggles seriously, resulting in an action movie with real substance. Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 is a winner.

Kathy’s Best Bollywood Movies of 2022

  1. Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 – buy at Amazon/stream on Zee5
  2. Gangubai Kathiawadi – stream on Netflix
  3. Monica, O My Darling – stream on Netflix
  4. Babli Bouncer – stream on Hulu
  5. Dasvi – stream on Netflix
  6. Thar – stream on Netflix
  7. Maja Ma – stream on Amazon Prime
  8. Brahmāstra Part One – Shiva – stream on Hulu
  9. Qala – stream on Netflix
  10. Ek Villain Returns – stream on Netflix

Previous Best Movies Lists

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Movie Review: Khuda Haafiz – Chapter 2 (2022)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Buy Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 on DVD at Amazon

2020’s Khuda Haafiz presented action star Vidyut Jammwal in a different light, playing an ordinary man on a mission to rescue his kidnapped wife. The sequel Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 — Agni Pariksha shows the devastating consequences that the events of the first film have on both characters, propelling them to change in whole new ways.

The sequel picks up in 2008, one year after Jammwal’s Sameer rescued his wife Nargis (Shivaleeka Oberoi) from sex traffickers in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Noman. Getting her home safely wasn’t the end of their troubles as Sameer had hoped. Nargis is depressed and anxious, tired of the constant whispers about her ordeal by neighbors and coworkers. Sameer walks on eggshells, cautious not to upset Nargis but not sure how to fix her or their relationship.

In a well-meaning but misguided attempt to help Nargis open up emotionally, Sameer offers to look after his friend’s newly orphaned niece, 5-year-old Nandini (cute Riddhi Sharma). The girl’s presence initially has the opposite effect that Sameer wanted, reminding Nargis of the dreams that were taken from her in Noman. But when Nandini suffers a medical emergency, Nargis’s protective side takes over, and soon the three are living together as a happy family.

That joy doesn’t last. While heading home from school with a teenage neighbor named Seema (Anushka Marchande), the girls are kidnapped by three boys who’ve been stalking Seema. Their ringleader is Bacchu (Bodhisattva Sharma), grandson of a powerful family lead by matriarch Sheela Thakur (Sheeba Chaddha). The local police are either in cahoots with, or in fear of, Sheela. So, it becomes clear that Sameer will have to take matters into his own hands once again.

The public wants justice for the girls, thanks to sympathetic news coverage by reporter Ravi Kumar (Rajesh Tailang). Filmmaker Faruk Kabir — who wrote and directed both Khuda Haafiz movies — demonstrates how to properly include news reports in a film. Ravi is shown out in the field with his camera crew or recording in a studio. There are no annoying “man on the street” interviews or shots to make the audience feel as though they are watching a TV news report.

While the first film was based on a true story, the plot of the second is entirely Kabir’s own creation. This allows him to focus on character growth and the consequences of their actions. The result is a story that is exciting but grounded in reality. Unlike some Hollywood movies where superheroes destroy entire cities and get to go about their merry way, choices produce results that the characters in Khuda Haafiz – Chapter 2 have to deal with, good or bad.

Nargis was primarily acted upon in the first film, but here Oberoi gets to display real emotional range, carrying most of the story in the early stages. Nargis’s struggles are centered, as they should be. Only after Nandini is taken does she turn the reins over to Sameer.

As befits Jammwal’s martial arts background, Sameer’s character evolution is demonstrated through his fighting styles. In his first fight, he beats a callous police official in a blind rage, all fury and no finesse. This lands him in jail, where he is attacked by a gang that works for Sheela. He fights to survive in a manner that is still desperate but more calculating. When he’s released from prison, he’s a predator on the hunt, powerful and merciless.

The jail fight scene is particularly chilling because the prisoners’ improvised weapons — half of a pair of short scissors or a small piece of metal — require them to get very close to one another when attacking, stabbing in small bursts rather than taking long swipes from a distance. The sequence’s intimacy makes it especially terrifying.

Chaddha’s icy demeanor as Sheela is just as scary. At one point, she visits Nargis at her parents’ home, requesting a glass of milk from Nargis’s mother. After threatening Nargis and being met with defiance, Sheela drains the glass of milk in one go, sending the unambiguous message that she could make Nargis disappear just as easily. One would hardly imagine that drinking milk could be a menacing act, but Chaddha does it with aplomb.

Khuda Haafiz – Chapter 2 deals with a grim subject in a respectful way. While not taken from a single news story, Kabir distills the Indian public’s frustrated desire for justice in response to similar crimes into a fictional plot that feels cathartic but not pandering. Kabir treats his characters and the topic of crimes against women and girls with respect, and he trusts his audience to do the same.

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Movie Review: Ram Setu (2022)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Ram Setu on Amazon Prime

Ram Setu is interesting because it explains many of the limitations placed on the Hindi film industry by India’s current political environment, then proceeds to exemplify all of the problems it identifies. It’s a thought-provoking movie, albeit for the wrong reasons.

The story is set in 2007, allowing the filmmakers to plausibly deny that the movie is about present day India. Atheist archeologist Aryan (Akshay Kumar) discovers important artifacts in Afghanistan that reinforce the country’s connections to India via the Silk Road. Aryan notes that the whole region shares a cultural history, regardless which religion predominates, past or present.

It’s significant that writer-director Abhishek Sharma has his main character voice the merit of preserving history based on cultural import — which often aligns closely to religious import, to be fair — because Sharma spends the rest of the movie ignoring that nuanced sentiment in favor of pandering to religious zealots.

Aryan is hired by the Indian government to write a paper declaring that Ram Setu — a now-submerged land bridge connecting India to Sri Lanka — is a naturally occurring structure. This crucial step will allow shipping magnate Indrakant (Nassar) to demolish part of the bridge for speedier ocean transit. There are environmental concerns about the project, too, but they are nothing compared to the vociferous opposition by Hindu groups who believe that Rama himself built the bridge.

Aryan’s wife Gayatri (Nushrratt Baruccha) is a believer and warns Aryan against getting involved. He does anyway. Due to the ferocity of the protests, Aryan is scapegoated and suspended, and the couple’s son is bullied at school. Aryan figures that the only way to clear his name is to accept Indrakant’s offer to investigate Ram Setu personally and prove that it is not a man-made structure.

Indrakant and his villainous lackey Bali (Pravesh Rana) are condemned for demanding Aryan and the other researchers — including environmental scientist Dr. Rebello (Jacqueline Fernandez) and geologist Dr. Gabrielle (Jeniffer Piccinato) — cherry-pick their findings to support the bridge’s destruction rather than follow the evidence where it leads. Yet Ram Setu does the exact same thing. It lays out plenty of plausible counter-arguments, but it ends up with Aryan being converted and publicly declaring that God is real.

Sharma writes a couple of courtroom scenes in which the lawyer for the state argues that that even if Ram Setu was man-made, Aryan hasn’t proven that Rama was the one who built it. And further, why is the bridge’s significance to Hindus more important than its significance to Christians and Muslims? All these claims could fall under the cultural value statement that Aryan himself made earlier in the film, especially if they are considered collectively. But Aryan insists that Rama is the architect and that Hinduism’s claims on the bridge are the only ones that matter.

Based on the positions Sharma writes for the opposition, he knows what a movie that trusts in the intelligence of its audience would sound like. Unfortunately, he took to heart one of the lessons Aryan learns: don’t anger the mob. The end result is a movie that feels pandering, and therefore forgettable.

The adventure aspects of the film are not bad in concept, but there wasn’t the budget to execute them properly. There’s lots of obvious green-screen usage, with backgrounds and environments that feel fake. The practical sets that are used are pretty good.

Performances across the board are uneven, with Kumar being needlessly shouty at times. His emoting in the film’s lone dance number is unappetizing. Telugu star Satyadev Kancharana is a welcome addition to the story as helpful Sri Lankan tour guide AP.

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Movie Review: Double XL (2022)

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0.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Double XL on Netflix

Double XL is a trainwreck. Good intentions can’t save a movie so utterly clueless.

Rajshri (Huma Qureshi) wants to be a sports broadcaster, and Saira (Sonakshi Sinha) aspires to be a fashion designer. Both face discrimination in their personal and professional lives for being overweight. A chance meeting convinces the two to travel to London for a week, working together to enhance their portfolios and build a lasting friendship.

It’s a simple story setup that in no way requires the forty minutes of annoying backstory that leads up to the two meeting. In fact, the setbacks that bring them together — Rajshri is denied the chance to audition for a job because of her weight, and Saira discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her with a thin woman — should have been used to introduce the main characters and establish them as underdogs.

Rather, much of the superfluous character development actually makes the characters less likeable. Both Rajshri and Saira yell at service workers or people who aren’t in decision-making roles about unfair policies, despite knowing that the person they are screaming at isn’t responsible or able to fix the situation. The solution to systemic discrimination is not bullying.

The story of Double XL feels like it was made with minimal effort and zero research. Rajshri and Saira are both 30 but act like they were frozen in time after they earned their bachelors degrees and only recently thawed out. In the intervening years, they appear to have learned nothing about career paths in their chosen fields and instead expect to be magically elevated to the top of their industries, just as soon as the powers that be can look past their weight.

For a movie about weight bias, it has very little insight to offer on the topic. When characters discuss the subject, it’s with a surface-level understanding that is belabored to death. Some problems that aren’t necessarily weight-related are made so for the sake of keeping the film on topic. The movie offers nothing new to viewers already attuned to weight bias, and it won’t do much to change to the minds of those who weren’t concerned or aware of the problem.

There’s nothing that Sinha and Qureshi — two actors I enjoy — can do performance-wise to save this film, and they get no help from the supporting cast. It’s further confounding that Qureshi co-produced Double XL and didn’t remedy its obvious shortcomings. I really wanted to like this film. I just couldn’t.

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Movie Review: Phone Bhoot (2022)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Phone Bhoot on Amazon Prime

Phone Bhoot is almost a very good movie. It has a distinct style and point of view, and Ishaan Khattar gives a hypnotic performance. But it badly needs editing.

It’s not just that Phone Bhoot is too long (though it is, especially for a comedy) or that scenes are too slow (though they are). It’s that all the cruft in the film makes the jokes less funny than if they were quick hits. There’s a reason why the Hamlet quote “Brevity is the soul of wit” endures over the centuries.

For example, take how the film’s main characters acquire their superpowers. Friends Major (Siddhant Chaturvedi) and Gullu (Khattar) are two horror-obsessed slackers. While fixing the glowing eyes of their Frankenstein-like monster statue named Raaka, our heroes are electrocuted. Instead of just convulsing for a few seconds then dropping, director Gurmmeet Singh has the camera repeatedly cut between Major, Gullu, and Raaka as the humans convulse for what feels like forever. The prolonged electrocution sequence has been a tired Bollywood comedy trope for a long time.

When the guys wake up, they find that they can see ghosts. Specifically, they can see Ragini (Katrina Kaif), a beautiful spectre who makes them a proposition. She will help them start an exorcism business, thereby earning enough to pay back the money that the guys owe their fathers. In exchange, they have to help her with a favor, no questions asked.

An interesting theme that comes up as the trio’s exorcism business takes off is the financial ramifications of death. The ghost of a young woman haunts the family of the man who killed her in a hit-and-run not just because of the unfairness of her life being cut short. It’s also because the woman was the breadwinner for her aging parents, who now live in poverty. Other ghosts have similar stories. It’s a thoughtful acknowledgement that justice may be best served in forms other than jail time or equivalent physical punishment.

Another cool thing about Major and Gullu is that they are obsessed expressly with Indian horror movies. There are very few references to Hollywood horror films in the movie, and all of the posters and props in their apartment are from older Bollywood flicks. Ragini’s name obviously comes from the Ragini MMS series, and I’m sure there are tons of other references for those with a deeper knowledge of spooky Hindi classics than I have.

Unfortunately, as with the electrocution sequence, the movie draws too much from outdated comedy and storytelling styles. Jokes last so long that they stop being funny. The story moves too slowly, especially since there isn’t really a b-plot. There’s plenty of room in the narrative for characters like the Major’s and Gullu’s dads to reappear to check on their unconventional sons’ progress, or for there to be more to the guys’ thin association with a witch whose name translates in the English subtitles as Wicky Witch (Sheeba Chaddha).

Likewise, it would’ve been better to have the guys encounter the movie’s villain Aatmaram Shastrashakti (Jackie Shroff) earlier in the story, rather than keep the evil sorcerer sequestered in the underground lair he’s leasing from Big Trouble in Little China‘s David Lo Pan.

Another disappointment is that the songs and choreography are forgettable. None of the numbers will rank among Kaif’s greatest hits, despite pairing her with an excellent dancer like Khattar. (Chartuvedi holds his own on the dance floor, too.)

Kaif’s performance is solid as the stand-in for the audience, rolling her eyes at the two dopes she’s forced to rely on for help. Chaturvedi’s mugging as Major is a bit much at times but mostly fits with his character’s personality. Khattar is the real standout, totally immersing himself in every scene, no matter how silly, and reacting authentically.

Were it 30 minutes shorter, Phone Bhoot would be a real winner.

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