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Movie Review: Brothers (2015)

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Brothers1 Star (out of 4)

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Among screenwriting jobs, Brothers: Blood Against Blood should be as easy as it gets. The movie is an official remake of Warrior, a great Hollywood film by Gavin O’Connor. Translate the dialogue, relocate the action, cast some Bollywood stars, and boom, you’re done. So why is Brothers so bad?

Warrior is superbly written. Every character has clear motivation and a goal in every scene. Background information is doled out efficiently. The plot is brisk.

For some reason, director Karan Malhotra and his screenplay adapter/wife, Ekta Pathak Malhotra, abandoned the original film’s efficiency in favor of overly long melodrama. The characters in Brothers are left adrift. We know too much about their history, but nothing about what they want right now.

Former alcoholic Gary Fernandez (Jackie Shroff) emerges from prison sober but unhinged. His son, Monty (Sidharth Malhotra, no relation to the director), brings his father home, watching as the broken old man sees the ghost of his dead wife Maria (Shefali Shah) in every corner. Gary wants to know why his other son, David (Akshay Kumar), hasn’t come to meet him.

David is a high school physics teacher, burdened by the cost of his daughter’s dialysis. He earns some cash in an illegal street fight, but his bruises cost him his job. David’s wife, Jenny (Jacqueline Fernandez), worries about the danger of his return to the ring, but he can’t resist the allure of fighting in India’s first televised mixed martial arts tournament, Right 2 Fight (R2F). Neither can Monty.

Most of the copious flashbacks in Brothers are time-wasters (really, we need to see David and Jenny falling in love?). The only useful one explains why the brothers are estranged. Monty is Gary’s son from an affair, and David blames his younger half-brother for destroying his family. Maria makes is clear that she loves Monty as much as her biological son, but David doesn’t care.

The single biggest problem in Brothers is that the Malhotras think that David is a hero. Having a sick kid may make him sympathetic, but it doesn’t automatically mean he’s a good person. During a match at R2F, David is so enraged that he continues to pummel an unconscious opponent, even as his physics students watch on television. (Gary is proud of him for this. What a guy.) David is the one who turned his back on his little brother, and he apparently never tried to reach out to Monty in the years since.

It’s not clear how Monty spent the decades that his father was incarcerated. When he starts his fighting career, he’s terrible, and he doesn’t decide to pursue it seriously until halfway through the movie. There’s a hint that, because Gary is a former fighter, Monty fights to gain his father’s approval, but that storyline goes nowhere.

Sidharth provides no help in elucidating his character’s motivation because he has only two emotions: sad and bewildered. When Monty isn’t moping, he’s flinching from the bright lights of the arena, as though he’s a defrosted caveman fearfully trying to comprehend the modern world.

spideyPictured Above: Sidharth’s acting coach for Brothers?

Akshay is a trained martial artist, but his salt-and-pepper beard makes him look too old to play a competitive fighter. It looks like Sidharth is fighting his dad while his grandpa, Jackie Shroff, watches. David’s a bad enough guy as is, and Akshay doesn’t do anything to make him more likable.

The two women in the cast — Jacqueline and Shefali — give the strongest performances, but they cry in every one of their scenes. The excess of melodrama peaks when David looks at his battered brother in the ring and hallucinates Monty as a smiling little boy. It’s laugh-out-loud funny.

Another bit of unintentional — but totally predictable — comedy in Brothers: David’s daughter is called “Poopoo.” The ladies in the theater with me hooted every time someone said her name.

Nothing happens quickly in Brothers. Something as simple as a character walking into the arena takes several minutes. An inordinate amount of time is devoted to the R2F promoter, who has nothing to do with the main story. There’s a lengthy item number featuring Kareena Kapoor Khan dancing in a Benihana, intercut with scenes of David training, for who knows what reason.

Brothers isn’t bad in comparison to Warrior, it’s just bad. Why would anyone watch this when they could just rent Warrior?

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Movie Review: Roy (2015)

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Roy_film_poster1 Star (out of 4)

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Roy is full of so much talking and so little action that it should have been an audiobook instead of a movie. Then again, with such dull dialogue, who would listen to it?

Arjun Rampal plays Kabir, a celebrity film director. Kabir is the kind of narcissistic jerk who stomps out his cigarette butts on the floor of a hotel hallway and who uses a manual typewriter while flying on a plane.

After the success of Guns and Guns 2, Kabir is stymied by writer’s block while working on Guns 3. The first fifteen minutes of Roy consist of shots of Kabir sitting idly in front of the typewriter, brushing his teeth, feeding his fish, and fending off the concerned inquiries of his excessively patient producer, Meera (Shernaz Patel).

In the world of Roy, news reports consist entirely of details of Kabir’s romantic life and reports of art theft. A TV report about a painting stolen in Malaysia prompts Kabir to take his crew there to film Guns 3. There, Kabir becomes smitten with an independent movie director, Ayesha (Jacqueline Fernandez).

[Correction: In addition to art theft and Kabir’s romantic life, news reports in Roy also feature extensive coverage of indie film festivals. Just like real life.]

Kabir casts an actress who looks exactly like Ayesha to play the romantic interest in Guns 3, opposite his protagonist, Roy (Ranbir Kapoor). There is absolutely no explanation offered for Ayesha’s doppelgänger.

Action — such as it is — switches between Kabir and Ayesha in the real world and Roy and the lookalike, Tia, in the movie world of Guns. Both worlds are dominated by boring, pseudo-intellectual conversations, punctuated by languid song montages in which people drive around in cars or Roy rides a motorcycle.

Given that Kabir is an emotionally stunted pre-teen trapped in a 40-year-old body, nothing he or Roy says on the nature of being contains any kind of insight. There’s so much undirected angst in the dialogue, it’s like it was written by the guys from the ’90s band Bush.

An excess of ennui in their characters yields clunky, detached performances by Rampal and Kapoor. Fernandez — whose beauty is the best thing Roy has going for it — is better in scenes as Tia, in which she plays an heiress trapped in a 1960s time warp, at least as far as her teased hair is concerned.

Debutant writer-director Vikramjit Singh has a good sense for framing shots, and the movie is quite pretty. Sadly, the visual interest ends there, since Singh focuses all his attention on writing bland dialogue instead of considering what it would look like when delivered onscreen.

Without additional assistance on the script, Singh’s story feels hollow. Even after Kabir undergoes his supposed metamorphosis from spoiled man-child to emotionally mature adult, he still does something incredibly selfish.

Ayesha is on her way to a film festival in another country. For independent filmmakers, festivals provide opportunities to network and drum up publicity and funds for their next projects. Wealthy, connected Kabir stops Ayesha at the airport, telling her, in essence, “If you love me, you won’t get on the plane.”

Kabir puts his own desires ahead of Ayesha’s career, which is all the more selfish since Kabir’s got more than enough cash to buy his own plane ticket and go with her. Considering that Singh’s debut film features A-listers like Kapoor, Rampal, and Fernandez, it’s not surprising that he has an easier time identifying with a celebrity like Kabir rather than a struggling filmmaker like Ayesha.

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Opening February 13: Roy and MSG

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The romantic thriller Roy — starring Ranbir Kapoor, Jacqueline Fernandez, and Arjun Rampal — hits Chicago area theaters on February 13, 2015.

Roy opens on Friday at MovieMax Cinemas in Niles, AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington, and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville. It has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 26 min.

Also opening at MovieMax on Friday is MSG: The Messenger of God, which has a runtime of 3 hrs. 17 min.

Shamitabh carries over for a second week at MovieMax, Cantera 17 and South Barrington 30, which also holds over Baby for a fourth week.

Other Indian movies showing in the Chicago area this weekend include Temper (Telugu w/no subtitles) at MovieMax, Muvico Rosemont 18 in Rosemont, Century Stratford Square in Bloomingdale, and Cinemark at Seven Bridges in Woodridge, and Yennai Arindhaal (Tamil w/English subtitles) at MovieMax and Seven Bridges. MovieMax also carries Anegan (Tamil) and Malli Malli Idi Rani Roju (Telugu), as well as English-language coverage of the India vs. Pakistan Cricket World Cup match on Saturday night.

Movie Review: Kick (2014)

Kick0 Stars (out of 4)

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Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but Kick asks its audience to forget everything they know about quality filmmaking for 146 minutes. Kick is boring, annoying, and offensively stupid.

Though no one associated with this turd comes off well, Kick is primarily a failure of storytelling. The moronic plot lacks any sense of organization. Explanations come out of left field. The characters — in particular Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s villainous rich guy, Faroz — operate without clear motivation. There’s nothing in this that makes a lick of sense.

Though Kick is a Salman Khan vehicle, the movie opens with Shaina (Jacqueline Fernandez) moping about in Warsaw, Poland. She shares a train ride with Himanshu (Randeep Hooda), a top cop visiting from India. Their families want the two of them to marry, but Shaina explains that she’s still mourning the end of her previous relationship.

The movie should’ve stopped at that point. When Randeep Hooda starts talking marriage — especially while looking cute in a sweater vest — the only answer is, “Yes.” Roll credits. Instead, we get forty-five minutes of flashbacks to Shaina’s romance with annoying lout Devi Lal (Khan).

It’s hard to believe that a woman intelligent enough to become a licensed psychiatrist would fall for a schmuck as irritating as Devi Lal, but Shaina does nonetheless. He dumps her after she suggests that — since he finds steady employment and conventional romance a kind of “hell” that interferes with his adrenaline addiction — they live with her dad after marriage. Devi Lal declares that he won’t be a live-in son-in-law and stalks off.

It takes nearly two hours before alleged genius cop Himanshu realizes that the master thief “Devil” he’s tracked to Warsaw is Shaina’s ex, Devi Lal, who’s managed to worm his way into Shaina’s care with a purported case of amnesia.

Things get increasingly stupid as politically connected healthcare tycoon Feroz is revealed to be Devil’s next target. Siddiqui plays Feroz as a cackling supervillain, but he doesn’t have a sinister agenda or plan for world domination. He’s just a rich guy who’s kind of a dick.

(Speaking of genitalia, did no one on the crew notice that Randeep’s nuts were practically busting out of his pants during Himanshu’s balcony drinking scene with Devi Lal?)

The explanation for Devi Lal’s transition from unemployed schmo to master thief hinges on writer-director Sajid Nadiadwala’s exploitation of disabled children to provoke audience sympathy. It’s tacky.

It also doesn’t hold up to scrutiny from a story perspective. No matter what Devil’s Robin Hood-like motivations are, he kills several Polish police officers who try to stop his destructive chase through downtown Warsaw (which may have actually been London, since Devil drives a red double-decker bus headed for King’s Cross).

But, this being a Salman Khan film, morality always tilts in Khan’s favor. No matter how many lives Devi Lal/Devil takes, he’s always the hero because his intentions were good. Like every Khan character, Devi Lal’s only flaw is that he doesn’t have a girlfriend when the movie begins.

There’s nothing good about this movie. The performances are terrible. Even the choreography sucks because it has to accommodate Khan’s stiffness.

Enough. We’ve seen this all before. Kick just takes the typical Khan movie to jaw-dropping new lows.

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New Trailers: June 15, 2014

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Two new Hindi film trailers released today. Coming first to theaters — though not in the U.S., I suspect — is the cute-looking Vir Das comedy Amit Sahni Ki List, releasing July 18.

One of the biggest movies of the year — Salman Khan’s Kick — hits theaters the following weekend on July 25.

I’m going to have to wait until an English-subtitled version of the trailer is released in order to make heads or tails of the plot. The romantic storyline involving beardless Salman and Jacqueline Fernandez looks awful, but I’m reassured by the presence of Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Randeep Hooda in the bearded Salman storyline. Kick could be a lot of fun.

Movie Review: Ramaiya Vastavaiya (2013)

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R_Vastavaiya1 Star (out of 4)

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“Weird Al” Yankovic has a song called “One More Minute” in which he lists the things he’d rather do than spend time with the woman who broke his heart. Examples include ripping out his own intestines and jumping onto a pile of thumbtacks. While watching Ramaiya Vastavaiya, I gained a new appreciation for the song. Ramaiya Vastavaiya is a stupid movie that I wish I’d never seen.

The film has an incredibly dorky opening. Raghu (Sonu Sood) sits in his cell on the eve of his release from jail, a beatific glow on his face as he stares at photo of himself and his little sister as children. The friendly jailer asks glowing Raghu how a nice guy like him ended up in the clink — it’s been seven years, and you’re just wondering this now, Mr. Jailer? — prompting Raghu to recount a tale of romance between two young people of different economic classes.

Mind you, Raghu isn’t one of the young lovers. The couple comprises his sister, Sona (Shruti Haasan) and her rich boyfriend, Ram (debutant Girish Kumar Taurani, whose father produced the film), whom she meets at a friend’s wedding at which Raghu is not present. Raghu would seem to be an odd choice to narrate a love story he wasn’t around to witness, but Sona’s romance with Ram is just a perfunctory plot contrivance. The story isn’t about how Ram woos the girl but about how he woos Raghu.

Ram is a textbook example of the male-fantasy hero of so many Hindi films (to be fair, many Hollywood films, too). He’s immature, annoying, and spoiled, yet he gets his salt-of-the-earth dream-girl anyway, no effort required. As poorly as the character is written, Taurani does his best to make Ram as irritating as possible.

Ram’s obligatory character growth in which he learns the value of hard work happens not to impress Sona, but to win over Raghu. This is made doubly hard since Raghu arrived at the friend’s wedding in time to witness Ram’s snobby mother accuse Sona of being a gold-digger and have her thrown out of the wedding.

Prabhu Deva’s schizophrenic directing style compounds the film’s many problems. Uncomfortable scenes such as the one involving Ram’s mother follow on the heels of pratfalls and slide-whistle sound effects. The second half of the movie is replete with bodily function gags and lots and lots of cow dung.

Action scenes are edited so jarringly that the action is hard to follow. The climactic fight scene — which ends in unexpected brutality — is so fast and erratic that I started to experience motion sickness.

While Prabhu Deva is renowned as a choreographer, the movie’s dance numbers are nothing special. There’s no context for the film’s big item number, which inexplicably finds Jacqueline Fernandez dolled up and dancing in a field.

Ramaiya Vastavaiya has two things going for it: 1) Shruti Haasan is really, really pretty, and 2) Paresh Ganatra is funny as the manservant Bijli. Is that enough to make me prefer watching Ramaiya Vastavaiya to having my blood sucked out by leeches? No.

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Movie Review: Race 2 (2013)

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Race_2_Poster2 Stars (out of 4)

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There were moments in Race 2 when I really wanted to like the movie, if only my brain would let me. Giving any aspect of Race 2 more than a passing thought renders it utterly silly.

Race 2 picks up not long after the events of the original Race from 2008. (Though not essential, it does help to have seen the original film.) Ranveer Singh (Saif Ali Khan) arrives in Istanbul to cheat casino magnate Vikram Thapar (Rajesh Khattar) out of his properties in revenge for a wrong that Ranveer doesn’t immediately specify. Ranveer then transfers ownership of the casinos to street-fighter-turned-billionaire Armaan Mallik (John Abraham).

If Ranveer’s generosity toward Armaan seems too good to be true, that’s because it is. Ranveer’s really out to get revenge on Armaan for another unspecified wrong, but Armaan knows Ranveer’s out to get him. And Ranveer knows that Armaan knows that Ranveer’s out to get him. And then Ranveer steals the Shroud of Turin.

Race 2 owes a lot to early James Bond movies, what with characters always being one step ahead of each other and wielding crazy gadgets like Armaan’s digital playing cards, whose faces can be manipulated on an iPhone operated by his half-sister, Alina (Deepika Padukone). The characters also fall into the Bond villain trap of talking too much and over-complicating things when a bullet to the head would be a surer and simpler way to kill someone.

Anil Kapoor returns in the sequel as R.D., a goofy, now-retired detective with a soft spot for Ranveer. R.D. has a new, bubble-brained assistant named Cherry (Ameesha Patel) who exists only to provide R.D. opportunities to make double entendres. Jacqueline Fernandez plays Armaan’s girlfriend, Omisha, a woman with a connection to Ranveer’s girlfriend in the original Race, Soniya (Bipasha Basu).

Race 2 is the movie equivalent of an email written in all caps. Everything about it is relentlessly intense. It feels as though approximately forty percent of the movie consists of shots of characters strutting in slow-motion while a fan blows on them and a heavy metal guitar wails in the background. Directing duo Abbas-Mustan want to make sure that the audience is absolutely clear that Race 2 is AWESOME! SEXY! EXCITING! COOL!

Let me illustrate this with a video of the song “Allah Duhai Hai,” which sums up the intensity the movie tries to maintain for all of its two-and-a-half hours:

This excess could be funny if the movie had any sense of humor about itself, but it doesn’t. Ranveer, Armaan, Alina, and Omisha are all deadly serious as they double cross one another, no matter how ridiculous the circumstances.

Padukone and Fernandez are the two strongest performers in the cast, carrying off their roles with sex appeal and an air of danger. Kapoor and Patel are amusing enough, and Khan is competent as usual.

Abraham is the weak link. Despite being cast for his beefcake body, there’s nothing menacing about him. He’s supposed to be the most fearsome man in Turkey, but only if you’re dumb enough to challenge him to a fistfight.

The story moves quickly enough to hold one’s attention, even though everything that happens is silly and unable to be explained by the retroactive continuity Abbas-Mustan were obviously hoping would clear everything up. The Turkish-influenced musical score is the film’s best element. Race 2 is less annoying that the original Race, but that’s hardly a recommendation.

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Opening January 25: Race 2

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Of all the movies that I never needed to see, a sequel to 2008’s idiotic Race is near the top of my list. Nevertheless, Race 2 hits the big screen on January 25, 2013. Let’s hope Deepika Padukone and Jacqueline Fernandez can help returnees Saif Ali Khan and Anil Kapoor make this Race a more enjoyable experience than the first one.

Race 2 opens on Friday at five Chicago area theaters: AMC River East 21 in Chicago, Regal Gardens Stadium 1-6 in Skokie, Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles, AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington, and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville. It has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 30 min.

The only other Hindi film showing locally is Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola, which gets a third week at the South Barrington 30.

Other Indian movies showing at the Golf Glen 5 this weekend include Naayak (Telugu), Seethamma Vakitlo Sirimalle Chettu (Telugu), Tu Mera 22 Main Tera 22 (Punjabi), and both the Tamil and Telugu versions of Vishwaroopam.

Opening July 8: Murder 2 and Chillar Party

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There’s no shortage of Bollywood movies in Chicago area theaters at the moment, and two new flicks are set to open on Friday, July 8, 2011. Getting the wider release of the two is the erotic thriller Murder 2, starring Emraan Hashmi and Jacqueline Fernandez.

Murder 2 opens on Friday at the Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles and AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington. It has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 25 min.

Also debuting on Friday at the Golf Glen 5 is the children’s movie Chillar Party.

After posting impressive opening weekend earnings of $701,824, Delhi Belly gets a second week at the Golf Glen 5, South Barrington 30 and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville.

Last weekend’s other new release, Bbuddah…Hoga Terra Baap, sticks around at the Golf Glen 5 and South Barrington 30.

Other Indian movies showing at the Golf Glen 5 this weekend include the Tamil films Deiva Thirumagal and Venghai.

Movie Review: Aladin (2009)

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AladinPoster3 Stars (out of 4)

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There aren’t many kid-friendly Bollywood movies released in the United States, and those that have opened here, like Saawariya and Roadside Romeo, have disappointed. Aladin is a delightful update of the classic fairytale that will amuse the whole family.

In this live action version of the story — which differs significantly from the animated Disney film — Aladin (Ritesh Deshmukh) is a lonely college student. His parents died under mysterious circumstances when he was young, and he lives alone in the book-littered home of his deceased grandfather. Fellow students tease him because of his name, demanding that he produce a genie from a lamp like the fairytale dictates.

Aladin’s crush on Jasmine (Jacqueline Fernandez), an American exchange student, appears destined to go unrequited until she buys him a lamp from the “Ancient Thing Store” as a birthday gift. He’s goaded into rubbing the lamp which, naturally, contains a genie.

The genie, named Genius (Amitabh Bachchan) is close to retirement and is eager for Aladin to use his three wishes before his genie contract gets renewed for another million years. The duo sets about trying to woo Jasmine on Aladin’s behalf. But Genius doesn’t know that Aladin is in danger from an evil ex-genie named Ring Master (Sanjay Dutt), who’s eager to regain his powers and take over the world.

One of Aladin‘s best features is that it looks terrific. The fictional town of Khwaish is a perfect fantasy city: narrow cobblestoned streets that wind uphill through buildings made of sand-colored bricks. Dance numbers are colorful and the special effects are relatively seamless.

As for the characters and plot, writer-director-producer Sujoy Ghosh keeps the story true to tradition, while giving it his own spin. Deshmukh does a great job as Aladin, a likable guy with such simple desires that he’s incapable of misusing his new-found power.

Ring Master is also a fitting villain. His motives are clear, and he’s got a group of creepy circus-inspired henchmen to help him, including a lion tamer, a firebreather and, inexplicably, a Star Trek Klingon.

The writing in Aladin is solid, especially for a Bollywood comedy (see my review of Deshmukh’s other recent film, Do Knot Disturb). Several scenes are laugh-out-loud funny, and there are no extraneous plot threads or characters.

For parents of children who don’t understand Hindi, Aladin is a good introduction to movies with English subtitles, even if it is long at 2 hrs. 12 min. The story is familiar, so all that’s required is that the child be old enough to read English with some speed: third or fourth grade, perhaps. There’s no objectionable material, and no “gross” kissing (this is Bollywood, after all).

One note to parents who themselves aren’t familiar with Bollywood films: it’s worth telling kids that Amitabh Bachchan, who plays the genie, is one of the coolest guys in Indian cinema. He was an action star when he was younger and has always been a lady’s man. It’s the only way to explain why a man old enough to be a grandfather is rapping about “shorties.”