Tag Archives: Mukul Dev

Movie Review: Son of Sardaar 2 (2025)

1 Reply

2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Son of Sardaar 2 on Netflix

Hidden within Son of Sardaar 2‘s overstuffed story are some wonderfully executed performances — but, boy, do you have to sort through a lot of cruft to find them.

The sequel to 2012’s enjoyable Son of Sardaar finds naive nice guy Jassi Singh Randhawa (Ajay Devgn) waiting in Punjab for his British visa to come through so he can join his wife of 11 years, Dimple (Neeru Bajwa). When he finally gets it and reunites with her in Scotland, she immediately asks for a divorce.

Elsewhere in Scotland, a band of Pakistani-British musicians — Rabia (Mrunal Thakur), her step-daughter Saba (Roshni Walia), Mehwish (Kubbra Sait), and transgender woman Gul (Deepak Dobriyal) — is in trouble. Their leader Danish (Chunky Panday) — who is Rabia’s husband and Saba’s father — took off with a Russian woman, forcing Rabia to take charge of the group.

A chance encounter between Rabia and Jassi proves beneficial for both of them, even if she does stab him in the hand with a fork when they meet. Rabia gives Jassi a place to stay in exchange for pretending to be her husband and Saba’s dad. See, Saba wants to marry her rich boyfriend Gogi (Sahil Mehta), but his strict father Raja (Ravi Kishan) insists on meeting Saba’s family first. Not only does Jassi have to pretend to be Saba’s dad but a former soldier as well, while the rest of the women pretend to be Indian, Hindu, and definitely not musicians.

These are already a lot of characters to keep track of, and it gets worse when Gogi’s family is introduced. There’s his mom Premlata (Ashwini Kalsekar), his uncles Tony (the late Mukul Dev in his final role) and Titu (Vindu Dara Singh), and his white step-grandmother Kim (Emma Kate Vansittart). The step-grandmother’s backstory brings several other characters into the mix, and Sanjay Mishra shows up with a bunch of sidekicks as well. Heck, the movie even starts with Jassi dancing with Dimple and their four children, but that turns out to be a dream and they don’t actually have kids. There are too many people as-is without introducing imaginary ones.

New characters are dropped into the film following abrupt cuts, and it takes a while to figure out how they connect to the main story. Subplots sprawl and expand while previously introduced characters get less and less to do. The lack of focus forces the audience to keep track of threads and relationships when they should be allowed to sit back and laugh. Then again, there aren’t many standout bits, save one near the end involving Dimple.

Son of Sardaar 2 isn’t all bad, thanks to the actors. Devgn is still endearing as the innocent guy who stumbles into trouble. Thakur’s feisty energy pairs well opposite Devgn and keeps the story moving. Sait plays her musician character as charmingly caffeinated, and Kishan’s straitlaced performance as the strict dad defines the stakes for Jassi and crew.

The delightful surprise of the film is Dobriyal’s portrayal of Gul. Dobriyal is a tremendous actor with plenty of stellar work on his resume, but the fact that he brings such gravity and tenderness to a character in a rather silly comedy is impressive. Gul is the voice of reason and authority when things get too chaotic. I can’t speak to the authenticity of the way she’s written as a trans woman (there’s some dialogue about the man inside her versus the woman inside her that feels odd), but Dobriyal plays her respectfully. Her being trans fuels some jokes, but she is never the butt of the joke. Dobriyal won’t let her be.

Links

Movie Review: Creature 3D (2014)

6 Replies

creature2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

Hindi horror movies are few and far between, and monster movies are rarer still. Taking into consideration the largely nonexistent infrastructure of screenwriters, directors, and visual effects artists that specialize in monster movies, my expectations for Creature 3D were low. While it lived down to my expectations, Creature 3D is so bad, it’s good.

Here’s an example of how Creature 3D qualifies for “so bad, it’s good” status: the humanoid monster’s roar is literally a guy saying, “Roar.” Not making a roar sound, but saying the word, “Roar.”

The creature’s victims are primarily guests and employees of the Glendale Forest Hotel, a place that sounds more like a rehab clinic than a mountain resort, according to my brother (with whom I watched the film). The hotel belongs to Ahana (Bipasha Basu), who left Delhi following her father’s death. Her hopes of a fresh start in the hinterlands are dashed when a monster starts eating her clients.

The monster also interrupts a budding romance between Ahana and Kunal (Imran Abbas), one of her guests. Kunal is supposedly a famous author, but he gets mysterious phone calls asking if he’s done what he came to the hotel to do.

Do Kunal’s mysterious phone calls or the events that drove Ahana from the city have any connection to the creature? No. Unlike American horror movies in which a supernatural attack is often a response to a sin committed — why do you think the teens making out in a car are always first to die? — Ahana’s encounter with the creature is just a case of bad luck. So says Professor Sadanand (Mukul Dev), a zoologist familiar with the creature.

If there’s a moral to the story, it’s that one can’t run from one’s problems. However, the problems that drove Ahana from the city aren’t the kind that can be fought. She’s just grieving her dead dad. Kunal guilt-trips Ahana for taking anti-anxiety medication, which he considers a moral weakness.

Ultimately, Ahana decides to stay and fight the creature, because there wouldn’t be a second half of the movie if she didn’t.

As for the hybrid man-lizard creature itself, oh, boy. It’s entirely computer generated, so it lacks the physical presence of a man in a suit or even a puppet. Some of its movements are neat, but it feels fake and never scary.

In fact, it’s almost like writer-director Vikram Bhatt — who probably has more experience with the horror genre than anyone else presently working in Hindi cinema — went out of his way to make Creature 3D not scary. There isn’t a single frightening moment in the film.

There’s no payoff in scenes where you expect a jump scare. When Ahana and Kunal stand in front of a window, the creature doesn’t pop up on the other side of the glass. Instead, the camera cuts to a window on the other side of the room, and we see the creature’s hand reach over the windowsill before he slowly pulls himself over it. Several shots are just pans across a blank wall with growling sounds in the background that end with the monster coming into the room through an open door.

Far scarier than the monster is Kunal, who spends the bulk of the movie leering at Ahana. One of the film’s song sequences — “Hum Na Rahein Hum” —  is just Kunal staring at Ahana while she goes about her day. Whether she’s buying flowers or driving through the woods, he’s always lurking. I’ve included a link to the hilarious music video below the review.

Mukul Dev is the real hero of the film, providing most of the unintentional comedy. Even though the professor saves a dining room full of people by scaring the monster with fire, his elaborate plan to kill the creature doesn’t involve flames. Instead, it requires “an old bus” and a human dummy covered in meat.

When that plan doesn’t work, the professor must rescue Ahana and Kunal using — you guessed it — fire. This sets up the single greatest shot in the whole film. Instead of soaking his jacket in gasoline, running to the old bus, setting the jacket on fire, and throwing it into the bus to give Ahana and Kunal a chance to escape, Professor Sadanand lights the jacket on fire first and then starts running. The sight of Mukul Dev running down the road trying not to get burned by his flaming sport coat is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

Despite a tremendously boring final twenty minutes, there are abundant reasons to watch Creature 3D: Kunal lurking seductively in the woods. The creature’s “roar.” Mukul Dev’s flaming sport coat. Meat dummy.

Links

Movie Review: R… Rajkumar (2013)

13 Replies

R..._Rajkumar_Theatrical_poster_(2013)1 Star (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

Director Prabhu Deva’s schizophrenic style strikes again. In R… Rajkumar, he derails an enjoyable action rom-com with a casual treatment of violence against women.

The double shame is that the character who suffers most from this misogyny, Chanda (Sonakshi Sinha), is a strong female character. Yet the script reduces her to a plot device, beaten and threatened with rape just to inspire the heroic deeds of the title character, Romeo Rajkumar (Shahid Kapoor).

Romeo, a hired thug, comes to town to join a gang headed by Shivraj (Sonu Sood), a drug lord at war with a rival opium dealer, Parmar (Ashish Vidyarthi). He falls in love with Chanda at first sight, becoming so lovestruck that it hampers his ability to carry out his duties on behalf of Shivraj.

Romeo’s love-induced impairment repeatedly endangers the life of his fellow henchmen and best friend, an apparently unnamed goon played by Mukul Dev. Their playfully antagonistic friendship is the highlight of the movie, even though it mostly disappears in the second half of the film.

The humor in Romeo’s friendship and in his pursuit of Chanda are hard to reconcile in the context of a movie that treats violence against women as a given. Chanda is brutally lashed with a belt a dozen times by her uncle, who objects to her romance with Romeo. In the very next scene, the same uncle is seen clowning around with his underlings, accompanied by a flatulence sound effect.

Is the audience supposed to ignore the beating the uncle administered to his niece just seconds earlier? Is he supposed to be a source of comic relief or a monster? It’s one thing for the uncle to abuse his underlings; they signed up for the job. Chanda is beaten because she is a woman.

In another scene, Shivraj threatens Chanda in order to provoke Romeo: “I’ll tie her up and rape her in front of you.” However, in the English subtitles, the word “rape” is censored, written as “r**e.” So rape is too vile a word to read, but not too vile an act to depict onscreen or use as a threat?

It’s so frustrating because R… Rajkumar is otherwise pretty good. Romeo and Chanda develop a sweet relationship over the course of the film. Kapoor shows a wide range in his performance, and his dancing is top-notch, as always. Sinha is brave and resolute while enduring all the abuse the script throws at her.

I wish I could recommend R… Rajkumar, but I just can’t. It portrays violence against women as a social norm, something a woman can only escape if she has a boyfriend with superhuman strength to defend her. Why couldn’t this just be a fun movie and not a regressive piece of social commentary?

Links