Tag Archives: Shakun Batra

Movie Review: Gehraiyaan (2022)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Gehraiyaan is writer-director Shakun Batra’s third film, after his brilliant sophomore effort, Kapoor & Sons. Unfortunately, Gehraiyaan repeats some of the same missteps from Batra’s enjoyable but frustrating debut — Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu — including problems with pacing and a muddled thematic conclusion.

Deepika Padukone stars as Alisha, a woman plagued by fears of succumbing to the same fate as her mother, who died by suicide when Alisha was a little girl. Now an adult, Alisha is dating her childhood best friend Karan (Dhairya Karwa), working overtime as a yoga instructor to support his floundering dreams of being a novelist. She feels stuck — a sentiment her mother expressed before her death.

Then Alisha’s cousin Tia (Ananya Panday) re-enters the picture. Tia is rich, the sole beneficiary of her dad’s real estate empire, which he once shared with Alisha’s father. The parents split on bad terms shortly before Alisha’s mother’s death, separating the cousins and sending their financial fortunes in opposite directions. Now Tia is living the high life with her handsome fiance Zain (Siddhant Chaturvedi), her father’s former protege who aspires to be a big-time developer himself.

On the night they first meet, Zain flirts with Alisha. That should be a red flag to Alisha, but she’s desperate for a change. When opportunity presents itself, she and Zain begin an affair. This exacerbates tensions in her relationship with Karan, leading them to break up. Zain promises to end things with Tia in six months, after he returns an investment she made in his company. Then, he promises, he and Alisha can be together.

Alisha and Zain make a sexy pair, and the thrill of their relationship is apparent. There’s always the danger of what would happen if Tia found out — especially since Tia repeatedly hints in conversations with her mother that there’s something important that Alisha doesn’t know.

About halfway through Gehraiyaan, the relationship drama takes a backseat, as the movie pivots to focus for way too long on financial shenanigans at Zain’s company. The details aren’t particularly interesting in and of themselves, and are even less so because they don’t prompt Zain to undergo any character growth. It’s established early on that Zain’s only priority is himself, and the time spent on his subplot feels like it comes at Alisha’s expense. She’s the only character in the film on a personal growth journey.

Part of Alisha’s journey is deciding what kind of relationship to have with her estranged father Vinod (Naseeruddin Shah), whom she blames for her mother’s death. Given their immense talents, it’s little surprise that the scenes between Padukone and Shah are highlights. Panday is also really good in her supporting role, playing Tia as both canny and vulnerable. The film could have used more scenes between her and Padukone as well.

Even when Alisha’s character growth is foregrounded in the plot, the ways the film’s themes are applied to her story feel off. One theme is about moving beyond the past and choosing the direction of one’s life, but it’s hard for Alisha to choose wisely, since every person she knows is hiding something from her. And the theme of moving forward is at odds with a contradictory theme that you can’t really escape the past anyway.

At best, Batra is trying to too hard to avoid a predictable ending. At worst, his theming is just a mess. Either way, the story ends on what feels like a pointless twist. Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu suffered from a similarly disappointing fate. Kapoor & Sons didn’t have that problem, so here’s hoping Batra nails it next time.

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Movie Review: Kapoor & Sons (2016)

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Kapoor&Sons4 Stars (out of 4)

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Kapoor & Sons packs enough of an emotional wallop to leave one reeling. It’s going to be tough to beat when the Best of 2016 rankings come out.

The Kapoor family — father Harsh (Rajat Kapoor), mother Sunita (Ratna Pathak), elder son Rahul (Fawad Khan), and younger son Arjun (Sidharth Malhotra) — reunite at the bedside of ailing patriarch Amarjeet (Rishi Kapoor) when he suffers a heart attack just before his 90th birthday. The birthday provides a reason for the boys to linger for a few days in their childhood home.

All of the undercurrents of tension between the family members surface as soon as the boys come home. Harsh and Sunita are shorter with one another than they used to be, though they fall back into old patterns with their sons. Rahul is the golden boy, his room a shrine to his accomplished youth. Perpetual screw-up Arjun finds his bedroom re-purposed as his mom’s closet, overrun with purses and exercise equipment.

There’s trouble between the boys, too. Rahul waits for his brother to grow up, while Arjun harbors resentment toward Rahul, not just for his exalted status but by a suspicion that it may have come at Arjun’s expense. None of these concerns are addressed openly, leaving wounds to fester.

Two people make the trip home worthwhile. First, Grandpa Amarjeet, whose abundant love for his grandsons only grows when they teach him how to watch pornography on his iPad. Second, Tia (Alia Bhatt): a fun-loving neighbor who meets the boys separately and charms them both.

Kapoor & Sons is beautifully balanced, with funny moments juxtaposed against serious revelations. Writer-director Shakun Batra and co-writer Ayesha Devitre Dhillon set the perfect tempo, allowing subplots and relationships to develop at a pace that never feels rushed.

Behind all of the action is a beautiful, evocative score by Sameer Uddin. Of all the film’s wonderful qualities, the score may be the very best.

The acting in Kapoor & Sons is top-notch, the whole cast striking the right tone under Batra’s direction. Ratna Pathak and Rajat Kapoor are so strong as a couple whose marriage suffers after their kids have grown up and moved out. It’s wonderful to watch Alia Bhatt and Sidharth Malhotra grow as young actors.

Fawad Khan is hypnotic. His acting is graceful and grounded and stands out even when compared to the film’s other great performances.

Rishi Kapoor is terrific as well, equal parts funny and moving as an old man who just wants his family to be happy again. His makeup and prosthetics (designed by Greg Cannom) age the 63-year-old Kapoor effectively, without being distracting.

Two supporting performances of note belong to Sukant Goel as Arjun’s pal Wasim and Fahim Shaikh as Wasim’s bodybuilding brother, Boobly, who steals every scene he’s in.

Batra’s directorial debut Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu showed a ton of promise, though it was marred by a frustrating ending. Those frustrations are nowhere to be found in Kapoor & Sons, a mature, satisfying film. Well done.

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Movie Review: Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (2012)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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It’s a bad sign when the words “The Beginning” appear on screen at the end of a movie, just before the closing credits roll. If this is only “the beginning,” what was I watching for the last two hours? It’s a cop-out.

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (“One of Me and One of You”) ends with “The Beginning.” It’s disappointing because the first 95% of the movie is really, really good. I enjoyed myself so much while watching it that the lame way the story concludes made it feel like I had the rug pulled out from under me.

Let me focus on the good first, which is nearly every part of the movie. The protagonist in Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (EMAET, henceforth) is Rahul (Imran Khan), the average son of snobby parents who routinely make it clear that he is a disappointment. When he loses his job at a Las Vegas architecture firm, he elects not to tell them.

Rahul meets fun-loving Riana (Kareena Kapoor), a similarly unemployed hairstylist. Since they are both alone on Christmas Eve, Rahul reluctantly agrees to let Riana take him out on the town. They get drunk and get married.

The next morning, they amicably agree to get their marriage annulled. Again reluctantly, Rahul lets broke, disorganized Riana stay in his meticulously clean apartment. Friendship blossoms as Rahul finally finds in Riana someone who does not think he’s a failure.

There’s little conflict in Rahul and Riana’s relationship, but that’s a good thing. They are both nice people, their only faults being that Rahul is overly fearful of making mistakes and Riana a bit oblivious to her more annoying habits. From Raina, Rahul gets the validation he’s never gotten from his parents, and Raina is happy to make him happy.

Khan and Kapoor are completely charming and succeed in making Rahul and Riana realistic characters. Their restraint adds to the movie’s humor: Khan gets more laughs out of a single raised eyebrow than any of the frantic, screaming characters in the Housefull 2 promo that preceded EMAET. Debutant director Shakun Batra gets the tone exactly right for a romantic comedy.

As much as I appreciate a movie that resists the urge to force conflict into a story, about three-fourths of the way into EMAET, I started to wonder, “What’s the catch?” Rahul and Raina can’t just stroll into their happily ever after, can they? Is she hiding something? Will he compromise his new self-confidence to placate his parents?

When the hiccup in Rahul & Riana’s otherwise perfect relationship finally arises, it does so without enough time left in the film to adequately deal with it. Hence “The Beginning.” It’s a profoundly unsatisfying conclusion, especially since all of the signs pointed to the adorable couple getting their tidy “happily ever after.”

I admire filmmakers who take risks with their storytelling — though audiences do have certain expectations of rom-coms released in time for Valentine’s Day — but the risks have to feel warranted. The ultimate resolution to Rahul & Riana’s story feels unrealistic and unfair. I wanted a better ending for characters I’d come to like so much.

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