Tag Archives: Varun Grover

Movie Review: Superboys of Malegaon (2024)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Superboys of Malegaon is a film for anyone who loves movies. Director Reema Kagti’s latest is a touching story of friendship and all the things that can go right and wrong in the creative process.

Varun Grover’s screenplay is based on director Faiza Ahmad Khan’s documentary Supermen of Malegaon. The documentary itself is wonderful, and Grover brilliantly adapts its fictional version.

The story begins in 1997 in the industrial town of Malegaon, about 300 kilometers from Mumbai. Movies are a popular pastime for the men in the city, but film reels are hard to come by. The small theater Nasir (Adarsh Gourav) runs with his older brother gets by screening Charlie Chaplin movies, but business is lousy.

Their fortunes improve when Nasir learns how to edit together VHS tapes using two VCRs. His mashups of Chaplin and Bruce Lee are a hit, until the cops bust him for piracy. That’s when Nasir realizes that he needs to make his own films.

He’s got everything he needs within his circle of friends. Nasir can direct and edit. Akram (Anuj Singh Duhan) is the town’s wedding videographer. Farogh (Vineet Kumar Singh) writes for the newspaper. Irfan (Saqib Ayub) can act. And Shafique (Shashank Arora) can do whatever else is needed.

Nasir rejects Farogh’s suggestion for a more serious story, reasoning that things in Malegaon are tough enough as is. They settle on a parody of Sholay called simply “Malegaon’s Sholay.” With the help of plenty of other people in town and a dancer named Trupti (Manjiri Pupala), their original film becomes a massive local hit.

Watching the guys make the film with the technology available in a small Indian city in 1997 is a treat. They improvise a dolly by strapping Akram’s video camera to bicycle. Trupti’s vanity van is an auto-rickshaw with a shawl draped over one side. It’s not fancy, but it works.

Yet even this crew of friends is susceptible to the stressors that can foil any collaborative creative project. Disputes over input, respect, and financial compensation strain the group, and Nasir — who enjoys being celebrated as the brains behind the operation — is too prideful to stop things from unraveling.

The story is ultimately about learning the real meaning and value of friendship, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Since the movie is based on real people who have lives outside of their amateur filmmaking endeavors, Superboys of Malegaon takes place over the course of thirteen years. That just emphasizes how difficult it can be to put egos aside and apologize for bad behavior.

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect cast for this underdog story. Adarsh Gourav skillfully portrays Nasir as the kind of guy with enough charisma to pull together this kind of project, but with the flaws that often accompany that kind of charisma. Vineet Kumar Singh’s quiet seething as the writer whose ideas get trampled by his director represents the many contemporary Indian screenwriters who feel devalued by the industry.

With his skinny arms and incongruous pompadour, it’s impossible not to love Shashank Arora’s Shafique. Though everyone in the film feels their lives limited by lack of opportunity, that’s most true for Shafique. He’s the forgotten member even within his friend group. But from the minute he’s introduced, it’s obvious that he’s the heart of the film.

Reema Kagti’s movie is made with real affection for everyone who inspired it. It’s in details like all the retro movie technology and Bhawna Sharma’s charming costume design. It’s in casting just the right performers to bring these scrappy guys to the big screen. Superboys of Malegaon is a lovable movie.

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Movie Review: Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar (2021)

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4 Stars (out of 4)

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In 2012, Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra made their lead debuts in the romantic thriller Ishaqzaade. They made an excellent duo, turning in nuanced performances in a story that tackled a number of thorny subjects. Reunited nearly a decade later in Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar (“Sandeep and Pinky Have Absconded“), Kapoor and Chopra remind us that they might be at their best when they’re together.

Writer-director Dibakar Banerjee’s chilling opening scene sees a car full of rowdy bros gunned down as the opening credits come to an end. Shortly thereafter, we learn that their murder is a case of mistaken identity.

The real target is Sandeep “Sandy” Walia (Parineeti Chopra), a high-ranking executive at Parivartan Bank. She’s dating her boss, Parichay (Dinker Sharma), and is pregnant with his child. As Sandy waits at a restaurant for her boss/boyfriend, a messenger — Satinder “Pinky” Dahiya — arrives with a note from Parichay asking her to accompany Pinky to a different location.

Pinky is trying get his suspension from the police force overturned by doing jobs for a well-connected goon named Tyagi (Jaideep Ahlawat). Pinky assumes he’s been hired to turn Sandy over to some thugs who will scare her (he doesn’t care why). When he realizes Tyagi intended to have him killed along with Sandy in order to cover up her murder, Pinky reluctantly takes Sandy to a border town where they can cross into Nepal.

Pinky’s emotional arc is pretty conventional and self-contained. He needs to shed his tough guy self-image and learn to care about people other than himself. He does so first by realizing the special considerations Sandy has to take to protect her own health for the sake of her unborn child. Pinky’s progress is also helped along by Munna (Rahul Kumar), a young man who looks up to Pinky and needs a shoulder to cry on. Pinky’s compassion toward Munna — however grudgingly it’s given — yields dividends when Tyagi shows up in town.

Sandy’s arc is more complex and ties in with the film’s themes about misogyny, double standards, and capitalism. Sandy’s just as morally flexible as Pinky, if not more so — comfortable with both large scale corruption and simple interpersonal lies — but she’s often pressured to act by external forces. Parichay convinces her that the only way to save the bank is for her to do something illegal, so she acts in a way that saves her company and her relationship with him at the expense of faceless customers she thinks she’ll never meet. When she needs a clean place to stay, Sandy convinces an older couple — known simply as Aunty (Neena Gupta) and Uncle (Raghuvir Yadav) — to rent a room to her and Pinky even though they have no money. It’s an understandable act of deception for an expectant mother worried about her health.

The world as presented in Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar allows women no margin for error and gives men full discretion over the terms of their existence. Sandy climbs the ranks in her field through hard work but becomes disposable once she asks for something for herself. She makes a mutually beneficial deal with a local bank manager (played by Sukant Goel) who abruptly changes the terms, then resorts to violence when she refuses to comply. Uncle values his pride more than Sandy’s safety.

Aunty tells a story to Sandy and a group of other women about being so angry at Uncle that she packed a bag and left the house. He followed her out and asked where she was going to go. Realizing she had nowhere else she could go, she turned around and went back in the house. Everyone laughs, but the truth of the story is incredibly sad. All of the options for women in Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar are bad.

The only woman with a chance of making things right is a lawyer named Sejal (Archana Patel), hired by Parichay to track down Sandy. Like Sandy, Sejal is smarter than the men around her, so Parichay withholds information from her about the reasons why Sandy fled and what he plans to do with her when she’s found. Though at first she seems like another pawn working to preserve the power of capitalism and patriarchy, Sejal is Banerjee’s way of introducing hope into the story. Sandy didn’t see Parichay’s true colors in time, but if Sejal can, maybe she can balance the scales of justice a little bit.

Every performance in the movie is spot-on, down to the smallest roles. But boy do Chopra and Kapoor do an amazing job of reminding you just what they are capable of, especially when they’re working with a great director. Banerjee’s story — co-written with Varun Grover — heads in unexpected directions but never feels like it’s being clever for its own sake, and it does so at a pace that is neither too fast nor too slow. Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is totally engrossing and dense enough to merit a second viewing.

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Movie Review: Masaan (2015)

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Masaan3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Thanks to Just Me Mike for lending me his DVD copy of Masaan! Check out Mike’s film and TV reviews here.

Two young people struggle to grow within the confining social norms of modern-day Banaras in Masaan (international title: “Fly Away Solo“). The film is thought-provoking and full of moving performances.

Computer coach Devi (Richa Chadda) and her university student boyfriend Piyush check into a motel to finally consummate their relationship. “Curbing curiosities,” as Devi describes it. Their lovemaking is interrupted by the police, who storm into the room hoping to nab a couple engaging in premarital sex.

Police Inspector Mishra (Bhagwan Tiwari) revels in busting these two criminals. He tells Devi, “Your life is now ruined,” as he uses his phone to film her in a state of partial undress. He demands a bribe from Devi’s father, Mr. Pathak (Sanjay Mishra), in order to keep Devi out of jail. Mishra threatens to tarnish Pathak’s honor — not Devi’s, which is apparently already forfeit — by posting the video on YouTube if the impoverished bookseller doesn’t pay.

As Devi’s world falls apart, elsewhere in the city a young man falls in love. Deepak (Vicky Kaushal) is about to graduate from engineering school, the first member of his low-caste family to do so. He meets Shaalu (Shweta Tripathi), an opinionated young woman with a passion for poetry. As their feelings build through phone calls and clandestine meetings, Deepak chooses to ignore the fact that Shaalu’s higher caste status likely rules him out as a potential marriage partner.

Because the film opens with Devi’s tragedy, it’s impossible to enjoy Deepak’s romance with Shaalu. Watching them sneak glances at one another during a carnival feels like watching a horror movie, with the monster lurking around the corner clad in a police uniform.

Despite being a city of over a million people, the “small town” mentality in Banaras limits Devi’s options. As she switches jobs to avoid people familiar with her scandal, the expression in her eyes indicates that she has already checked out. Once she pays the bribe, Devi is moving away. Chadda gives Devi quiet fortitude coupled with an attitude that is beyond annoyed.

One minor subplot feels out-of-place in Masaan. During an argument, Pathak demands to know why Devi wants to punish him (as though her getting busted by the cops was directed at him). Instead of citing grievances such as Pathak’s eagerness to assume she’s at fault and his lack of compassion, Devi accuses him of having killed her mother by waiting to take her to the hospital.

It doesn’t make sense that Devi would have been a dutiful daughter her whole life, waiting until now to unload on him for something that happened when she was six. She has every right to be upset that he didn’t support her as an adult. The dead mother angle doesn’t fit.

Director Neeraj Ghaywan — who co-wrote Masaan with Varun Grover — takes advantage of Banaras’ most famous landmark: the city’s burning ghats where bodies are cremated. Deepak’s family business is burning corpses, and his engineering degree is his only hope of escape.

Americans are generally removed from the specific details of what happens to a body after death, so Ghaywan’s depiction of the pyres is eye-opening. Deepak’s father instructs one worker to tuck a corpse’s leg back under the burning logs. He yells at Deepak to smash open another corpse’s skull to “release the soul” (and help it burn more completely, no doubt).

Kaushal is terrific as Deepak, and Mishra and Tripathi are wonderful as well. Tiwari is callous and opportunistic as the corrupt inspector.

Two other performances stand out. Pankaj Tripathi — who normally plays villains or bumbling sidekicks — is sweet as an awkward ticket vendor with a crush on Devi. Little Nikhil Sahni is feisty and charming as Jhonta, a skinny orphan boy who drums up business for Pathak. Jhonta gradually comes to fill the void Pathak feels as his adult daughter pulls away from him.

Masaan is a really wonderful work from a first-time director with a bright future ahead of him. If it leads to quality, high-profile roles for the talented cast members, even better.

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