Side effects of 'Shaadi ke side effects' - Prize

A nice T-shirt with a DVD and a creative calender is a combo of side effects of my review of "Shaadi ke side effects". Thanks, TV18 Broadcast Ltd. 

Movie Review: 'Shaadi ke side effects'

Sid (Farhan Akhtar) and Trisha (Vidya Balan) try to cover almost all the possible angles of disputes, bargains, expectations, finesse, and romance a couple goes through mainly in the initial few years of marriage. They apply various formulas to cope with changes and continue a happily married life but everything bombs out. Even though the side effects of marriage strike both the partners, the story is shown particularly from Sid’s view.

Farhan and Vidya stick to their acting abilities and fit the bill conveniently. Ram Kapoor is fun to watch as Trisha’s brother-in-law. Ila Arun does well in her role of a bumptious caretaker but frankly her role is one of the avoidable or editable pieces of the second half. Vir Das as Farhan’s cool bro grabs attention with his firm grip on comedy. Oh yes, there is also Purab Kohli in the movie who seems to have come straight after the shooting of Nescafe’s new ad and hasn’t forgotten his character of a dying-to-meet neighbour eyeing up the girl next door. He has been given the same role with the same duration.

Couple of instances really snatch the laughs out of you, like the one in which after confirming her pregnancy when Trisha asks Sid of his opinion whether to keep the baby or not, Sid answers, “Tumhari body hai, tum decide karo”. The other ones include - Sid’s cutting the Donald Duck cake on his birthday by slicing the Duck’s neck; the desperate attempts made by Sid to understand whether his daughter feels cold, hot, or hungry. There is a hilarious scene wherein Sid’s friends come over to his place to watch a football match together but they have to keep calm, can’t cheer, and mute the volume because it’s Trisha’s order to Sid to follow instructions for keeping their baby asleep! Ram Kapoor bags some of the really side-splitting moments specially while ordering his son in various foreign languages.

Overall, the movie is a visual and musical Wedlock Manual showing dos and don’ts for keeping the married life alive and kicking. The best part of the movie is its first half, filled with contextual one liners and a hotfooting script. After the interval, side effects of marriage and the movie kick in beyond a limit so much that they not only fracture the pace of the movie but also put the patience to test. The topping of emotions simply doesn’t go very well with the fine base of comedy when Sid suffers, understands, becomes wise, and preaches that there are no formulas for a happy marriage; only staying truthful works. I give three stars to the movie - two and a half for the pre-interval fun, and the rest half for the dedicated acting.

Movie Review: 'The Dirty Picture'

Let me take up the title first - If one believes that skin-show beyond the need and letting groaning button turned on while having or imitating sex is dirty, it’s certainly is a dirty picture. But, hold your horses folks, it’s not vulgar.

Detail:

The movie opens with a story of a girl named Reshma (Vidya Balan), an aspiring actress with a view why-think-twice-when-one-life, fantasizing age-old superstar Suryakant (Naseeruddin Shah) while showering. She goes on trying to be an actress believing that she has something which others don’t, but none offers her the role. Due to her persistence and confidence, she gets a break in a dancing number and she grabs the chance by both hands. In her first shot, she turns into the steamy dancing girl making the whip make way through her deep curves while leaving the audience with jaws dropped down, mouths open and eyes lustfully wide. She becomes the ultimate sex-siren on the block and gears up to set the mercury soaring with her steamy screen presence and thereby attracting a huge fan base of lechers. She gets famous as 'Silk'. This popularity puts her in a position to work with her old fantasy Suryakant, a big womanizer, self-proclaiming to have slept with half a grand babes and still shamelessly counting number in his years of religious tours. Such filthy man is born to take advantage of anyone with only x chromosomes, so just imagine the situation when he meets this bold newcomer who is more than willing to do anything for getting film projects – the warmth turns to heat and heat turns to fire. He leaves her when he realizes that she can be threat to his marriage. 

Silk on the other hand, unaffected by this, picks his younger brother and aspiring writer Ramakant (Tusshar Kapoor) but neither of them knows what they’re into and their ways are parted smoothly like none cares, including the director Milan Luthria. Now, there’s a proud director in the movie named Abraham (Emraan Hashmi) who royally hates Silk for her sleaziness as he believes in making films which hit either brain or heart and not any other part of human body in order to luring mass to the cinema hall. But his face-to-face encounter with Silk changes his ideology and he starts dancing to her silky smooth tunes of entertainment. As time passes by, due to her arrogance and audacity, Silk becomes an unwelcome pain to everyone and ignored by most including her mother which makes her shallow and lifeless. Finally, Abraham is seen realizing him falling in love with her but he gets late in stopping her from choosing her way out of this dirty world. 

Dissection:

Naseeruddin Shah and Emraan Hashmi do justice to their given roles. The song of Vidya and Emraan is totally uncalled for. It’s a bad, boring patch. Vidya is unquestionably the showstopper. Even though she proudly exhibits her pendulous fleshes which in today’s time is a mockery-material, her inviting body language with unrestrained straight talk, luscious lips-pressing and seductive eye-winking prove her unshakable self-confidence and make her click hard. 

There is a sudden character mismatch found in the letter which Silk leaves for Abraham at the end, which has her view of the world. She is, for a change and for a moment, portrayed sentimental but it doesn’t sink well or sound genuine as she only keeps on blowing the trumpet that she is ‘entertainment’ and continuously keeps on breaching her own character lows. So when people take you seriously for your way of entertainment, you can’t be the source of ‘enlightenment’ at the end to show your soft side! She comes across as a fluffy hare raring to find lion and dancing its way to his mouth to be eaten in order to be noticed by the world. So, no sympathy granted here. 

Tusshar looks as pitiable in the movie as in reality for lack of films. My sincere condolences are just for him for his real life situation than for Silk for her end. By the way, on this note, the way Abraham is attracted towards Silk despite he despised her all through the movie, is as mysterious as the need of Tusshar’s role for this movie.

Deduction:

In the dirty film industry, one aspiring actress comes, stumbles, learns, screws her life in every way and finally ends it. The Dirty Picture is a justification of why dirty pictures are made, why they work for mass audience and still why they’re not given an open welcome. It tries to portray that such movies are only embraced behind the closed doors of the house and not in public at large. But don’t apply your mind. No message is manifest unless you’re desperate to find one.

Go for this movie. It can’t belong to the best of the lot but it’s a sincerely brave attempt. It’s a total fun, especially when its super-bold one-liners with repartees only are worth your time and ticket and the foot-tapping, shoulder-jumping number ‘Ooh Lala’ with the ‘entertainment’ of 2 hours and 20 minutes becomes the big cherry on the cake!