Movie Review: Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara

ZNMD is a get-up-my-dear-take-on-your-fear kind inspiring, engaging and musical tale of three friends struggling through inadequacies and finally succeeding to cultivate the ideal approach to life. It is awesomely architected story which effortlessly and convincingly portrays the fact that it is not difficult to re-programme your mind regardless of your age, especially when your best buddies are around!

It’s a story of three different-minded yet emotionally-connected friends getting together after a long time before one of them ties the nagging knot. The victim is Kabir (Abhay) and this tying the knot is a knotty affair for him as it is nothing more than a funny accident. He lets himself slide through others’ overpowering emotions and ends up proposing a girl named Natasha (Kalki) who ecstatically agrees to this proposal as she claims to love him. Before virtually hanging himself by the mundane marriage knot, he plans of arranging a bachelor trip – a boys’ hangout to some fab place. 

This hangout just can’t happen without either of his two closest pals, his pact-mates Arjun (Hrithik) and Imran (Farhan). Arjun is totally into money-making as he’s a financial broker and enjoys keeping himself proudly stuck in his business drudgeries. Imran, on the other hand is a facetious freak by nature, freewheeling flirt by behavior, writer by profession, poet by passion and yes, a royal pain in Arjun’s ass. The trio heads on for a 21-day road trip to the beautiful Spain to enjoy the seventh heaven. Men turn to boys (bwoyz) and go crazily “mental”. Three of them break their comforting shells and quench for the thrill of the moments full of uncertainties. State of uncertainty has its own excitement and charm. All put themselves in top gear before plunging into spine-chilling adventures. During this trip, one charming babe, the diving instructor, Laila (Katrina), a totally contented and never-regretting soul joins the pack and shares the life-secrets through easily understandable demos, especially to her love-at-first-sight Arjun.

Now, everyone, sooner or later, comes across one solid transformational threshold in his life which takes him to the state of fearlessness; a state of being so light yet so powerful that gives him the courage to boldly go for what he wants. Here, our three heroes experience the same Buddha-moment in this Spain trip of three weeks. Nicely woven by Zoya Akhtar, all these independent realizations are immediate results of the encounters with their greatest individual fears. Hydrophobic Arjun, having deep-dived in the mid sea, washes him off his fears and finds the beauty of life while his swimming underwater translates to pleasing introspection. Acrophobic Imran gets rid of his fear in skydiving by nosediving from the plane. Socio-phobic Kabir overcomes his problem by being true to his ownself rather than pretending for society in order to please everyone. 

Overall, Abhay is really good. Hrithik is really cool. Farhan is super-duper-cool. Katrina, for a change, is a hot life-coach and Kalki is a role-filler. The movie certainly has the potential to touch a chord with the audience of all ages. The concept is fresh and the contexts are new; for instance, showing gift for mom being misinterpreted as engagement ring by a girl, silly school pranks, punching situational poems, catchy adventure sports of surmounting shortfalls, Tomatina festival and emotional bonds within the bounds of practicality etc. Bollywood was thirsty of something so refreshingly youthful since long. This movie for which a few may gently complain of being a little overstretched is yet undoubtedly very much enjoyable. ZNMD claims by meaning Zoya Nailsdown a Master Director.

Got Prizes for 'Stanley Ka Dabba'

Many Thanks to Rajeev Masand and Television Eighteen India Ltd. for this token of appreciation for my little piece of interest-based output!

Movie Review: Source Code

Preset:

Have you ever experienced your intelligence being questioned by a movie concept? I had once while watching Inception. Honestly and modestly, Source Code is a mature younger brother of Inception. You must have seen superheroes saving people’s lives in movies but might not have seen a guy who is close-to-no-more do that. Here is this movie for you.

Source Code is like a computer-programmed simulation or should I say computerized real game! Well, that’s where your mind is put to its rigorous tensile and compressive strength test.

Plot:

A young, smart and levelheaded pilot named Colter Stevens was zonked out in Afghanistan sometime back. Without a bit of his knowledge, his mind is linked to the body of a person who’s dead in the train blast today morning. The game starts: Colter is totally baffled to find himself in the train of which he had no clue at all. He sees his different face and different identity altogether. He tries to figure things out what in the hell is happening with him and just after eight minutes, the train blasts and the game is over. He feels the heat of his death but horridly comes back to his own self; but this time - in a space capsule. Confusing? Yes it is, very much. It’s a sci-fic fun after all.

All right, then. Continuing…

In that capsule, he while catching his breath talks to the lady on the screen and knows that he is a part of a mission i.e. Source Code. He is told that he would again be given eight minutes to find out the bomb which blasted in the train. If he can make it, he can help in preventing further blasts and saving many lives. So he agrees and again rises back in the train exactly eight minutes before the train-blast. This is like someone rewinds the video to eight minutes earlier for changing the post eight-minute outcome. He sees the same smiling sweet lady in front, same already-seen faces around, he gets his ticket checked, a lady spills the coffee on his shoe and everything is repeated what he experienced before. Only those things can change what he wants to change and that's the reason why he is sent for. Now, as you play just one video-game many times, you easily get comfortable with the sequence of its events and stages since there would be no uncertainties for you. Likewise, Colter is allowed to play the same eight minutes of the train-blast game multiple times. He wins if he finds the bomb and catches the bomber. During his multiple trials he does many errors but as he is a clever protagonist, eventually gets to the bomber. Now how he does that and what follows that should be left as a surprising spark for the movie-goers. Happy swinging in the riddle!

Off the track - Just want to say...

This kind of movie climax should be debated to check the Creative Quotient of the aspirants for the real creative field. Such movies really mock bollywood by showing it the mirror. My message to bollywood: Get hurt to get better. It’s high time, folks!

Movie Review: Stanley Ka Dabba

He is a fourth-grade kid. He is accidentally lonely yet faces everything boldly. He is confident, creative and caring. He is a good story-teller and hardworking go-getter. He is liked by all his classmates though he is a virtual leader of all. He has everything: intelligence, cuteness, smartness, naughtiness, liveliness; but he doesn’t have one thing: Dabba (tiffin)! Yes, he is Stanley.

O Dear God…Big deal if he doesn’t carry the tiffin?

No big deal; it’s just that one born-to-devour- others’-food kind of glutton orders him to stay out of the class until he gets his own tiffin. Holy smoke! You want to know the reason, why? Because he targets the same kids’ big tiffins for lunch that Stanley does due to his otherwise water-is-okay-for-lunch condition. And yes, by profession, he is Stanley’s Hindi-teacher. Kids give the teacher the politest possible nick name: Khadoos. Devils look like angels if you see this Khadoos who’s nothing better than untidy, disgusting pig.

So the situation is: Stanley not in school but roams somewhere around the school while his tiffin-buddies miss him. And then this hobo-like situation of Stanley succeeds in gaining him some real sympathy from his friends and kind teachers. It also opens the eyes of Khadoos and makes him realize his animal behaviour when he doesn’t see Stanley in the class. Then, one day Stanley goes to him with his tiffin, offers him food and asks for permission to sit in the class. This brings the predictable sequence of the movie. Khadoos starts to liberate some humanly emotions which remind us that even animals have feelings but they show in their own ways. The glutton decides to leave the school while leaving an apology letter to Stanley. Everything gets back to normal. Everyone is happy and the movie ends.

Go for it or let it go?

First half of the movie is dedicated to overly emphatic character building and the latter half quickly throws reactions coupled with bare realities which end up leaving you with a societal message (which I am not revealing). I wholeheartedly appreciate and applaud the concept creation and execution backed by outstanding pieces of act by Partho (Stanley) and Amole Gupte (Khadoos). Amole emerges as the rare combo of brilliant acting, classy creativity and super story-telling. There are many sweet moments wherein every school-passed can undoubtedly connect himself with and for sure, at least once he would miss his school friends which I did a lot. Overall it is a pure and innocent emotional ride with fun-pieces in between. But if I were to put all my kind emotions aside and suggest then – if you’re in a total weekend or chillout mood, this may not be the best choice for your kinda party-minds; but if you’re in a mood to appreciate the “real good” movie, go grab a ticket for the next show, if possible with your primary schoolmate/s!