FILM: Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania
Cast: Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt
DIRECTOR: Shashank Shekhar
Thank god for Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt. The soul shivers in fear wondering which disaster zone this bland avatar of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLJ) would have headed to if these two actors hadn’t steered the rudderless revisionist saga to semblance of sensitivity.
As you sit cross-eyed and tense waiting for the young lovers in Ambala to sort out the mess in matters of the heart, you wonder how many rip-offs, homages, tributes and remakes of Aditya Chopra’s DDLJ we would have to bear before this…errr…classic is put to rest.
It may be sacrilegious to say this. But DDLJ in my humble opinion, is hardly the stuff classics are made of. It had its moments of glory…Oh yes! But a repeatedly recyled classic? Nah! That’s going too far.
Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (HSKD) takes the Raj and Simran characters, shakes and stirs them and turns them on their head. Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt, two of Bollywood’s most talented contemporary actors, don’t really try to fill Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol’s shoes. They have better things to do.
He, Humpty (yes, that’s what our hero is called) can’t keep it in his pants…his money, that is! He spends it buying a lehenga for the wedding of the girl of his dreams. She uses the money to buy him a car of his dreams.
You really wish the director had left these two annoying characters to their dreams and devices. These are the kind of 20-something over-reachers who need to be told “to get a life” doesn’t mean to beg borrow steal material happiness.
When we first meet Humpty, he emerges from a loo behind a sheepish-looking girl. In her introduction scene, Kavya (Alia) is shown trying to bully her father into buying her a Manish Malhotra lehenga for her wedding to the ‘perfect’ NRI.
The ‘perfect’ NRI is played by television actor Siddharth Shukla, so exceptionally wooden, that he seems to be carved out of a tree. And there he should have remained.
No one in HSKD seems to feel any real emotions. It is all a pantomime of being cool.
There are characters in Humpty’s saga equivalent to the ones in DLLJ, all subverted to the point of appearing farcically over-blown. Except Ashutosh Rana, who does a dignified take on Amrish Puri from the original, no one else gets it right.
Clearly, the debutant director is here doing a revisionist version of DDLJ, much in the same way that Sanjay Leela Bhansali did with Romeo and Juliet in Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela. With one difference. The creator of the revisionist version of the ‘classic’ (provided you consider DDLJ a classic) lacks the vision to take the original characters to another level from where they originally stood.
Director Shashank Khaitan yanks the characters from DDLJ from their allotted places and takes them on a joyride which may be pleasurable for the characters but is of minimal joy or interest to the audience.
Standing credibly firm in this earthquake of dismantled storytelling are Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt.
Endearing in their affection for DDLJ, they are like two well-armed soldiers waiting for the battle to begin. Alas, the ammunition provided to them is like water pistols masquerading as AK-47s.
More miniature and spoofy versions of Bonnie and Clyde than Raj and Simran from DDLJ, the couple in HSKD is eminently uninspiring and hopelessly self-seeking. At mid-point when the girl jumps in bed with the stranger who buys her the lehenga from her dreams, you know once and for all that this pair is beyond repair.
Simran would have never done that. (IANS)
FILM: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Cast: Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee …
DIRECTOR: Matt Reeves
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes has all the trappings of a blockbuster. It’s an inter-species survival story that hinges on deception, trust and forgiveness.
The film is set 10 years after the events of the 2011 released Rise of the Planet of the Apes. For those who have missed the previous edition, the newsreel, which acts as a prologue, sums it all.
A deadly Simian Virus is wiping off the human race. The spread of the virus is believed to have originated after the massive ape escape from the Gen-Sys Labs in San Francisco. So the existing humans around the world, in their desperate bid to survive, are taking every precautionary measure to live in quarantine ghettoes.
On the other hand the escaped apes that include Orangutans, Gorillas and Chimpanzees lead by Ceasar (Andy Serkis) and assisted by Koba (Toby Kebbell), Maurice and Ash are surviving in the forests of California, oblivious of the human misery.
In the meanwhile, in San Francisco the surviving group of humans controlled by ex-military man Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) run out of electricity and need access to a dam that is situated in the forest.
So a small group led by a former architect, Malcolm (Jason Clarke) and accompanied by his girlfriend Ellie (Keri Russell) who is a nurse, son Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and a few other assistants, venture into the forest. Soon their paths cross with the apes that initially astonish both sides; the apes are upset to find that humans still exist and the humans are shocked to learn that the apes can talk.
Being rational and logical, Ceasar permits Malcolm access to the defunct dam. This causes a rift amongst the apes, which in turn reflects the “ape in the man” and “man in the ape” nature in both the species. This forms the crux of the entire narration.
Packed with ape-versus-human mayhem and sub-plots on human philosophies, logic and amusement the film is conceptually brilliant and engaging, but not inspiring or thought provoking.
On the performance front, most of the key characters deliver beyond expectations.
Andy Serk is as the mature Caesar with his piercing stares and somber disposition as the leader of his tribe and Toby Kebbell as Koba, the sharp fanged dramatic ally evil human hating ape give the most intense and engaging performance in a non-human role.
Their action packed face-off, along with their subtle sign language that is aptly interpreted by the sub-titles is the highlight of the film.
Director Matt Reeves sustains a fine dramatic balance with the plot and scenes. He adeptly handles the major action scene and the close and personal emotional moments with equal dedication. He transports you to a cinematic universe that is so realistic and believable.
Kudos to the production designer James Chinlund and visual effects supervisors Joe Letteri and Dan Lemmon for their contribution.
To have a sustained and flawless representation of the ape world and the dystopian state is no mean achievement. It is equally laudable the way it is skillfully captured by Director of Photography Michale Seresin whose frames seamlessly merge with the computer-generated images.
Overall the film is superbly crafted and engaging to watch. (IANS)