FILM: Happy New Year
DIRECTOR: Farah Khan
CAST: Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Abhishek Bachchan, Boman Irani, Sonu Sood
What is it about Shah Rukh Khan that brings out the comic accent in Deepika Padukone? She did a very funny broad South Indian accent in Mr Khan’s inspired company in the maddeningly mundane “Chennai Express”. She repeats the farcical feat, this time doing a bravura Maharashtrian accent, with the relish of bar dancer grooving to “Kaanta laga” in her own free time.
Dancing Deepika dreams of running her own dance school where little girls will learn to dance not for drooling men. But just for the heck of it.
Heck she’s nailed it! That’s what this film is all about! It’s been made with no loftier intention than to provide lowbrow entertainment.
“Happy New Year”(HNY) is the cinematic equivalent of freshly-plucked guavas from a roadside tree. Juicy, tempting but of indeterminate origin. Eat and enjoy at your own risk.
Some of the stuff passing off as humour in this tall of tale of a bunch of losers who dance their way into a billion-rupee heist, is pretty….ummm….ugh. Abhishek Bachchan, who plays another interesting character, just vomits on unsuspecting victims to get his way.
HNY is the kind of film that doesn’t allow us to dwell on the crimes of excesses, of which there is plenty in this stretched-out plot. The carnival-like flavour of presentation is not quite the aesthetic experience that one expects from a film with such a classy line-up of actors and technicians.
Instead what we get in abundance are in-house jokes where Shah Rukh Khan does dialogue take-offs with his co-stars from his own famous films.
Speaking of take-offs, there is an excess of shirtless scenes featuring Mr Khan and Sonu Sood who seem to enjoy dropping their shirts for no other reason but to become instant eye-candy for the ladies in the audience. For most of the playing time the main actors play graceless dancers masquerading as wannabe winners at an international dance contest whose owner Jackie Shroff(scowling constantly) has a strange version to all things Indian.
Of course that gives our five heroes(and I am including Deepika in the list) a chance to dance with the Indian flag being waved defiantly at all the unpatriotic spoilsports.
The formula is fearsomely in-your-face. You can’t miss the broadness of the humour and the patriotic spirit. Every emotion is like a message written on a t-shirt. Every actor seems to have been given the brief to be as loud as possible. No wonder Sonu Sood plays a partially deaf character. It offsets the plot’s ditsy celebration of dumbness.
Deepika is one of the more interesting characters in Farah’s new 3-hour dance-heist marathon. She sparkles in the dance and the talkie portions. Abhishek Bachchan’s tapori act is written with over-the-top intentions. He manages to play the character with a certain inbuilt cool that perhaps was not there in plot.
Sonu Sood , Boman Irani and young Vivaan Shah suffer because of sketchily written parts but still succeed in making their presence felt, specially Sood who as per character sketch plays a ‘bad’ dancer which he is not by any stretch of the imagination.
But it’s the King Khan’s show all the way , make no mistake of that. The director misses no chance to make Shah Rukh’s ‘loser’ character Charlie appear emerge a winner. Shah Rukh even has a long rooftop fight sequence with Korean dancers which has no bearing on anything but the hero’s 8-pack midriff.
Somewhere in the scramble to engage our attention, the plot comes up with filmmaker Anurag Kashyap and musician Vishal Dadlani playing closet-gay reality-show judges who are blackmailed by Charlie into eligibility.
HNY is a rollicking rumbustious ode to the spirit of whopping howling shrieking and bantering camaraderie.
Filled with tongue-in-cheek episodes of hip-swaying audacity, the all-pervasive madness is infectious. (IANS)
FILM: The Judge
DIRECTOR: David Dobkin
CAST: Robert Downey Jr, Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent Da Onofrio, Jeremy Strong
Director David Dobkin’s “The Judge” is not just a courtroom drama. The pivot of the story is in fact an estranged father-son saga.
Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr), the suave and successful Chicago criminal defence lawyer in the midst of a divorce, has turned his back on Indiana, and on his family, particularly his father Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall). He is seething with a strong sense of betrayal, although it is revealed subtly. The news of his mother’s demise takes him back home after 20 years.
“Nothing changes,” Hank mutters to himself as he drives into Indiana after several years.
Metaphorically too, nothing has changed between him and his father who holds him responsible for jeopardising his brother Glen’s bright career in baseball. Glen (Vincent D’Onofrio) was grievously injured in a road accident when 17-year-old, Hank was at the wheel.
The undercurrents of tension, the sardonic barbs between the father and son have in no way diminished with the passage of time. The funeral over, Hank is heading back to Chicago.
A hit-and-run accident of a former convict, which lands his father, Judge Palmer in the dock, is the turning point. Even though their relationship is far from perfect, Hank offers to defend him.
The courtroom drama is indeed interesting, but it is the father-son relationship that is even more engaging. The scene with the tornado as the backdrop, where Hank confronts his father, giving vent to his deep-seated animosity for his father, accusing him of “running the house as he runs the courtroom”, is gripping. The petulant Duvall is equally a powerhouse of emotions, giving credence to his reasons for being strict with his son.
The film has a mix of the poignant and the powerful with some humour thrown in for good measure, albeit through gibes and sarcasm.
It is a treat to watch Robert Downey Jr. after a long time in a new avatar. He delivers a power-packed performance with a broad spectrum of emotions ranging from the smug lawyer who does not hesitate to relieve himself on a rival lawyer in a courtroom urinal and nonchalantly says, “Innocent people cannot afford me” to the caring son who sensitively handles his father in the bathroom during a bout of incontinence without hurting his ego.
As a criminal defence lawyer defending his father in the court, Downey Jr. is razor-sharp in his legal jargon, as he is in portraying the myriad emotions that flit through his face.
His only competition is from Robert Duvall, as the disciplinarian, ethical, 72-year-old judge with an indefatigable spirit even when his health is failing. He has his weak moments when he admits that he pardoned convict Blackwell and let him off with only 30 days of imprisonment, because his “wilful disobedience and recklessness reminded him of his middle son, Hank.”
There is Jeremy Strong as Dale, Hank’s differently-abled, younger brother who is forever, filming and capturing life though his camera.
He delivers a sensitive, but fairly predictable performance.
Vera Farmiga, as Sam, Hank’s heart-broken childhood sweetheart, and Vincent D’Onofriao as Glen, Hank’s embittered older brother, are convincing. Leighton Meester as Carla, intended for the glamour quotient, fails to impress.
Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski captures rural Indiana perfectly. Whether it is Hank cycling furiously on lush green lawns and experiencing liberation or the father-son fishing scene — these are pure visual delight. What adds to the aesthetics of the frames, is the lighting which is deliberate. It succeeds in creating the apt effect, although dramatic.
Overall, what keeps you riveted to this oft-heard story is without a doubt, the powerful performances. (IANS)