Film: “Home”
Voices of: Rihanna, Jim Parsons, Steve Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Matt Jones
Director: Tim Johnson
Home is where the heart is. Children below the age of 5 will truly love this film.Director Tim Johnson’s film Home written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, is based on Adam Rex’s book for children, The True Meaning of Smekday.
With a few gimmicks that will entertain children, it is a story of an alien helping a girl, reunite with her mother.
The film introduces, The Boov a species from outer space, who change their colour with emotions.
They are led by Captain Smek. The Boovs are on the run, from planet to planet, thinking that the evil Gorgs are out to destroy them.In their endeavour to escape the Gorgs, they plan to settle on planet earth and make it their “home”.
So in order to accommodate the Boovs, the earthlings are forcibly evacuated by huge suction pipes that pick them up and relocate them to remote Australia.
And the empty apartments are now transformed for the Boovs to move in.
Excited about his new home, “Oh” a lonely Boov who got his name because of the loud sighs he attracts whenever he is near fellow Boovs, accidentally sends an email invitation to the entire galaxy for his housewarming party and because of this blunder he is further shunned.
During the same time, 10-year-old Tip Tucci from New York along with her pet cat escapes the evacuation process and so she is separated from her mother.
She is left stranded in New York.
Later, when she ventures out in search of her mother, she chances upon Oh.
Oh befriends Tip and realises that his perception of earthlings based on what Captain Smek had told them is so different from reality.
So, he promises to help Tip locate her mother.
And during the process we also learn why the Gorgs were chasing them.
The plot is simple and punctuated with a noisy narrative. The voices of the A-list star cast suit the animated characters.
Jim Parsons along with Rihanna complement each other as Oh and Tip.
While Jim gives a unique spin to the tone in his dialogue delivery, Rihanna with her slightly weak husky voice lends the right tinge of helplessness and cheerfulness to Tip’s go-getter spirit.
Steve Martin as Captain Shek is lackluster and Jennifer Lopez as Tip’s dislocated mother has little to offer as she hardly has any screen time.
As for the animation, the images are not extraordinary at all and the 3D effect is a hindrance to the viewing experience. (IANS)
Film: Dharam Sankat Mein
Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Paresh Rawal, Annu Kapoor
Director: Fuwad Khan
Making a film mocking the sacred cows isn’t easy in this country where every artiste stumbles on a sensitive organisation, green saffron or yellow, every step along his way.
The makers of Dharam Sankat Mein must be applauded for going where angels and agnostics fear to tread.Of course, Raj Kumar Hirani’s PK did it recently, how can we forget? And before that Umesh Shukla’s Oh My God (OMG). Much of Rawal’s performance in his new religious satire is a repeat of what he has already done in OMG.
Now there is the added responsibility and burden of representing the BJP.
Rawal takes on the tricky task of being both non-religious and finally hugely respectful towards all religions.
To make his pro-government stand even more cogent, the film is shot in and around Ahmedabad in the lives and colonies of Gujarati families.
This gives the narrative a quaint and comfortable lived-in structure even when the dialogues raise thorny issues on the Great Religious Divide.
The film outwardly seems to scoff at ritualistic religion. The script, derived from Josh Apignanesi’s The Infidel turns the satire on anti-Semitism to a pro-Islamic statement.
The very idea of talking religion so openly on screen seems audacious enough.
There are scenes in the early part of the film where Rawal’s Gujarati Hindu character scuffles verbally with his Muslim neighbour, played with emphatic elan by Annu Kapoor.
These scenes are the backbone of the film. The dialogues penetrate sacrosanct spaces occupied by both the religious orders, offending both and thereby hurting none, so to speak.
Hats off the Rawal and Kapoor and the dialogue writers (Alpesh Dixit, Sanjay Sharma, Vijay Desai) for the absorbing lines shared by the two characters.
Pithy’ the words are lost in contrived translation. In trying to be faithful to the original material, Dharam Sanket Mein ends up being a bit of a botch and a whole lot of hash.
The twist when Rawal’s wife suspects him of having a homosexual affair with his neighbour fitted in well into the original.
Here it looks forced and embarrassing.
“Tumhe kya lagta hai main gay hoon? Main bilkul straight hoon,” Rawal chuckles to his screen wife, making you wish he was gay after all…Perhaps the tedium of tirelessly lampooning ritualistic religion would have broken.
The film’s main dramatic core when Rawal discovers his Islamic parentage is squandered in trying to be sassy and funny.
Throughout the film while Rawal discovers his religious identity, audiences become more and more confused about their own religious allegiances.
Adding to the identity crisis are the songs. Punjabi star Gippy Singh shows up dancing to Bhangra beat whose significance is as hard to decode as the reason why Naseer would take up a role so ridiculously over-blown.
Naseeruddin Shah as the Hindu godman Neel Anand Baba is quite evidently modeled on a certain self-styled rock-star guru.
Naseer seems to have a lot of fun chanting the cheesy lines and being extra-friendly with female devotees.
The fun, alas, never filters down to the audience.There is an inherent dryness to the drama that is hard to ignore. And even harder to digest.
As the screenplay serenades a stupendous surfeit of absurdities, you are left counting the blessings inherent in the theme of infidelity.
It gives filmmakers the freedom to think out of the box. Though how far that freedom is taken is entirely a matter of individual vision.Dharam Sankat Mein has some lucid moments of self-questioning where the religious divide is pungently scrutinized and satirized.
Hilarity at the cost of organised religion is not an easy target to achieve for any filmmaker.This films achieves a remarkable threshold of thoughtful humour.
Though a lot of it is gradually eroded by over-punctuated satire, this is that rare film which takes potshots at the religious divide without offending anyone.(IANS)