About Time (2013)

Rating : 7/10
Release Date : 11th October, 2013
Time : 123 minutes
Director & Writer: Richard Curtis; Music : Nick Laird-Clowes
Starring : Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Lydia Wilson, Lindsay Duncan, Richard Cordery, Joshua McGuire, Margot Robbie, Tom Hollander, Tom Hughes

One of the alternate taglines for my book, Eighteen Plus, was ‘Romantic Comedies. With sex’, before we chose to go with the much classier ‘Bedtime Stories. For Grown-Ups’. The reason I bring that up is that the tagline for this movie could just as easily have been ‘Romantic Comedy. With Time Travel’ or even ‘A Father-Son relationship. With a touch of Science Fiction’

 

The men in Bill Nighy’s family have always had a secret. After they turn twenty one, they can travel back in time. Only back in their own lives, as Bill Nighy explains to his bewildered son, Domhnall, “You cant kill Hitler or shag Helen of Troy” but you can travel, quite easily, back and forth, by simply visualizing the moment you want to be transported to. Key question now confronting the gob-smacked Dom is, what do you do with such a gift ? He and his father attempt to find out what they (and anyone else) should want out of life, with or without such an ability…

I love British humour and this film is no exception, especially coming from Richard Curtis and starring the lovely Rachel McAdams (as Domnhall’s love interest), who continues to endear herself to me in every role I see her in. Domhnall, who revels in his lead role bringing the right amount of bewilderment and confidence to his character and most importantly, Bill Nighy, who steals the show with his fantastic turn as the father, combining humour and life’s lessons with effortless ease…

 

The bizarre walks to the beach in Cornwall, the movie sessions, the ping pong games, the early, sweet crush on Margot Robbie, the eccentric sister, Lydia, the brusque mother, Lindsay, the impeccably dressed uncle, Richard, the walks in and out of the tube station with Rachel, the importance of Kate Moss, the crazy playwright, Tom and the gentle humour permeating every scene make it really enjoyable.

 

The pace, never too nippy ever, does flag a bit, especially in the second half. The time travel thing does seem like a little bit of a bolt on – and you do wonder, if someone had that gift, would he solely use it to chase love, as Dom seems to, without ever getting tempted to go for money, fame or power ?

However, the end does come together nicely. Important lessons to most of us, who seem too absorbed in building for the future to be able to take our days, calmly, one at a time, stopping ever so often to reflect, smell the coffee and the roses around us, to revel in what we do have rather than forever hanker for what we don’t. Happiness, after all, doesn’t need to be postponed for tomorrow but can be enjoyed everyday…

Mickey Virus (2013)

 

 

Starring: Manish Paul, Elli Avram, Manish Choudhary, Varun Badola, Puja Gupta, Nitesh Pandey

 

Today's youth is extremely tech-savvy and most of them would not get lost within all the technology and gadgets that are floating around these days. Mickey Virus (Paul) is one such techie youngster who, along with his friends, solve IT issues, create viruses, hack into peoples accounts and a lot more for money. ACP Siddharth (Choudhary) of the New Delhi police, gets wind of Mickey and his accomplishments and persuades him to do some good work for the police force and help them round up hackers who are carrying out illegal activities. Mickey and his friends are developing a game called Kung Fu Chameli and ironically, he meets his real life Chameli who resembles her in almost every way. Mickey falls in love with Kamayani (Avram) but he later realises that her love costed him a lot when one fine morning he is charged with murder and money laundering, something he never actually did. The movie tries to target the young guns and toady's lifestyle and mix that with a crime story. Manish Paul is known for his comedy acts and he has skilfully carried them forward to the movie. The plot and movie progression is smooth and linear but what actually gave everything away is the climax. The movie fails to open in an exciting manner, and instead becomes a narration of the entire plot and lands up being one big joke. It was a good attempt with almost everything correct, but the ultimate suspense is what gave this movie away. An interesting watch just for one time, but do not expect too much.

American Reunion (2012)

Genre: Comedy/Drama/Adventure/Romance

 

Starring: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klien, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Tara Reid, Seann William Scott, Mena Suvari, Eddie Kaye Thomas, John Cho, Jennifer Coolidge, Eugene Levy, Katrina Bowden, Ali Cobrin, Dania Ramirez, Chuck Hittinger, Vik Sahay, Jay Harrington

 

The American Pie series played a very large role in bringing sex-comedy in mainline cinema and poking fun at college life. Ever since then, many spin-offs and versions were formed but nothing seemed to do justice like the first 3 movies did with their original star cast. With the original cast now grown up in reality, the movie tries to build upon that by reuniting them and making it a movie of growing old versus the new generation. Jim (Biggs) and Michelle (Hannigan) now have a baby boy and are leading the typical married life. Their sex life is not going too well and both of them are not very happy about it. The class of '99 is reuniting at East Great Falls and Jim, Michelle along with their son plan on meeting Jim's dad (Levy) and meeting the old gang once more. Kevin (Nicholas) is happily married to his wife, Oz (Klien) is a sportscaster on a TV news channel, Finch (Thomas) is an adventurer and traveller and Stiffler (Scott) works as a temp at an investment firm. Jim bumps into Kara (Cobrin), the girl next door whom he used to babysit, who holds a secret desire to lose her virginity to Jim. Kevin meets Vicky (Reid) and finds all his previous emotions towards her coming back to life which he does not know how to control. Oz is dating a sex-hungry super model Mia (Bowden) but realises he still loves Heather (Suvari). The movie comes across as a breathe of fresh air amongst other movies who seem to only focus on sex and nudity and not bother too much about humour. This movie, instead, focuses on trying to make you laugh and everything else is a means to an end. The audience of the original movie would have grown over the years too and hence can also relate to the older life as against the college days. The movie showcases maturity very well, although there are some moments with too much emotion and dialogues and pulls away from the humour, but all in all if you have enjoyed the movies of the original cast then this movie would never let you down.

 

Thumbs up: LOL funny and a good improvement from the original movie

Thumbs down: Those few emotional moments that could be avoided

 

Rating: 7.1/10

Grand Masti

 

Genre: Comedy/Drama

 

Starring: Vivek Oberoi, Aftab Shivdasani, Ritesh Deshmukh, Manjari Phadnis, Karishma Tanna, Maryam Zakaria, Bruna Abdullah, Kainaat Arora, Pradeep Rawat, Sonalee Kulkarni, Suresh Menon

 

First step, collect all the famous gags and jokes from American Pie, Mr. Bean and Austin Powers movie, put them all together one after the other, hope that the audience has never seen those movies in the past, add loads of skimpy bikini clad girls and voila! Amar (Deshmukh), Meet (Oberoi) and Prem (Shivdasani) are good friends who have now moved on in life and are all married. Amar is unable to make love to his wife anymore ever since his son, Pappu came into this world. Meet's wife is his senior at work who is too involved with work to give him any attention and Prem's wife is extremely occupied with the house chores to spend time with him. Frustrated, the trio decide to attend their college re-union without their wives so they can get lucky with some college girls and once again re-live their happy days. The movie is an assortment of sleaze and random jokes that do not seem to blend with the story and exist only to supposedly entertain. An over-load of nonsensical humour coupled with horrible performances and a non-existing story, creates the perfect environment to walk out of the movie in the first 30 minutes itself. Yes, there is loads of eye candy in the movie to ogle at and if that is your objective of watching the movie then go ahead, else avoid at all costs.

 

Thumbs up: Nothing

Thumbs down: No story, too much sex

 

Rating: 3.0/10

Mickey Virus

 

 

Rating : 5/10
Release Date : 25th October, 2013
Time : 135 minutes
Director : Saurabh Varma; Writer: Gaurav Varma, Saurabh Varma, Elvin Raja; Music : Hanif Shaikh
Starring : Manish Paul, Elli Avram, Manish Choudhary, Varun Badola, Puja Gupta, Raghav Kakkar, Vikesh Kumar, Nitesh Pandey

If I take out the conversations involving the amiable, wise-cracking cop Varun Badola and some of the cool T-shirts, there is little to recommend about the film. It’s a nice idea let down by very shoddy execution…in terms of performance (including Manish Paul in the title role), plot (all over the place) and pace (uneven – again the insertion of romance doesn’t help a thriller move forward)…

Its about a hacker. Who falls in love. With a girl (Elli Avram) he sees in a vegetable market. He is also being chased by two Delhi cops (Manish Choudhary and Varun) to help them solve a cyber crimes case. And his core group of friends, involving names like Chutney, Floppy etc (Puja, Raghav, Vikesh) help out when needed, with the Professor (Nitesh) being requisitioned when the virus hits the fan, the data overflow goes over the head etc

The issues with the plot, characterization are manifold – we’re told Manish is lazy but have precious little evidence of that…similarly we’re told he is brilliant (can do stuff that foreign hackers can’t do, even the Professor struggles with) but again that too has to be taken on trust because his personal circumstances, personality don’t match up to that level of intellect…the climax with its multitude of revelations was almost laughable in terms of everything conveniently falling into place…

The best moments involve Varun – who delivers the best performance in the film by far – and his humour laden invective and snappy one-liners. Manish Choudary is convincing as the upright (literally) cop until the end, which just didn’t make sense. The music and songs didn’t work at all. There were other odd moments in the film that were good but they were tucked away amidst a lot that was either unnecessary or left unexplained

Superhero Movie 2008

 

Genre: Comedy/Spoof/Science-fiction/Action

 

Starring: Drake Bell, Sara Paxton, Christopher McDonald, Leslie Nielsen, Kevin Hart, Marion Ross, Ryan Hansen

 

Making a spoof of an extremely popular movie is not exactly new and superheroes are a soft target due to their trademark behaviour and at times outlandish stunts. Rick Riker (Bell) gets bitten by a dragonfly on a field trip and gets super powers but does not get the ability to fly. He has a crush on Jill (Paxton) from his college and tries hard to woo her. Lou Landers (McDonald) is a multi-millionaire whose new invention can give him possible immortality. He needs to harness his technology better in order to gain ultimate freedom. The movie is a frame by frame spoof of the first Spiderman movie with the dragonfly replacing the spider. Don't be misled by the movies title since one might expect the movie to be a cumulative spoof of the many superhero movies. Unfortunately, the movie solely rests on the Spiderman and all other movie references are a blink and miss. The movie poster might convince you otherwise but don't be fooled. This not only makes the movie boring but also does not live up to it's name. Can be watched once just for the heck of it but don't go out of the way.

 

Thumbs up: Some decent spoofs

Thumbs down: Not outright funny, does not have other superhero movies except Spiderman

 

Rating: 4.7/10