RATINGS: (Romantic,Drama)

DIRECTOR: Ayaan Mukerjee.

CAST: Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Kalki Koechlin, Aditya Roy Kapur .

MOVIE FROM CRITICS POINT OF VIEW!!!

This may be Ayan Mukherjee's second film,but with Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani,he has proved that he is not a one time wonder with wake up sid!Back from his first film, his chemistry with Ranbir Kapoor is what that stands out in this film.Here is one team that will make it very,very big in Bollywood.And with Ranbir stating in pre - release interviews that he wants to work in all of Ayaan's films,we can definitely look forward to a great bollywood fare.

Back to the film,Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is a bright, breezy and brassy film designed for easy consumption. What it certainly is not is ballsy. For all the big ideas about life and the dilemmas of youth that it tosses up in the air over a runtime that’s 20 minutes shy of three hours, it always opts to play safe, vacillating between thoughts of rebellion and acts of conformity.

The characters spout familiar platitudes to each other: live your dream, get a life and move on, stop pitying yourself and learn to love thyself…We have seen and heard it all before. 

In the first half of the film, four happy-go-lucky school buddies with superficially defined traits reunite to go on a trekking trip to Manali and beyond.

Bunny (Ranbir Kapoor) is footloose and dreams of exploring the world. Aditi (Kalki Koechlin) is wild and fancy-free. Avi (Aditya Roy Kapur) is a drifter happy to blow up his cash on cricket bets.

Naina (Deepika Padukone) is the odd one out. She is a bespectacled and sedate medical student. She joins the gang in an act of impulsive defiance but cannot break away from her neuro-immunology textbook even as the rest of the traveling party live it up on the road. 

By the end of the adventure-filled sojourn through the ups and downs of the undulating landscape, each of the four is transformed a little, but only to go his/her way.

Eight years later, one of the two girls in the group, Aditi, decides to marry a straight-laced engineer (Kunaal Roy Kapur) and her old friends descend on a resort in Udaipur for the grand betrothal.

And like they did the first time around, they come and go talking about love, friendship and the need to grow up even as they consume a whole lot of liquor. 

Between the swigs, love and friendship do happen, but the quartet does not quite grow up. 

The high-flying Bunny, after several years of globe-trotting as a television cameraman, talks of the pleasure of watching Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. In response, the more rooted Naina extols the joy of seeing Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge with a tub of popcorn at Maratha Mandir. 

Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is clearly more of the latter than the former although it does occasionally betray the ambition to be larger in scope than what it is capable of. 

It is a mildly diverting film at best. Its musical set pieces are robustly staged and with Ranbir Kapoor at the centre of them all, they are fun while they last. 

The characters are rather sketchily etched and the psychological bends that they encounter on the way to self-realization are far too simplistic to catch the audience by surprise. 

Neither the romance nor the drama that the film seeks to whip up can salvage it from being just another harmless romp aimed at an undemanding audience that is comfortable with swimming at the shallow end of life. 

There is no denying, however, that Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is gorgeously filmed, the locations are eye-popping, and the guys and dolls that people the tale are a bunch of attractive people. 

The two lead actors, Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone, do make a fetching onscreen pair. And they are well complemented by Aditya Roy Kapur and Kalki Koechlin. 

It is the erratic narrative arc that is a letdown. Overlong, sluggish and fluffy, it meanders through varied locations as the young lovers/friends seek to reconnect with each other after a few years of being apart. 

The song and dance routines, no matter how foot-tapping they are, do not quite possess the kind of infectious energy that can offset the clichés around which they are wrapped and turn the film into something more than just superficially enjoyable.

Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is a mix of Dil Chahta Hai and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, with dollops of 3 Idiots thrown in for good measure. It is all served up in a Karan Johar-style concoction where the backdrops – both indoors and the locations – are infinitely more expressive than the inner worlds of the young characters.

The impulses of the quartet of friends, who predictably include one couple that is on the verge of a lifelong relationship but are either unable or not keen enough to express their love for each other, are hardly explained in logical and convincing terms. As a result, the fragmented storyline hurtles forward only in fits and starts. 

The heroine is head over heels in love. The boy she is smitten with is averse to making a commitment. The girl is unable to communicate her true feelings. So you know exactly what the outcome is going to be. They will keep crossing each other’s path until true love is found. 

Director Ayan Mukherji, who gave an impressive account of himself in his debut film, Wake Up Sid, appears to have allowed the skills that he displayed the first time around to go into deep slumber.

Not that Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is a sleeping pill. It is not. But it could certainly have done with a little more narrative verve.

Movie From Fans Point Of View!!!

This section is really very much interesting to write as all the fans of Ranbir & Deepika were desperate for the release of this film as it would bring the Ex-BTown love Birds back together in the silver screen.With plenty of variety available in this film surely from a fan point of view it would be a full-on paisa vasool film!!! With some awesome latke's & jhatke's & some serious mind blowing music this film is a must watch!!! Bit coming back to the expectations that the fans of these actors carry on them,the film fails to keep the expectations high!!!With some usual story & some "always known" climax this film fails to prove a point!!! Not to worry much on that as it would be neatly covered somehow by some nice music score. With 'Badtameez Dil','Dilli waali Girlfriend' the film would be surely enjoyable!!!With the film released on May 31,2013, it has somehow made a great impact in the box office & from a fan point of view i would surely like the box office ticking!!!!!

Do make it a point to get into your seat before the show begins. Madhuri Dixit’s item song plays out ten minutes into the film. Watch Ranbir Kapoor match steps with the still-lustrous diva and you know why this guy is special. Watch Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani for him. 

RATINGS FROM TOP SITES

INDIA TODAY  :  Rating:

TIMES OF INDIA : Rating:

HINDHUSTAN TIMES : Rating:

BOLLYWOOD REVIEWZ :  Rating: 

DECCAN HERALD : Rating:

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TAGS: Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani Review,Badtameez dil,YJHD Review,Ranbir Kapoor,Deepika Padukone,YJHD Ratings.

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RATING

 (Dance)

Cast:Kay Kay Menon, Prabhu Deva, Salman Yusuf Khan, Lauren Gottlieb, Prince Gupta, Dharmesh Yelande and Mayuresh Wadkar
Director: Remo DSouza

Spoilers ahead


Is ABCD – Anybody Can Dance the Lagaan of dance? Not by a long chalk. Knowledge of the ABCD of choreography – of which there is no dearth at all in this film – certainly doesn't guarantee cinematic excellence and narrative grasp.

India's first-ever 3-D dance film is replete with robust routines that certainly vouch for director Remo D'Souza's undeniable proficiency as a choreographer. The film also has the likes of Prabhu Deva and Ganesh Acharya, besides a host of Dance India Dance participants (Dharmesh Yelande, Salman Yusuff Khan, et al), in the cast. They give it their all.

If only they also had the services of a functioning screenplay and not just been saddled with half-baked plot contrivances to hang their acts on, ABCD might have gone beyond just those first four letters of the alphabet.
There is no denying that the film has its share of infectious energy and that the newcomers in the cast do go about their roles with commendable enthusiasm. It is the sluggish pace of the story-telling that prevents ABCD from rising to any great heights as an entertainer.

It revolves around a television dance show called Dance Dil Se – what else could it have been? The contest has just been won through means fair and fail by a top dance company owned by the flamboyant Jehangir Khan (Kay Kay Menon). The dance master of the troupe, Chennai native Vishnu (Prabhudheva), does not approve of the owner's unsavoury methods. He puts his foot down, so he is thrown out and replaced by an American choreographer.

A slighted Vishnu joins forces with old pal Gopi (Ganesh Acharya). The duo takes a bunch of young slum boys and girls under their wings with the intention of turning them into a team of dance champions. That is what the film is essentially about: in what is projected as an unequal battle, a group of privileged kids who can afford the high fees of Jehangir's academy are pitted against a disadvantaged group of wastrels who have only their talent and Vishnu's tips to fall back upon.

Jehangir believes that "we dance to impress". Vishnu, who feels the rhythms around him, in the leaves on tree branches, in the sea waves and among the flying birds, exhorts his team to "dance to express".
The drama, interspersed with freestyle dance performances that draw moves from varied influences, plays out along predictable lines.

Thrown into the mix are all manner of cliches about puppy love, friendship, bitter rivalries, heartburns, the troubles of an drug addict, parental opposition, tragedies, subterfuge, betrayal and, finally, triumph.

Some of the dance routines, especially the one in which Vishnu's team adopts the guise of circus clowns, are brilliant. A solo performance by Prabhu Deva is, not surprisingly, one of the high points of the film.
He is also the lead actor of ABCD – a first for him in a Hindi film. His endearing accent enhances the authenticity of the character – he is a man who left Chennai 15 years ago to pursue his dreams in Mumbai.
On the acting front, ABCD is Kay Kay Menon's film. Neither the role nor the situations that he finds himself in are etched out with much clarity and purpose. Yet, riding on his magnetic screen presence, he repeatedly rises above the limitations of the script.

It is his character that probably puts it best. "Indians don't have brains," he admonishes his American hire when the latter makes a suggestion ahead of the dance show finale. "Talent doesn't matter here. It is all about packaging. Mediocrity rules."

Take your pick. There is a whole lot of dancing talent on show here. It is the packaging that lets down the performers -- and the viewers.

And why, pray, is this film in 3-D? It isn't about Pina Bausch and Remo D'Souza is no Wim Wenders.

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RATING

 (Action/Crime)
Thursday, February 07, 2013 

Cast:Akshay Kumar, Kajal Aggarwal, Manoj Bajpayee and Anupam Kher

Director: Neeraj Pandey

SPOILERS AHEAD

One absolutely failsafe way of figuring out the efficacy of a movie is to measure how heavy its runtime weighs on the audience.

Special 26 is actually quite a long film – it is a shade under two and a half hours. But it feels much shorter than it really is.

It glides by with such effortlessness that it leaves behind no unsightly footmarks.

Special 26 is an intelligently scripted, superbly acted, enthralling and believable heist film that is more than just that.

Writer-director Neeraj Pandey’s maiden film, A Wednesday, was a taut thriller that delivered a sharp comment on the nation’s frequent and bloody brushes with the spectre of terrorism.

This one turns the spotlight, if only tangentially, on India’s collective and seemingly never-ending struggle to rid itself of the scourge of rampant corruption.

Special 26, "inspired by true incidents", is set in the first few months of 1987, one of the final years of the long-entrenched licence-permit raj that allowed self-serving politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen to rob the people of the country at will and with impunity.

Without spelling it out in so many words, the film poses the question: a quarter century on, has anything really changed? Special 26 deals with an era that is long gone. Yet the central issue that it raises is still as relevant as ever.

At the heart of the film is an intriguing battle of wits between an honest-to-a-fault CBI officer Waseem Khan (Manoj Bajpayee) on the one hand and a cynical con artist Ajay Vardhan (Akshay Kumar) and his older associate P.K. Sharma (Anupam Kher) on the other.

While one is a committed custodian of a terribly flawed enforcement system, the other two think nothing of exploiting its many loopholes to serve their own get-rich-quick designs.

Waseem is a government functionary willing to slug it out in the field even as he waits patiently for a promised promotion and a better pay packet.

He asks his boss in mock-seriousness: "Can’t make ends meet. Should I start taking bribes?" That, of course, is the last thing on his mind.

Ajay, on the other hand, has a reason to be cut up with the way life has treated him. So he and his accomplices are out to make those who live off the fat of the land pay for their greed.

There is no hero or villain here – both Waseem and Ajay are common men simply going about their lives, each opting for his own methods.

None of the main characters, let alone the minor ones, has detailed back stories that could help the audience grasp exactly where they are coming from. Yet each of them is generally interesting enough to be integral to the jigsaw that the film is.

Neeraj Pandey is particularly adept at laying out his principal spaces and extracting dramatic value from them – the locations and settings play an important part in not only taking the story forward, but also in capturing the shifting moods of the different players.

The cavernous and haphazardly lit CBI office where Waseem works, the huge; red-carpeted hall in which the fake law enforcers conduct the interviews to recruit young intelligence officials for one final mission; the streets and interiors where the raids take place; and the various terraces on/from which the sleuths operate (the director obviously has a fixation for rooftops) are all vital (and not merely incidental) elements in the narrative.

Even the minor characters have clearly identified locations – Joginder (Rajesh Sharma) belongs to Old Delhi, Iqbal (Kishore Kadam) is a Jaipur man and film’s only romantic interest is a teacher whose Mumbai school makes an appearance a few times.

These details of space, even when they are only fleeting, serve the purpose of underlining the slants and motives of the characters.

If there is a weak link in Special 26, it is the somewhat laboured love story involving Ajay and his pretty Mumbai neighbour, Priya (Kajal Aggarwal). Ignore the inevitable love ditties and a big fat wedding number, and there is little else in the film that would appear out of place.

Especially well executed is the daring CBI raid that the film opens with – it is conducted on Republic Day 1987 in the bungalow of a corrupt and cowering minister.

The build-up is steady and the cat-and-mouse game that the real CBI men play with the fake ones assumes increasing urgency as the film hurtles towards the final flashpoint – an audacious sortie on a high-end jewellery store in Mumbai.

Besides the gripping climactic moments – the highlight of which is a surprise last-minute twist – the film has a superbly mounted chase scene in Delhi’s Connaught Place as Waseem and his men zero on a suspect.

Special 26 hinges on four pivotal performances, with Manoj Bajpayee’s star turn being the standout one. It is a classic demonstration of what a consummate actor can achieve when he is at complete ease with the material at his disposal.

The pre-climactic scene between Bajpayee the armed interrogator and Anupam Kher the cornered target is remarkable for both its intensity and wit. The encounter crackles with controlled energy.

Akshay Kumar, shorn of all his superhero trappings, is a revelation. He stands up to the challenge with effort to spare. And Jimmy Shergill, whose invariably steady work often flies under our collective radars, is splendid as the man in uniform who has a score to settle with the conmen.

Just one grouse: wish Rajesh Sharma and Kishore Kadam were given a better deal. They are too good to be wasted in walk-on parts.

Verdict: Special 26 truly special. Not be missed. 

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Actors: Rajat Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Anupam Kher, Ronit Roy, Satya Bhabha, Seema Biswas, Shahana Goswami, Siddharth, Anita Majumdar, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Darsheel Safary, Soha Ali Khan and Shriya Saran

Director: Deepa Mehta

Rating: **1/2

Deepa Mehta's "Midnight's Children" is not a well-crafted film of Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name. Yet it captures the essence of the novel to the core.

Told through the lives of the children born at the stroke of midnight of Aug 15, 1947, especially, Salim, Shiva and Parvati, it is a multi-layered tale of destinies. It is a story of the rich, the poor and the misguided.

It is fiction and fantasy delightfully wrapped within the folds of the political scenario of the three countries, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

What precedes the birth of Salim is a complex tale that is narrated in the first 45 minutes of the film. Inspired by her rebel husband's communist slogan, "Let the rich be poor and the poor, rich", the misguided paediatric nurse, Mary, deliberately switches the identity tags of the two babies as a gesture of solidarity and thereby swaps their destinies.

Moving ahead, in childhood, Salim discovers that thanks to a sneeze and the sniffles, he can hear and see all of the other 581 surviving children around the country born at the same historic day and time as he.

Dubbing them as Midnight's Children, he has the power to call "conferences" in his bedroom late at night, bringing their presence together from all parts to plan the fate of the nation, including the hot-headed Shiva and pretty and mystical Parvati, the spell-weaving witch.

The three are intertwined again as adults in the film's last act when Shiva, now a ruthless military commander, and Salim, following six years of amnesia, become involved with the beautiful adult witch, Parvati against the background of Indira Gandhi's brutal emergency measures.

Rushdie's rich characters are brought to life by a strong ensemble of esteemed actors whose performances were well extracted by director Deepa Mehta. Debutant Satya Bhabha delivers a confident performance as the grown up Salim and Siddharth is the perfect foil for him as the embittered Shiva. Darsheel Safary as the young Salim is undoubtedly brilliant.

The competent Seema Biswas is charming as the misguided, guilt-ridden nurse and the catalyst for the unfolding sequence of events. Shahana Goswami smoothly conveys the poignant turmoil of the mother inadvertently caught in the cross-fire, while Ronit Roy is exacting as the frustrated businessman. Anita Majumdar also makes an impression as the hard-hearted, ambitious Emerald, alongside Rahul Bose as her military power-broker husband, Zulfikar.

Rajat Kapoor as Dr.Aziz, Salim's putative grandfather is amusing. Shabana Azmi as Rajat Kapoor's wife, Sriya Sharan as Parvati, Soha Ali Khan as Salim's sister and Kulbhushan Kharbanda as Picture Singh are wasted.

Visually, the film encompasses scenes of war, liberation, celebration, corruption, romance and mourning - all beautifully captured by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens. The visuals are brilliantly layered with Nitin Sawhney's ethereal score, making it a perfect backdrop with the mystical quality of the magic realism scenes; it is like watching a stunning canvas gradually come to life.

Even with Salman Rushdie's narration and screenplay, what probably did not work for "Midnight's Children" are the abrupt scenes. Each scene is brilliant, but in silos, disconnected with the next, making it difficult to capture and bring to life the essence of the book that combines a type of unexplained practicality.

Yet this is a striking, well-produced and thoughtfully designed epic.

Even with all its flaws, "Midnight's Children" is worth a watch. If nothing else, go and watch "Midnight's Children" to satiate your curiosity about this much-talked about novel.

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