Chennai Express movie review

Let me start by saying that I am no fan of SRK; just find him  incredibly adorable in some scenes; and again as in JTHJ there is a reference, be it minor, to his increasing 'seniority'; though, of course, he 'does not act his age'; the initial scenes in the movie where he prepares to go to Goa and the ones in the train where he encounters the goons are unbelievably juvenile and cinematic.

Most of the time we see happy families speaking with a heavy accent and a liberal mix of Punjabi vocabulary in their Hindi in Bollywood movies.  Chennai Express offers a refreshing change of scenario to beautiful Tamil homes and streets.  In fact the movie itself has loads of dialogues in Tamil.

But what mars this beautiful change is Deepika's Tamil accent!  Unbelievable!  Infuriating!!   Does this mean that all Tamilians speak Hindi with such an annoying accent??  Listen to Vidya Balan, Hemamalini - just two great actors I remembered from the top of my head!  They speak Hindi more beautifully than many other native speakers of the language!  Of course the Hindi that non- native speakers speak will have some remnants of influence of other languages but that is quite negligible.  I think in Chennai express the 'accent' thingy is supposed to be a comedy in itself, but according to me its in very poor taste!

Chennai Express has some vibrant colors in it; breathtaking scenery ( for all I know could be graphics) but overall a good entertainer!

Jab tak hai jaan - Hindi movie review

SRK, Katrina Kaif and Anushka Sharma

One refreshing thing is SRK acts his age at least for some part of the movie.  It is a welcome break from seeing him as 'just out of college' kid.  With the opening, Samar (SRK) is shown as challenging death, he takes on risky assignments such as bomb defusing in the Indian Army.  According to him, its only his death which will make Katrina (Meera) lose her faith in God (with whom she has a barter system going on).  She has given up seeing him because of one such barter, even though she is deeply in love with him in spite of being engaged to another man.

Meera's understanding of love is somewhat incomplete; she thinks love is something to be avoided.  Her mother's elopement with another man when she was 12 probably had a huge influence on her outlook.  But in comes Samar with his happy go lucky attitude and creates a reunion between mother and daughter.  She sees her mom very happy and content with her partner.  After the reconciliation Meera's outlook on love is entirely the opposite of her previous one - now she thinks people have to run away to find true love.  Her habit of 'praying' to God frequently and having an ongoing agreement of barter system is very annoying. 

However Anushka's character (Akira) is more annoying with her rustic attitude of youngsters and sex.  She has no problem bringing it up even to strangers.

Unless you are a fan of either of these actors, you can skip this movie.

Movie review - Main Gandhi ko nahi mara

I was left wondering how this Gandhiji related title was suitable for a film based on dementia/Alzheimer's. 

Anupam Kher dons the role of an absent minded professor, whose absentmindedness is actually the beginning of a more serious brain deterioration.  It could be age-related, because he is retired from active service for a couple of years, but still remembers some incidents with vivid detail.  Urmila Matondkar is the only daughter between two boys, older one away in the US and younger one still in college.  Not wanting to trouble her older brother she takes up the responsibility of caring for her father - taking him to doctors and worries over him.  The younger brother immaturely talks about admitting his dad in an 'asylum' which angers Urmila and rightly so.

Things shoot out of control when Urmila's four year boyfriend's parents visit to discuss the possible marriage when her dad bursts out in anger for having kept a teacup inadvertly on Gandhiji's picture.  Urmila is caught in between her father's deteriorating mental health and the insensitivity of her boyfriend.  Its when she finds him married that her world collapses, but she has to pull on for her father's sake - he has had more instances of running away from home and even setting his room on fire.  He repeatedly says that it he did not kill Gandhiji.

A good doctor comes into the picture and his approach turns around things.  The family unlocks their father's obsession with his guilty feeling.  An unexpected experiment turns out to be a success and things get back to normalcy.

Its only possible in Indian movies that the topic starts off as brain dysfunction and ends up in patriotism!