Quick reviews - Garam Masala and Englishkaaran
Garam Masala - After the nightmarish experience I had watching James, I had decided not to watch any Hindi movies for a while, unless that movie is a critically acclaimed good movie (like an Iqbal). But due to the compulsion of my friend, I had to go to this new movie titled Garam Masala, a movie Rediff claimed to be the funniest movie of the year. Though I was reluctant, I saw Priyadharshan's name against the director's slot. So finally decided to go to the movie consoling myself, "He has given us movies like Siraichalai and Hera Pheri. So he can not disappoint me very much"
Boy, was I wrong or what!! After the movie, as I was leaving the theater, I was left cursing my friend. It turned out to be such a pathetic movie with full of some loud mouthed and absolutely bullshit comedy. As they say, there should be this inherent honesty & sincerity while making a movie of any genre, even if it is a comedy movie or a pure masala movie. A typical masala movie has 5 songs, 4 fights and a bunch of sentiment & comedy scenes but only those movies which stay true to the story make it big in the box office (Dhool would be a very good example for that). Similar is the case with any stereotype comedy movie. There are bound to be a number of illogical & stupid scenes in a comedy movie but the premise on which those comedy scenes are built upon should be meaningful and believeable. Take our recent Panchathanthiram (IMO, the best comedy movie of recent times) for example. The film has so many of those illogical scenes which sends us one into uncontrollable bouts of laughter but at the same time, it is hard to miss the meaningful story & plot on which all those scenes were built on. Garam Masala does not have one such meaningful story line and that is the one big reason the movie falls flat. Even by the half-way mark of the first half, I was looking at my watch waiting for the movie to end. Not a good sign for a comedy movie where we should forget ourselves.
The only saving grace in the whole movie was Paresh Rawal. It was such a relief to watch someone as natural as him in the movie. And no wonder he succeeded in evoking the maximum laughter from the audience. Everything about him - be it his dialogue delivery or his body language - made me laugh but still that wasn't enough for me not to regret my decision of going to the movie in the first place.
The film clearly reflected one thing - that there is absolutely nothing in the name of creativity in the director's mind. The plot of the movie is wafer thin and it is clear that the director has given little thought to come up with any interesting/ funny situations. So, all we get to see in the name of comedy is people shuffling between rooms and falling & tripping over couches. There is not one single scene I can recall as hilarious. To add on to that, the leading actors too let the director down so badly. To say that Both Akshay and John Abraham were horrible, would be a gross understatement. And the less said about the heroines, the better. All they had to do was show some skin and be as artificial as possible. Songs were ordinary and sounded like recycled/ rehashed version of some popular songs. (The itwofs site has already confirmed that 3 of the songs have been lifted from other sources).
Overall, a must stay away movie, by all means.
Englishkaran - Rented this one after reading some good words about the movie in Lazygeek's blog. But this too turned out to be such a huge disappointment. I mean, I did not start watching the movie with huge expectations of the movie turning out to be a great one. But I started watching it as I would do for any Sathya Raj movie of the recent years - satirical and at the same time, funny. Though there were some scenes where I was rolling on the floor laughing, the rest of the movie was such a drag to sit through. The sole highlights of the movie were the scenes where Sathya Raj was going about imitating just about everybody in the film world. Some of the actors/ actresses he was imitating were - Chimbhu, Jyothika in Chandramukhi and Ravikrishna in 7GRC & his own son in Student No. 1. My personal favorite was the 7GRC song which had me in splits. The other good thing one has to appreciate is that he has even mocked the way his own son dances. As long as you take everything lightly, I bet you will enjoy those sequences.
But take those sequences and you have a film which you will find hard to sit through. The thing I hate about such films (directed by Shakthi Chidambaram) is that he tries to convey something called a message through the movie. In this movie, the message is that when someone has the talent & the determination to achieve something in life, he/she should not be discouraged and should be given all the right appreciation and encouragement. That is what ticks me off. Bcos to convey this above said message, the director's case study is Namitha trying to be a 100m runner. How horrible is that?! I mean, she can't even walk 100m without taking long breathes and she is shown as someone who wants to win a gold medal in the Asian games. Atrocious!! If they had even shown her as someone specializing in discuss throw or shot-put, I would have gladly taken it. But then in that case, you know you cant have some scenes (like herself running), scenes for which the film's target audience would come to watch. At the end of the day, I was left wondering how Lazygeek had even few good things to say about this movie.
Boy, was I wrong or what!! After the movie, as I was leaving the theater, I was left cursing my friend. It turned out to be such a pathetic movie with full of some loud mouthed and absolutely bullshit comedy. As they say, there should be this inherent honesty & sincerity while making a movie of any genre, even if it is a comedy movie or a pure masala movie. A typical masala movie has 5 songs, 4 fights and a bunch of sentiment & comedy scenes but only those movies which stay true to the story make it big in the box office (Dhool would be a very good example for that). Similar is the case with any stereotype comedy movie. There are bound to be a number of illogical & stupid scenes in a comedy movie but the premise on which those comedy scenes are built upon should be meaningful and believeable. Take our recent Panchathanthiram (IMO, the best comedy movie of recent times) for example. The film has so many of those illogical scenes which sends us one into uncontrollable bouts of laughter but at the same time, it is hard to miss the meaningful story & plot on which all those scenes were built on. Garam Masala does not have one such meaningful story line and that is the one big reason the movie falls flat. Even by the half-way mark of the first half, I was looking at my watch waiting for the movie to end. Not a good sign for a comedy movie where we should forget ourselves.
The only saving grace in the whole movie was Paresh Rawal. It was such a relief to watch someone as natural as him in the movie. And no wonder he succeeded in evoking the maximum laughter from the audience. Everything about him - be it his dialogue delivery or his body language - made me laugh but still that wasn't enough for me not to regret my decision of going to the movie in the first place.
The film clearly reflected one thing - that there is absolutely nothing in the name of creativity in the director's mind. The plot of the movie is wafer thin and it is clear that the director has given little thought to come up with any interesting/ funny situations. So, all we get to see in the name of comedy is people shuffling between rooms and falling & tripping over couches. There is not one single scene I can recall as hilarious. To add on to that, the leading actors too let the director down so badly. To say that Both Akshay and John Abraham were horrible, would be a gross understatement. And the less said about the heroines, the better. All they had to do was show some skin and be as artificial as possible. Songs were ordinary and sounded like recycled/ rehashed version of some popular songs. (The itwofs site has already confirmed that 3 of the songs have been lifted from other sources).
Overall, a must stay away movie, by all means.
Englishkaran - Rented this one after reading some good words about the movie in Lazygeek's blog. But this too turned out to be such a huge disappointment. I mean, I did not start watching the movie with huge expectations of the movie turning out to be a great one. But I started watching it as I would do for any Sathya Raj movie of the recent years - satirical and at the same time, funny. Though there were some scenes where I was rolling on the floor laughing, the rest of the movie was such a drag to sit through. The sole highlights of the movie were the scenes where Sathya Raj was going about imitating just about everybody in the film world. Some of the actors/ actresses he was imitating were - Chimbhu, Jyothika in Chandramukhi and Ravikrishna in 7GRC & his own son in Student No. 1. My personal favorite was the 7GRC song which had me in splits. The other good thing one has to appreciate is that he has even mocked the way his own son dances. As long as you take everything lightly, I bet you will enjoy those sequences.
But take those sequences and you have a film which you will find hard to sit through. The thing I hate about such films (directed by Shakthi Chidambaram) is that he tries to convey something called a message through the movie. In this movie, the message is that when someone has the talent & the determination to achieve something in life, he/she should not be discouraged and should be given all the right appreciation and encouragement. That is what ticks me off. Bcos to convey this above said message, the director's case study is Namitha trying to be a 100m runner. How horrible is that?! I mean, she can't even walk 100m without taking long breathes and she is shown as someone who wants to win a gold medal in the Asian games. Atrocious!! If they had even shown her as someone specializing in discuss throw or shot-put, I would have gladly taken it. But then in that case, you know you cant have some scenes (like herself running), scenes for which the film's target audience would come to watch. At the end of the day, I was left wondering how Lazygeek had even few good things to say about this movie.
posted by Filbert at 7:03 PM
2 Comments:
Filbert, I think Englishkaran had little commonsense which the recent tamil movies grossly miss. it was just another copy of 80's movies still i enjoyed the satyaraj nakkal.
Lazy, first up, it feels good that the first comment this blog has seen is from someone as famous as you :) I have been writing in filbert.rediffblogs.com for more than a year now and just migrated to blogger.
Anyway, about the movie, the thing is Englishkaran is no different from any of the Satyaraj - Shakthi Chidambaram movies of recent years. So, when you said that this movie is good, I was expecting something different.
Thanks for dropping by again.
Post a Comment
<< Home