MUST SEE - WORTH WATCHING - SKIP - CLASSICS
Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (2011) It seems like Katrina Kaif wandered off the set of a different movie and onto this one
. Her cranked-up comedy was fitting in films like Tees Maar Khan (2010), but her act is far too amped for Mere Brother Ki Dulhan. It’s a film with some wackiness, but next to her co-stars, whose humor is much more low key, she seems foolishly out of place. (more)
Karthik Calling Karthik (2010) A man who gets phone calls from himself telling him how to live his life—crazy, or is he? That's the mystery central to this psychological thriller—if you can call it that, because unlike the lead character, the film is unquestionably schizophrenic. As a thriller, it fails, because instead of taut, it's just stretched. The suspense is sapped by dull romance and realistic character study.
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Mausam (2011) Romantic epics—with beautiful lovers separated by fate, their passion spanning years and geography—are rapidly becoming a thing of the past because that kind of story could likely only happen in the past.
Mausam aims to be a refreshing throwback to the exalted love found in romantic classics, but with a contemporary setting, and it has all the elements of a great film—except a great story.
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Humko Deewana Kar Gaye (2006) Akshay Kumar and
Katrina Kaif are among the most entertaining onscreen couples in Bollywood. Their now-famous chemistry took hold right from the beginning in this, their first film pairing. The twosome is at their best when there's substance to Kaif's role, which is the case here. But their strong matchup is the only thing to recommend it, and it's not quite enough to compensate for the weak script.
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Milenge Milenge (2010) Milenge Milenge, a remake of the Hollywood film
Serendipity (2001), struggled to make it to the big screen. It was shot in 2004 and was supposed to be released in 2005, but because of financial and post-production holdups (including the unavailability of the lead pair), the film was stuck in the can for five years. By the time it released in 2010, it was a hopelessly dated picture.
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Tees Maar Khan (2010) Don't expect anything groundbreaking from the Queen of Camp, Farah Khan—unless you count what has to be the first-ever in-utero musical number. Yes,
Tees Maar Khan actually features a baby dancing with sexy girls in amniotic fluid. Outlandishness is Farah Khan's trademark, and her latest film certainly delivers on that count. But what's noticeably missing is her muse: actor
Shahrukh Khan.
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Kites: The Remix (2010) Kites was an unusual experiment in Hindi film: two versions were released—one for Indian audiences and one for international audiences. But the reason for the international version isn't clear, since the original was specifically made to appeal to Western sensibilities, while remaining true to the essence of Hindi cinema. Don't waste your time on
The Remix when the original
Kites is a must-see.
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No One Killed Jessica (2011) No One Killed Jessica relates the true story of the 1999 murder of Jessica Lal, a Delhi model who was bartending at a swanky restaurant when she was shot in the head by the son of a powerful politician for refusing to serve him a drink after last call. Media frenzy surrounded the seven-year trial and the verdict triggered national uproar. The movie is a tepid telling of a sensational story.
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Dhobi Ghat (2011) While the West often wrongly fancies itself classless, India tends to honestly acknowledge the reality of social strata, however harmful, and so, a serious film about class disparity by an Indian filmmaker has rich potential for insight. But what we get from
Dhobi Ghat is a story about two privileged individuals who are exploitatively slumming—and there's not a shred of condemnation in it.
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Guzaarish (2010) No doubt about it, director Sanjay Leela Bhansali makes beautiful movies—among the most beautiful ever made. He's helmed six films;
Saawariya (2007) was the only critical and commercial failure, lacking, as it did, the emotional force of its predecessors.
Guzaarish looks just as good as the others, and it tries just as hard to strike an intense chord, but like
Saawariya, it fails mightily to stir feeling.
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We Are Family (2010) A broken family, a dying mom, cute kids, and buckets of tears—you’d think a remake of the American film
Stepmom (1998), starring Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts, and Ed Harris, would be right in the wheelhouse of filmmaker Karan Johar. But not so. It’s close to being an exact copy of the original, and where it diverges is disastrous. Worst of all, the emotion you expect in a Johar film is missing.
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I Hate Luv Storys (2010) I Hate Luv Storys is a story about story—the process of story, why stories matter, the truth about life found in them. It's a defense of love stories, even as it pokes fun at their corniness. But this love story is a pale, muted version of the great Bollywood love stories of old, and while it aims to romanticize, it ultimately disparages.
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Lafangey Parindey (2010) He boxes blindfolded, she's a blind dancer. He teaches her to see, she teaches him to feel—at least, that's what the movie tries, and fails, to convey. In fact, there's very little feeling in this latest glossy romance to come out of the Yash Raj production house.
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Aisha (2010) Aisha is a Bollywood adaptation of English novelist Jane Austen's timeless classic
Emma, done in the modern spirit of
Clueless (1995), the Hollywood adaptation of the same, with a dash of
Sex and the City. This version of
Emma is set in modern-day Delhi's high society, but it reveals nothing about the interesting idiosyncrasies of Delhi's elite.
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Heyy Babyy (2007) A remake of the 1987 American film
Three Men and a Baby (which is itself a remake of a French film),
Heyy Babyy stars
Akshay Kumar, Fardeen Khan, and Ritesh Deshmukh as three swinging bachelors living in Australia. Arush (Kumar), Al (Khan), and Tanmay (Deshmukh) are roommates who share a love of scoring with as many women as possible. And then one day all that changes.
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Fida (2004) Current heartthrob
Shahid Kapoor got his start in Bollywood under the direction of Ken Ghosh; both made their debut with
Ishq Vishk (2003). Young girls couldn’t get enough of the teenybopper flick, and the actor-director duo came together for their second film,
Fida. It starts out as a typical boy-meets-girl love story, when Ghosh throws audiences a curveball and turns the film into a thriller.
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Aaja Nachle (2007) Madhuri Dixit disappointed a lot of fans when she announced her retirement from the Hindi film industry after her 2002 film,
Devdas. Those same fans were thrilled when Dixit decided to re-launch her career in a film by the most powerful production house in India—Yash Raj Films. Despite some charming moments, though, her comeback leaves a lot to be desired.
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Dus (2005) Sometimes confusing movies are good—
The Usual Suspects (1995), for example. But just because a movie is confusing doesn't mean it's good, contrary to conventional wisdom in Hollywood. In fact, the success of
The Usual Suspects may be to blame for the spate of American films in the last 15 years that don't make sense and were lauded to the moon. Unfortunately, Bollywood fell victim to this trend with
Dus.
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Main Aurr Mrs. Khanna (2009) The film was billed as a
Salman Khan-starrer, but his role could be more accurately described as an extended special appearance. His character, Samir, woos Raina (
Kareena Kapoor) early in the story, and the opening sequences quickly move through their courtship, marriage, and move to Melbourne. But Samir’s career is in trouble, and he soon moves to Singapore, leaving her behind.
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My Name Is Khan (2010) My Name Is Khan is the third major Bollywood film in the last year to deal with religious discrimination in the U.S., but while the other two—
Kurbaan and
New York—are terrorist thrillers,
My Name Is Khan is a love story with 9/11 as the backdrop. It reunites famous screen pair
Shahrukh Khan and
Kajol, who haven’t appeared in a film together in nine years.
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Chance Pe Dance (2010) If you want to swoon like a schoolgirl,
Chance Pe Dance—a showcase for
Shahid Kapoor’s gorgeous physique and dancing prowess—delivers. But if you’re looking for a compelling story that isn’t utterly predictable, it doesn’t. Kapoor plays an aspiring actor, but Kapoor’s superstar quality bursts through his character to such a degree that it’s impossible to buy him as a dejected failure.
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Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai (2000) Some movies stand the test of time, and some don’t.
Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai was a box-office hit that was generally liked by critics, and it cleaned up at the Filmfare Awards. It’s evident in this, his first film, that
Hrithik Roshan, now a superstar, is a natural-born actor, and the movie itself is mildly entertaining, but it’s a disappointment in retrospect, given its strong initial reception.
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U Me Aur Hum (2008) Actor
Ajay Devgan makes his directorial debut and stars opposite his real-life wife,
Kajol, in this, their 7th film together. While the melodramatic story line borrowed from the Hollywood film
The Notebook (2004) is certainly conducive to Bollywood treatment, the film fails to entertain. Ajay (Devgan) and Piya (Kajol) are an older married couple, and Piya has Alzheimer’s disease.
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Veer (2010) Veer is a period film that disregards history, a legend with an uninspiring hero, a costume drama with chintzy attire, and a romance with no passion.
Salman Khan plays Veer, a colonial-era ruffian, who belongs to a fierce tribe called the Pindaris. The Pindaris are betrayed by the king of Madhavgarh, who’s in cahoots with the British, and the Pindaris want to oust both from their land.
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What’s Your Rashee? (2009) Bollywood movies are long—for good reason. The time commitment required of the audience heightens their emotional investment in the story. The effect can be powerfully moving, even for Americans accustomed to shorter films.
What’s Your Rashee?, a tedious romantic comedy with a run time of three hours and 25 minutes, is not an example of Bollywood’s artful use of length, but an unpleasant test of endurance.
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Shootout at Lokhandwala (2007) Freud would have a field day with this one. The film covers all the psychoanalytic favorites—the wanton id, Oedipal complexes, penis envy—mixes in Victorian ideas about the public world (of men) and the private world (of women), and then plops all that on top of old-fashioned Indian family values. But blink a few times and you may miss these themes in the frenetic orgy of violence.
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Blue (2009) Beautiful babes and Bahamian beaches can’t salvage this wreck—
Blue is flat-out bad. Sagar (Sanjay Dutt) discovered a sunken treasure decades ago, but won’t retrieve it because of his haunted past. With the prodding of his friend Aarav (
Akshay Kumar), Sagar relents and goes after the treasure to get his brother out of trouble.
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Rang De Basanti (2006) The film’s title means “Paint It Saffron”—saffron, one of the three colors in the Indian flag, symbolizes sacrifice, and the narrative revolves around this theme, but here, the sacrifice is not noble—as the film suggests—but a foolish waste. The film is well-made and well-acted, but its romanticization of futile violence for wrongheaded reasons makes it impossible to take it seriously.
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Delhi-6 (2009) India is an exotic foreign land to Roshan, a New Yorker of Indian origin (played by
Abhishek Bachchan), who brings his sick grandmother back to her Delhi home. Filled with gorgeous urban footage, the film captures the wonder of seeing India for the first time. But a bizarre subplot about a black monkey terrorizing the city overtakes the main story and ruins it.
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Boom (2003) How this terrible film got made at all is truly a wonder, but what’s even more puzzling is why Bollywood great
Amitabh Bachchan agreed to appear in it and how
Katrina Kaif’s debut in it launched her subsequent rise to stardom instead of killing her budding career. No one, not even die-hard Bachchan fans, should waste their time watching this mess.
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36 China Town (2006) An aspiring actor (played by
Shahid Kapoor) and a runaway (
Kareena Kapoor) become suspects in the murder of a rich casino owner, along with a hotel guest (Johnny Lever), a rival casino owner (Paresh Rawal), and a gigolo (Upen Patel), and it’s up to a hard-nosed police detective (Akshaye Khanna) to solve the crime, but there’s no mystery in this whodunit.
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Jism (2003) John Abraham made his debut in this unfortunately titled film (which means “Body” in Hindi), alongside
Bipasha Basu, who was also fairly new to the industry at the time. The movie marked the beginning of their off-screen relationship and it made them big stars because of its provocative content. But that’s the only good thing that can be said about it—it’s sexy, in a late-night Cinemax sort of way.
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Drona (2008) Aditya (played by
Abhishek Bachchan) is a sad and lonely messianic hero, otherwise known as Drona, who’s unaware of his real identity and being raised in a foster family. The challenge is for the uncertain Aditya to step up and fulfill his destiny as savior of the world. The problem is his dangerous journey of discovery lacks energy, suspense, or any kind of moving revelation.
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Chandni Chowk to China (2009) One has to wonder what the execs at Warner Brothers were thinking when they decided on this film to be the company’s first Bollywood movie. The story follows dimwit Sidhu (
Akshay Kumar), a vegetable-chopper from the Chandni Chowk neighborhood of Delhi, who goes to China to fulfill his destiny as the reincarnation of an ancient Chinese warrior.
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Mission Istaanbul (2008) After director Apoorva Lakhia’s 2007 hit
Shootout at Lokhandwala, expectations were high for his subsequent project,
Mission Istaanbul. But those hopes couldn’t have been more thoroughly dashed by this disaster of a film. There’s little story here, but lots of chase and fight scenes. Attempts at comic relief fall flat—the only thing laughable is the blatant product placement.
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