A film that you do need an advisory against is called Jashnn. It's a Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt production. So there's one thing you already know: the songs, one after another, are Sufi or Pakistani pop-rock. The budgets are super-tight, and so a lot of the screen actually ends up looking quite tacky. The leading man however is not Emraan Hashmi. They've this time invested in a gentleman who the audiences can still look at and think, "If this guy can be a hero, so can I." On every scene they give him chance to show off his histrionics. He doesn't disappoint. He is hysterical. The formula has seemed to work for the successful producers so far. If you look at it that way, what's missing here are two things. One there is no sex here. Or at least only talk of it. No sensual scenes. This may disappoint many. What disappointed me actually is that the script is original.
Why think of some rubbish when you can lift from a DVD I say! So, you watch a struggling musician; his sister who's a mad businessman's keep; his girlfriend who's that businessman's sister. Every second a new conflict keeps coming in, and everyone goes berserk for some reason or another. The Bhatts' have their purpose in place. And they've used publicity and the media to prop up such products in the past. I'm not sure about this one.
Yet another super-sized dud of the week, is rightly called Shortkut. The director is the infamous writer-actor Neeraj Vohra. The idea of the film has been copied from the Malayalam movie Udayananu Tharam. This was remade in Tamil as Velli Therai or Silver Screen, which for a regional film was pretty good. Even this film's tagline The con is on has been picked up from the Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy starrer Bowfinger. Bowfinger had a similar storyline too. All that the filmmakers had to do use was attempt the short-cut, and mercilessly plagiarise. They couldn't even manage that, and have laid a stinking egg. Akshaye Khanna plays a supposedly genius screenwriter who's waiting to direct his own film. Arshad Warsi's character is a talentless actor who steals his friend's script and becomes a super-star. This sounds sweet and simple enough. But not in the hands of these filmmakers. The producer here has obviously confused big-budget to mean random lavish sets and holiday locations abroad for song-shoots. The actors believe they should ham it all up. You watch ten of them going over-the-top in one go. Amrita Rao, the leading lady, is certain she could make the Vogue cover. The only ones suffering is us. Clearly there isn't a more unbearable short-cut to excess. If you happen to catch this disaster, don't say, I didn't warn you.
Morning Walk, entirely owes its origin to Bengali middle-of-the-road cinema. In fact it could've well have been set in Kolkata. It's based out of Bombay, and there is just no bustle here. The neighbourhoods are calm, the bungalows are huge and Everyone walks and talks in their own pace. The movie is about old-life.
Anupam Kher plays the retired professor who moves in with his son's family after a heart-stroke. Given that the actor started out playing an old man in his first film Saraansh 25 years ago, he gifted himself a life-long career. But it doesn't quite mean you could wear a black wig and look younger in flashbacks as well. It just looks hilarious.
This gentleman runs into his illegitimate daughter and her mother, that's Sharmila Tagore, one fine day at a park. His daughter-in-law, that's Divya Dutta, is after money so she can get herself a house. His own newly-found daughter is super-excited to have found her dad. The grand-daughter, that's the child-star from Balika Vadhu loves him the most. He's found old-age love in Sharmila's character.
There are just so many conflicts in the movie that you lose sight of a central plot. Yet, it's all quite sincere for most part, until they start pelting item numbers after sarod recitals for background score. With so much noise around us, a Morning Walk may not be the most terrible idea.
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