A weekend of movies - Rang De Basanti, Dhoom 2 and Lage Raho Munnabhai
As I had written earlier, I had watched the first half of RDB a couple of weeks back. I finally watched the remainder of the movie on Friday evening. And no, it did not change my earlier expressed opinion. The movie has played on the emotional angle, but as a movie, I found it woefully ordinary. To begin with, the 'classy' look looked very artificial, and was distracting from the movie. The director seems to have tried to copy the look of Farhan Akhtars' 'Dil Chahta Hai'. But while the look came as a refreshing change at that time, RDB came across as a poor copy.
And I could not agree with the basic theme of the movie. Supposedly educated urban youth taking to crime, and that too, the murder of a supposedly corrupt politician. Please, is this the message we want to send out through films? If the underlying message was to exhort our youth to break free of their inertia and take the lead to 'set the country right', surely it could have been done without unabashedly playing on emotions?
The second movie I watched, this one on the big screen at Cinemax, Eternity Mall, Thane, was the current hit - Dhoom 2. I walked in only expecting mindless entertainment, and I was not disappointed! The script is very weak, songs are jarring, but the star cast redeems the show. While the women rave about Hrithik, I thought Abhishek quite simply stole the show at the end. And for Aishwarya Rais' 'hot' new look, suffice to say that it was all a case of 'The Emperors' New Clothes'. She is just too cold, too calculated, to be 'hot'. Sure, she has a great face, but she would be best advised to leave the 'hot' look to actresses better suited to the role.
Finally, I come to 'Lage Raho Munnabhai'. I was not too keen to watch it, as the India - South Africa cricket match was going on. But my my wife was, and she put it on. I joined her pretty soon, seeing how the cricket was going (for the record, we lost yet again by a humiliating margin). And I got hooked right from the first scene! This is how movies should be made - a simple script, dedicated actors, good music, and a great moral. The director has managed to make the movie touch the audience, without making it melodramatic, which could have been all too easy, given the storyline. This was easily the pick of the three movies I watched over the weekend.
And I could not agree with the basic theme of the movie. Supposedly educated urban youth taking to crime, and that too, the murder of a supposedly corrupt politician. Please, is this the message we want to send out through films? If the underlying message was to exhort our youth to break free of their inertia and take the lead to 'set the country right', surely it could have been done without unabashedly playing on emotions?
The second movie I watched, this one on the big screen at Cinemax, Eternity Mall, Thane, was the current hit - Dhoom 2. I walked in only expecting mindless entertainment, and I was not disappointed! The script is very weak, songs are jarring, but the star cast redeems the show. While the women rave about Hrithik, I thought Abhishek quite simply stole the show at the end. And for Aishwarya Rais' 'hot' new look, suffice to say that it was all a case of 'The Emperors' New Clothes'. She is just too cold, too calculated, to be 'hot'. Sure, she has a great face, but she would be best advised to leave the 'hot' look to actresses better suited to the role.
Finally, I come to 'Lage Raho Munnabhai'. I was not too keen to watch it, as the India - South Africa cricket match was going on. But my my wife was, and she put it on. I joined her pretty soon, seeing how the cricket was going (for the record, we lost yet again by a humiliating margin). And I got hooked right from the first scene! This is how movies should be made - a simple script, dedicated actors, good music, and a great moral. The director has managed to make the movie touch the audience, without making it melodramatic, which could have been all too easy, given the storyline. This was easily the pick of the three movies I watched over the weekend.
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