FilmyReviews

There is much craft on display, and some lovely moments, but the immense promise shown by the first half turns out as hollow as a politician's. Soaked in sloppy sexism, the second half has the heroine repeatedly tortured -- cheated, slapped, bound, gagged, shot at and abused -- and yet the film decrees that she forgive. In the heartlands the film is set in, maafi is an all-absolving concept, an irretractable token of instant forgiveness, like a church confessional. Ishaqzaade, despite its artistry, deserves no pardon.

Sajid Khan's Housefull 2, a grotesque film that seems to have been put together by a particularly sadistic ten-year-old. The fact that a film like this gets a budget and a release is befuddling and alarming, with several of the 'actors' involved vying fiercely for the Worst Of The Lot award. Housefull 2 is shamefully bad. So bad that Ranjeet - the rapey villain of yore - who appears in one scene, is the most dignified thing about the film.

Don 2, Akhtar's latest, is a glossy, unashamed action offering polished within an inch of itself, visually coming together seamlessly and effectively. It's evident in the very first few minutes that Khan is going to chew scenery like a particularly ravenous goat, but he does it with flair and it's hard not to be seduced by the perfectly manicured film Akhtar builds around his star. It is as the film goes on that it becomes painfully clear that while the film gives us a memorable villain, there is nothing that stands in his way.

But while Faisal delivers a few good lines, he isn't to blame for Devika Bhagat's sluggish script. A very predictable con-versus-con film can be made enjoyable, but it needs to be breezy and engaging. We need to want to take sides and we need to care about the twists, and by the time Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl winds down in extremely simplistic fashion, we just don't care anymore. If this were a better-made film, we might have been justifiably outraged by the lame sexism meted out at the climax, but for now yawning seems reaction enough.

Desi Boyz, a film that paints so ridiculously rosy a picture of the gigolo life that it plays like a recruitment film sponsored by pimps. Chitrangada Singh [ Images ], on the other hand, is a sheer trainwreck, so bad it hurts to watch her. (Thankfully she only enters the film in the second half.) Before she and the second half enter, the film motors along almost tolerably. There are sloppy musical cues and an inconsistent use of narrative gimmicks.

The film's narrative is disjointed and sluggish, with a mere handful of good scenes. The rest is not just filler, but lengthy, exhausting, filmi filler -- the kind of kitsch a film like this should really have left behind. There are people who will let this film slide. Who will say it's not bad "for a Hindi film." That if we make a superhero film we'll have to add in lots of Bollywood to make it commercially feasible, and this is as good as it gets. Hogwash. For those doubters I have two words: Mister and India.

Mausam starts off significantly fresh, making up for slightly overdone cutesiness with heart and flavour. The setting is enchanting and real, the characters are likable, the supporting cast stays pretty solid throughout, and Shahid revs up the energy while his classically gorgeous heroine Sonam Kapoor does what she does best, skipping around looking breathtaking. But no lovely little nuance could forgive Mausam its preposterous bad-action-movie climax, completely bringing the guillotine down on the already too-long film. As manipulative masala tearjerkers go, it's a film that tries relatively earnestly and certainly one that occasionally looks striking, but disappoints overall.

It is a film about a true murder case, and has two very good actors in the lead. Aren't the facts themselves exciting? Not quite. Tragically enough, while there might be enough meat in this version of the story for a great India's. Most Wanted recreational exposé, it doesn't have feature-length potential, not the way RGV shows it. All Ramu seems to be saying is 'look at me,' and we've seen most of that before. This is a film made in bad taste, and -- with apologies to Mr Capote -- in old blood.

We've seen it all before, and Singham's another time machine set up to take us back into the 1980s, Hindi cinema's most ghastly decade. Devgn's a tough, superheroic small-town policeman with a heart of gold and a near-permanent scowl, and he's come to the big city to take on a villain so vile he chokes children he kidnaps with his bare hands. The new film will likely make a lot more money than Vishal Bhardwaj's carefully crafted work of heart, but is that really all that counts? Perhaps it is.

Murder 2 is flat, boring and not worth talking about. Even Emraan, sporting less stubble than usual, seems babyfaced as he goes through the motions. It might be inspired by some obscure film, but I don't even care enough to look for its name. By now, I've come to accept that the Bhatts have a bigger DVD collection than me. I do wish they'd stop flaunting it, though.

Puri Jagannath's film is not a particularly well-crafted one. The story is threadbare, the scenes disjointed and abrupt, and poor Raveena Tandon is made to contort her face for almost a full minute. None of that matters. This isn't a masala film, it's a full-blown exploitation flick, and all that makes it work is the man under the spotlight. The extras can't stop smiling, almost as if Bachchan told them a knock-knock joke before the cameras started rolling, and they're all just basking in the grand silliness of this film. As are we. Plot? Please. Amitabh Bachchan is a retired gangster freshly back in Mumbai, and his triggerfingers are itchy. That's all that counts.

Potentially interesting ideas -- taking the narrative forward through status updates, for example, as a character goes from 'heading to a club' to posting party pics to saying 'hangovers are hell', in a matter of seconds -- appear but are instantly smothered by the next scene. The first half is dull as can be, merely loud, and while the emotionally-laden second half begins to mildly resemble something sweet, it explodes into a flashy climax that ruins everything. And then the producer's husband comes and ruins it all over again.

And then there's quirk that just falls flat, like an actress hiding on the stairs flicking a lighter and flashing cleavage while a burkha rests slinkily around her, as if she's in a b-movie. Oh, and the hero of another Kashyap production showing up in an inspired and wonderfully energetic cameo, which would have worked entirely if the fun sequence -- despite a flashback within a flashback gag the writers succumbed to and had fun with, but which doesn't make sense -- wasn't completely out of place. At a point when a cop has slapped a kid and naivete spills out of every crevice, it isn't the time for a gag. This film never seems to get that balance.

Teen Thay Bhai proves that actors with comic timing aren't everything, because while each of the actors -- particularly the awesome Dobriyal -- conjures up a couple of genuinely strong laughs apiece, the director doesn't really know the art of telling a joke. Loud and inert at the same time, Teen Thay Bhai is a film to be shunned simply because of how cruelly it treats three actors we should treasure.

I suspect Akshay Kumar makes most of his movies just for the workout. Looking at his interchangeable comic roles, the actor increasingly seems to limit himself through the motions, flicking on that auto-pilot switch behind his head as he grins and grimaces and groans and guffaws, the latter working overtime in the way laugh-tracks used to do in old sitcoms: if you hear enough laughing, chances are you'll crack open a chuckle yourself.