The Lunchbox: Mini Review

 

I am an aspiring film critic, but I’m not a very good one (yet). I know that, and most of you unfortunate enough to read my stuff know that. I want to tell you why you should watch 'The Lunchbox' but I don’t think I have the words or proper grasp of English language (yet) to describe how amazing it is. I think I’d be doing it disservice by trying to explain what makes it so magical.

All I can say is that 'The Lunchbox' is like that one chip in a bag so loaded with flavour that when you bite into it, it takes you to a state of pure ecstasy. The flavour explodes in your mouth and you love and hate it at the same time. Because you wish that every chip was like that, but you know that it will be the only one in the bag.

So please, check out 'The Lunchbox'. I know you won't be disappointed, I put my mediocre reputation on the line for it.

Grand Masti: Movie Review

                                 

I don’t like to come off as a movie snob, but when my friends who are highly intelligent and capable individuals recommend movies like Grand Masti to me, I can’t help but wonder why I am friends with these schmucks. I love and respect them of course, but it makes me question how anyone with a functioning brain can enjoy dog barf that is Grand Masti. Now don’t get me wrong we all have our guilty pleasure, but Grand Masti does not and cannot qualify as guilty pleasure. Unless your guilty pleasure is very bad porn fantasy of a 15 year old.

From what I can gather, Grand Masti is directed by pubescent boys who recently discovered their sexuality, and have very little concept of what actually goes on in college. Grand Masti is sequel to mildly successful 2004’s Masti. At the time I was in my teens and I have very little recollection of the movie. However I do remember enjoying it. Not a great movie mind you, but overall a fun murder cover-up with good music and message (at least the message I got from it at the time). 

Grand Masti takes place six years after the events of the original and it seems very little has changed in the lives of our three heroes, Meet (Vivek Oberoi), Prem (Aftab Shivdasani) and Amar (Ritesh Deshmukh). They’re still very horny and their wives are still too busy to satisfy their gluttonous sexual appetite. So how to they remedy their sexless marriages? Well, by going back to their glory days of college where the three followed the philosophy of ABC; which stands for Ass, Boobs, and C for (well, it rhymes with hunt). Yeah, that’s the extent of humor in this movie.

 A college reunion and busy schedules of their wives presents our heroes with an opportunity to go back and for the lack of better words, get some. So they decide to go back to college on their own and maybe partake in those famous collage orgies India is so famous for. 

    Upon their return to college they discover that their ‘sex-topian’ college feels like a monastery where and any interaction between opposite sexes strictly forbidden. All this prudishness is thanks to college principle Robert Pereira (Pradeep Rawat) who has a zero tolerance policy towards sex. Any guy caught hitting on a girl will be hung from a tree and will be shamed in front of everyone by having his underwear pulled down. And why such strict rules towards fraternization you may ask? Is it to preserve a standard of education? No, try again. Is it to insure that female students on campus can feel safe? Haha, nope, nice try though. It turns out that the zero tolerance policy is due to principle’s impotence. That’s right folks, the big twist in the end is if he can’t get some, then no one will. 

This movie is worse than some fan-made movies, but at least you can excuse the fans for being armatures. These are professionals, working in Bollywood for years; there is no excuse for such a movie. All that is going for it is exaggerated facial expressions, horrible puns, and painfully cheap sex humor. The movie has zero originality to a point where it literally stole the shadow tent scene from ‘Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me’. To compensate for lack of originality some genius thought it would be a good idea to have wave after wave of  scantily clad women.  

I’d like to ask the actresses in this movie about their presumptively deplorable financial situation because why else would they agree to do such a B-grade porn-esque movie. If India was progressing with women’s rights and equality; this movie is a stark reminder that the mainstream media and Bollywood (much like it’s Western counterparts or even taking cues from them) allow patriarchy to thrive and the hyper-sexualization/reduction of women as merely sexual objects even as it portrays it as just innocent, deliciously naughty fun. One must remember that South-east Asian society in some quarters still considers healthy discussions of sexuality as taboo and has notoriously given men a license to being sexually adventurous/abusive while it equally denies women implicitly the right to their own sexuality and to rejecting their objectification by Bollywood which remains mainly the playing ground of rich, monopolist dynasties of film-making/financing men. The men in this movie are no more than bewildered, sex-starved buffoons who find it ‘grand masti’ to objectify women and openly flaunt their perversions and lack of sexual control. Two scenes in particular stood out:

1.    The three heroes are stuck at a bank robbery, and the only way they can resolve the situation is if a beautiful woman strike sexy poses so one of the three who works at the bank can press the security alarm with his erection that is conveniently placed right under it. Yeah let that sink in for a minute.
2.    It’s the final confrontation between the heroes and the bad guys. They all end up hanging from a building and only way to save them if three women our heroes were fooling around with striped down to their undies to form a rope. Indian ingenuity at its finest ladies and gentlemen.

But Grand Masti is an adult movie with adult humor, why does it matter if there are random naked women in it? That could be a good argument only if the movie had the least bit of decency to make an attempt at originality. Having adult content doesn’t mean cheap humor. There is a fine line between pushing the boundary and pandering to the lowest common denominator. There are number of movies that do get adult humor right. Superbad, American Pie are among a few. Clearly Grand Masti is attempting to imitate the success of these movies, but instead of borrowing good ideas from them people behind Grand Masti decided to just stick with ‘haha, look boobies’ jokes. And it seems to be a winning combination for some horrible reason.  

Grand Masti is an attempt to make a Bollywood-version college movie that glorifies debauchery, lack of respect for women, and the boys-will-be-boys culture. It’s an insult to women and some male allies in India and world over who resist this commercialization of sexual fetish by an increasingly capitalist Bollywood, which is why the amount of money this movie has made scares me. The movie is profitable by Bollywood standards, which means that millions of Indians men (I hope it’s only men, because no respectable woman should stand for such objectification) went out and watched it. One can only feel a sense of impending doom as the realization hits that the 3^rd movie in this installment will bring more of the same.

A very special thanks to Ammad Wajahat.

Go Goa Gone: Movie Review

Go Goa Gone is a pretty good movie for the first of its kind in Bollywood. Apart from your typical Bollywood annoyances this movie was quite entertaining. Granted my opinion on this is fairly biased given my love for Zombie flicks, however I believe it stands on its own. The movie borrowed ideas from Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead that were easily recognizable and familiar; although nowhere as blatantly as many other Bollywood movie. Also, the setting of the movie felt eerily like the video game: Dead Island. Few scenes felt like they were exactly the same as some missions in the game.

The overall acting was good and the jokes were smart and stuck for most parts, some more than others. The chemistry between the three protagonists, and overall cast was spot on. Saif Ali Khan’s pseudo Russian Mafioso was an entertaining gag when originally introduced but it got a little old and drabby after a while. The female lead in the movie was underused and felt like a background character, other than being your prototypical Bollywood 'Damsel in distress'. 

The plot is very simple (like any other zombie movie) and can be easily figured out. The movie follows a very typical zombie flick formula: Intro to the main characters, putting them in a setting of zombies, explaining the origin of zombies (little lacklustre in this move), figuring out how to fight and kill zombies, the lack of ability to shoot the zombies at first and complete mastery of headshots by the end of the movie (which in this case was about half a day), and so on. This movie is as original as any zombie movie can get. Every scene was fairly predictable. Not to say that this is a bad thing, all zombie movies are alike. It’s the chemistry between the characters that really separate the greats from the rest. As liner as this movie was, the surprising anecdote about zombies which was cheesier than the cheesiest cheese cake, felt original. I laughed out loud several times during the movie; admittedly the humor was along the lines of 3 Idiots and Delhi Belly i.e. buddy movies with a lot of raunch.

The movie was 1 hour and 48 minutes in length, which is a little long for a movie of this sort. 1 hour and 30 to 40 minutes max is ideal for a zombie flick. It’s hard to keep the audience immersed. The jokes get lazy and pushy and the situations where protagonist has to escape the zombie hoards get nuttier and nuttier to the point of complete disbelief.

 
My biggest complaint against this movie is its anti-smoking campaign.

It’s almost ridiculous to see an anti-smoking campaign in a movie about pot-smoking booze hounds itching for parties that feature Mary Jane. There was an abundance of smoking scenes that featured small messages warning against smoking. It’s almost like the NRA running ads that featured gun-related killings and having messages popping up simultaneously that say “Don’t shoot people in the face. Shooting people in the face is bad.” I understand that the movie means well and doesn’t want to glamorize smoking, but omitting smoking altogether from the movie would be more effective anti-smoking rhetoric than a miniscule, meaningless and insincere insulting sign at the bottom of the screen.

Overall though, I would recommend this movie to any zombie fans out there. If you’re not a fan of Bollywood but enjoy zombies it’s still worth the watch. The nod to Bollywood cheesiness near the end of the movie was worth the price all on its own.There were obvious “Are you serious? He would totally get bitten in that situation.” type of scenes and the anti-smoking messages were very annoying. However, they are forgivable because it’s Bollywood’s first attempt at the genre and from the looks of it they have done a good job.

And as always special thanks to Ammad Wajahat.