Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
A celebration of the erotic...
YEH KYA HO RAHA HAI
(At Odeon and other Delhi theatres)
DIRECTOR HANSAL Mehta takes off trousers of morality here. This film does not aim at tickling your funny bone, it goes for the groin. There is an unending show of cleavage, midriff, biceps. It offers many faces of pleasure, myriad possibilities of sin. This film is about bursting hormones, plunging blouses, bulging pants. And growing up blues. If it is cold and flaccid at the beginning, it needs just a spark to come to life, to brim over. Then there is chutzpah, there is good cheer. It tugs at your heart, it impresses you with its poise and polish, gleam and glamour. At best, it conveys the furtive delight of a quickie, but not real pleasure to a viewer confident about the destination. At worst, it fails to tickle you which, as the experienced will tell you, can be most self-defeating.
This is a story of four guys who would be perfect members of who's who of who's that! They are too old, as a catchline goes, for chocolates, too young to be provided avenues for joys of the other kind. They are "boys waiting to be men". And the symbol of manhood here is no material accomplishment, no intellectual attainment, just "doing it" the way "men do it"! No questions asked. No howls or guffaws anticipated. No concession made to morality. Little left to imagination. All said, all seen. As one of the newcomers yells out: East or West sex is the best. Well, we did not need Mehta to tell us that. But if sex sells, this one makes an honest attempt to peddle the fare. It succeeds to a certain extent.
This is Bollywood's latest attempt at getting `frank' with the viewers. N. Chandra had a similar offering late December last year. And Mehta who has earlier delivered "Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar" and "Chhal", this time comes up with a film which has a storyline that makes the thinnest rubber in town appear like a hide! But he manages to sustain interest with newcomers in lead roles. They go through their roles with the confidence that comes naturally to the young and exude fresheness which again is the preserve of the young at body, younger at heart. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's niche music goes well with the film and Chitranjan Das does a fabulous job with cinematography. By themselves they are fine offerings but the viewer does not get much more than the sum of the parts as the whole product. Which is sad, considering here is a comedy that does not rely on banana peels and double entendres to score.
Watch "Yeh Kya Ho Raha Hai" if you are light around the head, heavy around the middle, open in the mind and in a mood to succumb to temptation. Expect nothing cerebral: this one is a celebration of the erotic.
THE DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD
(At PVR, Saket and other Delhi theatres)
IF YOU are through with the title, here is a word of advice: Watch this film only when you have loads of time at your disposal, when there are no sales target or deadlines on your mind, when there are no irritable kids around, when, well, the festive mood has not overtaken you. It is a slow moving movie which challenges your concentration, expects you to stay focussed and often loses focus itself. Hey! But why are we talking all the bad things at one go when the movie has many redeeming features. It has no blood or bullets for one. Ah! Thank God for that in this age of Spielberg-Minority Report and what have you. It does not expect you to be an adult who failed to grow up unlike many animation films which have done the rounds of theatres over the past few weeks. It does not have aliens populating the earth, like say, "Spiders", "Eight-legged Freaks".
This film takes you back in time, to the days when life was uncomplicated, when there was little to ruffle you, little to disturb the peace of mind. Days when life was a cruise, when peer circle was paramount, parents secondary. This one comes from the memory box, dusts off a few cobwebs and expects you to do the same.
Yet it is not nice nostalgia all the way. Like remembrance of the past, the cheer it imparts is ephemeral, the disappointment eternal. Or at least more durable than the good feeling in retrospect. This Sandra Bullock film - yes, she steps away from her image and plays a willing, soft second fiddle all along - is the story a bright young playwright living in New York, away from her home, her mom. Yet her distance from family is only an illusion. One story in a magazine demolishes barriers, rakes up old bruises. Sidda's quote that mom Vivi - Ellen Burstyn - was not really the best mother on earth, stirs a Hornet's next, brings in old, weather-beaten birds - mom's lifelong friends - eager to put their beak to the task of ushering in peace. They take her back in time, through pictures and books to her mother's youth, times when the now-screaming old haggard lady was fresh as daisies, when there was a song here, a stealthy dance there.
No Boldwood, no David Copperfield, "Sisterhood" celebrates the union of women and the ache of a girl who keeps a suitor lying in patient wait as she comes to terms with her past. If this date with the present and a date with the past keeps flitting back and forth, hold your nerve. That is the way to enjoy this otherwise quite slow film.
ZIYA US SALAM
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
|
