Film Review - Welcome Back

Sorry Bhai

Film: Welcome Back

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Nana Patekar, John Abraham,  Shruti Hassan

Directed by: Anees Bazmee

Duration: 2 hrs 27 mins

Rating:  * 1 / 2

Almost a decade after Welcome, which was no great shakes by any stretch of imagination but nevertheless was good enough for a few silly laughs, we have the sequel in the form of Welcome Back.  As the audience, we were surely much better off if they hadn’t come back. It is not worth a wada-pav, and a big ensemble cast has just been cobbled together to create some kind of chaos to pass off as a story.  This is sheer lazy writing that too at its worst.    

So the original story has been tweaked just a little bit here. The two buddies,  Uday Shetty (Nana Patekar) and Majnu (Anil Kapoor) have given up their erstwhile profession of bhaigiri and have settled in Dubai. There are more characters and complications here than the on-going Indrani saga. Maybe not quite, but you get the picture.  Dr. Gungroo (Pareh Rawal) discovers that he has a step-son (John Abraham, desperately in need of a crash course in acting) and on the other side of the planet, Uday discovers that he has a step sister (Shruti Hassan).  

The two friends meanwhile are on the radar of con women, one posing as a Maharani (Dimple Kapadia in an unworthy role) and the other a princess (Ankita Shrivastava, who needs to start with the ABC of acting) and both of them fall for the young lady. More chaos when a blind bad guy (Nasseurddin Shah) and his son (Shiney  Ahuja in a pink jacket) land on the scene.

One outlandish episode is followed by another and looks the dialogues were written with severe stress on the grey cells. “Jab maine chunaav me vote daala hi nahi toh mukhyamantri mera kaise ho gaya?” says Paresh Rawal trying to understand the existence of his step son. “Inke ghar mein ladies ke naam pe chipkali bhi nahi hain” whatever that is supposed to mean. 

It opens with a pixellated shot of Dubai and ends with climax that has some tacky CGI effects.  There is also a scene where a characters jumps from the one camels hump to another to save the don from a sandstorm.  Not sure whom we should feel sorry for, the camel or the audience who had to sit through this baloney. 

The acting is equally atrocious – Nana Patekar and Anil Kapoor manage to hold fort, but otherwise it is all downhill. 

The only relevant line in the film is where a character says – “Dimaag ki naas ko mat phaad” My sentiments exactly. 

 Published in The Navhind Times on 6th Sept. 2015
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Film Review - Gabbar Is Back

 

Brand Of Brothers

Film: Gabbar Is Back

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Shruti Hassan

Directed by: Krish

Duration: 2 hrs 20 mins

Rating: * 1 / 2

A remake of the Tamil hit Ramana (2002), Gabbar is Back is a travesty of a film. Why they bothered to do a remake remains a mystery because there is very little going for it. How many flops will it take till producers realize that the South Indian action films don’t quite work in Bollywood? 

Directed by Radhakrishna Jagarlamudi aka Krish, you don’t know if you should laugh or bang your head against the ground while watching the inane proceedings. Sample this – a young lady stops a car so that she help a pregnant lady get to the hospital. The water breaks on the way and a very healthy baby is instantly delivered in the car itself. On reaching the hospital, the young lady (we learn that she is a lawyer, not a doctor) tells the nurse “Maine umbilical cord Swiss army knife se cut kar diya…” (I cut the umbilical cord using a Swiss army knife). 

This was of course mildly better than the heart surgery performed by Vijaykanth using the light from mobile phones, in the original.

But the story is here about Gabbar (Akshay Kumar) who is hell bent on making corrupt officials pay for their sins. To the world, he is just a lecturer but behind the scenes, he runs a different show altogether with the help up some enthusiastic men and women. They kidnap corrupt officials, release most of them but the odd one is hanged. Reminded me of Amitabh Bachchan’s Shahenshah when he drags the culprit and says “Shahenshah jahan khade ho jaate hai ... wahin darbar lag jaate hai” and decides the fate criminal. 

That film also had a similar story of a police officer who turns into a vigilante – and it was so much more fun with some memorable lines. 

But no such luck with Gabbar. Shruti Hassan fills the mandatory glamour quotient and Kareena Kapoor is seen in a cameo that is best forgotten. Meanwhile the police are trying to hunt for Gabbar, a police driver (Sunil Grover) cracks the mystery like a Sherlock Holmes but is chided by his seniors.   

And then there is the main villain, Digvijay Patil (Suman Talwar) who constantly keeps on harping that is he is a bigger ‘Brand’  Gabbar eventually gets to prove that he is a bigger brand than the guy who claims to be the bigger brand.

There is no subtlety whatsoever in conveying the message everything is hammered and hammered hard. The background music is ear drum shattering and the dialogues are cringe worthy.

Not quite sure which was more embarrassing - Shurti Hassan’s character or her acting. Akshay Kumar tries his best to provide a silver lining but the cloud is as dark as a black hole. 

Published in The Navhind Times on 3rd May 2015

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