Sirf (Released in 2008) - Life in Mumbai for 4 couples

When somebody tells you about a story with different couples, detailing their different situations, you know the following. The story will tell you about their challenges, about the complexity of their life, about how they all don't know each other but will come together (or rather, their life will be intertwined near the close (or in the second half) of the film), and they will all be in the same city. And all that is true of this movie.
However, a story such as this needs to be gripping, and it has to be logical. For getting its viewers to get hooked to the story, the person depicted in the movie may not be in the same social class, but the challenges that they face should be something that the person seeing the movie can understand and make sense of. These challenges can be related to money, love or affairs - these are the most common areas that make up the stories of our day-to-day movies.
So, here we have the story of 4 couples, all of them having their own challenges. And some of the people taken for depicting the various roles are great actors, and yet, you come out of the movie not satisfied. The story and editing needs to keep the challenges and the grip right through the duration of the movie, and here, after some initial effort, you feel that the Director, Rajaatsh Nayar, loses grip over the direction through the movie, and it gets difficult to stay the 2 hours of this movie.
Here are the cast of main characters in the movies, their relationships and the challenges facing them.




The rich couple: Gaurav (Kay Kay Menon) and Devika (Manisha Koirala). They are the rich couple, but you know the depiction of rich couples. When people are shown as rich, they are most of the time shown to have a deficit of love in their relationship, and the movie sticks to the same approach. And of course, they tend to be busy (or rather, the man is shown to be busy and not have time for his wife).
Needing money: Rahul (Ankur Khanna) and Shalu (Nauheed Cyrusi). Very much in love with each other, but her parents have set a condition that even though they are fine with the marriage, he has to find a house in 3 months on rent, else she will get married to somebody else. Seems a bit strange.
Love and trust: Amit (Parvin Dabbas) and Suchita (Rituparan Sengupta). They have a good life, not wanting for money, but then she starts suspecting that he is having an affair ? Is this true ?
Love and understanding: Akash (Ranvir Shorey) and Namita (Sonali Kulkarni). This one is difficult, but when you consider a number of divorce cases where there is no real reason, except that people have grown apart and hence do not want to remain married, it might make more sense. But did the movie bring that out ? They have their own offices, do love each other but are they able to understand their respective limitations ? Do they have that understanding ?
The music of the movie was no great shakes, with the music being by Sohail Sen and Shibani Kashyap. Lyrics are by Mehboob and Vipul Saini.

Aur Ek Prem Kahani (released in 1996) - Starring Ramesh Aravind and Revathi

Once in a while a movie comes along, that is forgotten by most people after it has come and gone, but something remains in the memory. I had seen the movie, but had forgotten the details of the story; what I remembered was this lovely song, "Naina Bole Naina". This was a delightful song, sung by the melodious voice of Asha Bhosle, and with music by Ilayaraaja. I am sure that a number of people would remember the movie for this song (although the proportion of people who would also remember this song would not be too high though, since it has been almost 20 years since the movie and the song, and even though it is a delightful song, it did not get very very popular even then).
This was a movie that saw a number of South Indian stars, such as Ramesh Aravind, Revathi Menon, Heera Rajgopal and Sudhir Ahuja. The movie was directed by another South Indian director, Balu Mahendra, who also made the original Kannada movie 'Kokila' on which this movie was made. The movie was produced by Mahesh Bhatt and Amit Khanna and the music for the film was not original music by Ilayaraaja; he instead took tunes from other movies of his as the tunes for these songs.
The movie is a love triangle, with the sharpness of reality thrown into the cauldron, The responsibility that a person has to bear for his actions is also highlighted in the movie.



What is the movie about ? In the southern city of Madras, there is an engineer Ranganathan (played by Sudhir Ahuja) who lives with his wife Kamala (played by Sushma Ahuja) and his college going daughter (medical student) Kokila (played by Heera Rajgopal). And they have a maid Manga (played by Revathy). A sudden shock comes to the family  when Kamala suffers a stroke (mild stroke, but it can still be a calamity). Since Ranganathan has to travel frequently, this is a problem. Somebody is needed in the house just to ensure that if there is some problem, it can be handled. So they decide to get a tenant, a male tenant, who can be asked to help in case of some emergency.
They finalize on Sathyamoorthy (played by Ramesh Aravind), he seems dependable. And life continues; but a make entrant to the house can change conditions. And they do change. Kokila and Sathya fall in love, and decide that they will seek consent of her parents to get married. But, things change (or maybe just a single incident happens). On a night where only Manga and Sathya are in the house, it so happens that they make love; but this was a one-off incident. Kokila and Sathya are still in love, and Kokila of course is not aware of this incident. Manga knows about this love, but nothing more. However, one fine day, when Kokila is away on a college trip, Manga breaks the calm around Sathya and tells him that she is pregnant, and she expects that he will do what is right.
He of course looks rationally, and thinks that maybe her getting an abortion is the right next step. This was not what she was thinking in terms of the right step, and she leaves the household. When Kokila comes back, she sees Sathya missing, and he remains missing. Years later, when she is a doctor and goes to some village as part of her medical duties, she comes across them. They have a daughter, whom they have named Kokila.

Mere Baap Pehle Aap (Released in 2008) - Trying to get Dad married - Can be missed, even though from Priyadarshan

It was a good cast, starring Akshaye Khanna, Paresh Rawal, Om Puri, Genelia D'Souza and Shobhana, out of whom almost all are known for good performances. And Priyadarshan has made some good comedies in the past, so it was a bit surprising that one good into such a non-interesting movie. The concept can be pretty good, with a great father-son partnership, the father trying to get his son married to the beautiful girl, while the son is trying to get the father married off to the mother of the girl, who is also coincidentally his old girlfriend. Can be interesting, right ? Well, not quite. Modern comedies try to put a lot of different incidents into a movie, hoping that the series of gags or incidents eventually ensure that the audience likes the movie and feel satisfied.
Now to the reality of the movie - this movie attempts to get a bit serious, or so the story tries to do in between. And in between, there are some sort of gags - but imagine wasting such stars such as Om Puri (portrayed as a comic skirt-chaser - why did he take such a role?), Sobhana (restricted to wearing good sarees and sniffing or making faces), or even Paresh Rawal (who has played comic roles in a great way in movies such as Hungama, but who does not get any comic roles in this movie); you get the idea. Maybe the idea was to change their personas in the movie, different from how they are regularly portrayed; would have been appreciated if the movie had worked, but it did not. It did not earn much at the box office either. The movie has music by Vidyasagar and Tauseef Akhtar.




So what is the story about (spoiler alert) ? Well, there is this widower Janaradhan Wishvanbhar Rane (played by Paresh Rawal), he has 2 sons Chirag (Manoj Joshi) and Gaurav (played by Akshaye Khanna). Janardhan has played a good father to his sons, bringing them up in a good manner; and over a period of time, his son Gaurav has gone to become very protective of his father; to the effect that it seems that Gaurav is the father, not his father. He is extra protective because of the presence of his father's dear friend, Madhav Mathur (played by Om Puri). Madhav, in the search for a bride who is not yet over-the-hill, gets into regular escapades and Gaurav has to get them out of trouble.
Gaurav now gets in touch with a lady, an old college friend Sheekha Kapoor (played by Genelia D'Souza), who in turn is staying with her guardian Anuradha (played by Shobhana). When Gaurav and Sheekha see Janardhan and Anuradha meeting, it seems strained, and they find out that both were in an old relationship; with this, Gaurav changes his mind and decides that his father should get married to this old companion; it also seems to his father that Sheekha is an ideal bride for his son; and so it gets confused. Who gets married to whom ?

Aamir (Released in 2008) - Starring Rajeev Khandelwal - A serious movie about a terror attack

Once in a while a movie comes along that is gripping. You have these romantic comedies that are released in thousands of theaters and go on to make hundreds of crores in revenue, but those movies leave you unsatisfied. And then you get a movie, made low budget, with unknown characters, that leaves you thinking, that grips you during the movie and you start thinking for the character in terms of what will happen next. Aamir is one such movie, a movie about terrorism, but an angle that is different from other movies. It is a simple story, but does not pull any punches, and makes you think about the tragedy that happens to the hero of the movie. Rajeev Khandelwal was not unknown before the movie, since he had made a name for himself in TV serials, but a movie is a different ball-game all together.
The movie started out slowly, since there were no major stars, but when a movie is good and is also praised by critics, it starts getting good word of mouth, and that ensured that the movie went on to earn a good profit and created a good name for Rajeev. The movie was directed by Raj Kumar Gupta (who later went on to direct the hit and serious, No One Killed Jessica). Music for the film was given by Amit Trivedi, lyrics by Amitabh Bhattacharya and the movie was produced by UTV.




A man is returning from Britain, back to his family, and suddenly, his life is turned upside down, thrown into a mix that will eventually take his life. Dr. Aamir Ali (played by Rajeev Khandelwal) is returning back to Mumbai, when he is given a cellphone by a stranger and told to wait for further instructions. The video in the phone scares him, since it is clear that his family has been abducted, and he has to now wait for further instructions. Further instructions make it clear to him that he has been caught in the trap of an Islamic terrorist who urges him to do something for his religion rather than the work that he is currently doing, and plays upon his name (Aamir means a leader).
From then on, it is a frantic series of movements, a lot of them over a red suitcase that has been given to him, and which gets stolen from him in between. It is full of cash, but when he finally gets to sit in a bus and is told to leave the suitcase under his seat and move out, he realizes that the suitcase contains a bomb, and the intention was to use Aamir to cause mayhem in a bus through the bomb. He finally makes a choice, deciding to ensure that no one else gets caught up in the bomb blast, clearing an area, and dying in the bomb blast - and all his tension, his sacrifice, is unknown to people around him, since he is suspected of being the bomber who died in the blast.

Anamika (released in 2008) - Starring Dino Morea, Minissha Lamba, Koena Mitra and Gulshan Grover

Rebecca is an incredible novel and an incredible movie. So, when you start making a movie that seeks to draw inspiration from (or rather take the entire concept from). And when start comparing this movie to the original 1940 movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock, there are very few movies that will come up to the standard; and to tell the truth, Anamika is not even a superb Hindi movie, so any comparison with Rebecca will be far from fair. However, reading the book Rebecca or seeing the movie Rebecca can prove interesting, because it provides an important context to this movie. The movie is made by Anant Mahadevan who has directed a number of movies in the past, but this once cannot be said to be his best movie. The movie slips a bit, but is still watchable to some extent. Need to give some marks for trying, although it might have been better if he had taken some better actors - this after all is a movie that can provide some great acting parts (one after can pretend that it is the next Rebecca). Music directed by Anu Malik, but really no great shakes.




So what's the movie about ? There is this rich guy from a Gajner Palace in Rajasthan, who is a rich and successful industrialist. He comes to Bombay for a convention, with plans for doing what so many other people in Rajasthan have done - convert his palace into a posh heritage resort. However, being a young man, he hires from an escort service, and gets Jia Rao (played by Minissha Lamba), who does not exactly do great service to the work of an escort. He teaches her how to be an escort, and also falls in love with her (shades of Pretty Woman, maybe). They marry, and she comes back to his palace in Rajasthan. And that is where the inspiration from Rebecca happens.
The caretaker is this lady Koena Mitra, and how along with other members of the staff, keep on referring to the first wife of the industrialist, to the point that it starts to bother Jia. Jia decides to convert herself into the proper wife, and becomes more and more like the first wife, but this also bothers her husband who did not want his second wife to become like the first wife. And then, Vikram (played by Dino Morea), the rich industrialist, is accused of the murder of his first wife, things get more complicated. And then the body of his first wife gets found in the desert. What does all this lead to ? Is Jia herself in danger ? Watch the movie.

U Me Aur Hum (released in 2008) - A tearjerker starring Ajay Devgn, Kajol, Divya Dutta, Isha Shervani, and others

U Me Aur Hum is a romantic movie, although one with a difference. The movie takes a look at what love means, and how does love deal with a case where a person loses their memory, cannot even remember basic details, and what that does to the person who is living with them. The movie was the first movie made by Ajay Devgn as a director, and was also the last one. The movie did okay the box office, but gained more through word of mouth where people liked the story. Critics however had a mixed tale; they liked the story, they liked the performances, but found the direction and the progress of the movie somewhat weak, with the movie getting slow in certain parts. The music for the film won some praise, but nothing outstanding, with music by Vishal Bharadwaj, and lyrics by Munna Dhiman. Some of the other actors in the movie besides Ajay Devgun and Kajol were Karan Khanna, Isha Shervani, Sumeet Raghavan, and Divya Dutta.
The story of the movie is being done as a flashback, where a middle aged Ajay Devgn is on a cruise ship. His son is with him and likes another lady. Ajay pushes him to go talk to her, and his son asks him to first go and find an old lady to charm, and as a result, Ajay goes to an old lady and starts telling his story, with this story drawing in more crowds all around them. The story is from 25 years back, from a cruise again, where Ajay is enjoying a cruise with his friends. One of the couples with him are having some tension in their marriage.




At the bar, Ajay meets Kajol and falls for her. In the morning, when they meet, out of his booze, Ajay tells her that he still loves her. She does not tell him yes, so he pursues her by trying to find what she likes. He even manages to read her diary and from this learns that she wanted to dance. So he learns enough that he can give her training in dancing, and this makes the position better. However, she finds out that he had seen her diary and is upset. However, he still believes that things will work out the way he wanted.
He calls his friends over, and they learn to their surprise that she accepted his efforts and they finally got married. But their romantic life suddenly starts getting into problems - she starts forgetting things. When such incidents happen, they consult and find out that she has a disease, Alzheimer's, and her current pregnancy will cause more problems. He manages to handle the situation, but after the baby is born, he has to worry that if she forgets who the baby is, this can cause harm to the baby. He decides that it is best if she is put in a place that handles people with such problems, although this decision hurts him a lot.
But, then does he get her back ? Watch the movie to find out.

Krazzy 4 (released in 2008) - Starring Juhi Chawla, Arshad Warsi, Irrfan Khan, Suresh Menon, Dia Mirza and Rajpal Yadav

Rakesh Roshan has produced and made many great movies over the past decades, but sometimes even a guy like him can slip up. You have to be somewhat crazy yourself to like such a movie, although there are some parts that make you laugh. The cast of characters are all great character actors, and that helps the movie somewhat, and the same with the concept, where they take 4 people who have been locked up in a hospital for various mental illnesses and the mess which ensues when they are outside the hospital, and how they help their doctor though all this, the same doctor who has been kidnapped right in front of them.
In order to get some more star power, the movie had guest appearances from some superstars and others - Shahrukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Rakhi Sawant.
The movie was directed by Jaideep Sen, with the story by Ashwni Dhir, making this a rare movie, a movie produced by Rakesh Roshan, and not directed by him. There was some controversy related to the music of the film, with music composer Ram Sampath filing a case that a couple of the songs were essentially copied from work that he had done, and finally the case was settled out of court (with the court however ordering the producers to delete these songs from the movie).




So what is the movie all about ? It is about these 4 patients of the mental hospital, all of them with different illnesses (although why all of them need to be admitted is not clear given their problems):
Raja - Gets very angry (explosively angry) - Played by Arshad Warsi
Gangadhar - Obsessed with the freedom struggle and has friendships with long dead freedom fighters - played by Rajpal Yadav
Dr. Mukherjee - Diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a cleanliness freak - Played by Irrfan Khan
Daboo - A man capable of speaking, but has not done so for many years - Played by Suresh Menon
In addition to this, Juhi Chawla plays their married doctor who wants to take them out for a day to get them to see a cricket match between India and England, and who gets kidnapped right in front of one of them, as a part of a serious plot.
Dia Mirza plays the role of a journalist who was in love with Raja, but left him. She runs the news for a TV news channel.
Overall, the movie deals with the time when she takes them out of the hospital for the break, but when she leaves them in the van outside for some work, one of them steps out and sees her being kidnapped, and motivates the others to find her. They run into a whole host of issues but try and determine who has kidnapped her and why, and since they are inmates from a mental hospital, have to get her convinced when they tell her about the reasons why she was kidnapped.

Shaurya (released in 2008) - Starring Rahul Bose, Kay Kay Menon, Javed Jaffrey and Minissha Lamba

When you make a film on such a sensitive target, you cannot make a very simplistic movie, it has to be deep enough to present the different perspectives of the situation. And when you are trying to copy an iconic movie, then all the more so, since it is quite plausible that your audience would have seen the original movie and will end up comparing the original movie with this one, and it better be good, or the comparison will fail.
Now consider a situation where a defense lawyer, in an army setting is apathetic, not really caring about the cases of the client. However, he is asked to defend an army officer who is being prosecuted for killing his own superior officer, that too in the conflict zone of Kashmir, and he is on trial for his life. The evidence is against him, and there is a senior officer who is pushing the prosecution case. Does all this sound familiar ? Well, even though the exact situation may not be similar, no one who has seen the Tom Cruise movie, 'A Few Good Men', can fail to make the association. Even more so, since the movie was not an action thriller or something like that, it had some commanding performances, especially from Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, and trying to catch upto those performances can be a tough act, even for actors such as Rahul Bose and Kay Kay Menon. I would like to say that I found the movie great, but the English movie was in my mind, and Shaurya cannot catch up to that movie, especially because I found the script and direction to be one of the weaker aspects.




So what is the story ? In Kashmir, the young officer, that too a Muslim officer, Javed Khan had shot his superior officer, Major Rathod during the course of a search operation in a village. Now, he is on trial, and to stand as his lawyer is the cynical Major Siddhant Chaudhary (played by Rahul Bose). He is opposed by his friend, Major Akash Kapoor (played by Javed Jaffery) who is the prosecution lawyer. And a superior officer is in the shadows, Brigadier Rudra Pratap Singh.
Do I need to say more ? Rahul Bose gets more involved in the case, trying to decipher the motives of the young Javed Khan, who does not want to reveal any details of what had happened. And there is the journalist played by Minissha Lamba who reveals more of the truth to Rahul Bose and forces him to start thinking more about what Shaurya means, and how is this related to the actions of the Briagdier, the dead major and the non-speaking Army office on trial for murder. Where is the honor of the army and its officers also figuring in all this.
At the same time, it is still one of the better experiments in Indian cinema, and if you fed of nonsensical movies that become super-hits, then get hold of this movie and watch it. I hardly ever see any re-runs of the movie on TV though.

Black and White (released in 2008) - Starring Anil Kapoor, Anurag Sinha, Shefali Shah, and Aditi Sharma

This is a serious movie, on a serious topic. India has seen one spectacular suicide bomber, in the form of Dhanu who blew up in 1991, killing the former Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and a number of others (including his security personnel) in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. But even though India has seen a huge number of terrorist attacks, with such terror attacks at many different regions of the country; there have been very few such suicide bombers in India (it has occurred in many other movies though, another one being the film Dil Se ). There have been many cases of terrorists attacking the police or acting in a conflict where they are not likely to survive (including the Mumbai attacks where the terrorists would have known that they would not come out alive), but no suicide bombers.
The movie starred a few known actors such as Anil Kapoor, Anurag Sinha, Shefali Shah, and Aditi Sharma. The movie was directed by Subhash Ghai, more know for romance movies, and other such movies (Taal, Karz, Pardes, and many others). However, over a period of time, Subhash Ghai also contributed to meaningful movies, such as the movie Iqbal. This is a movie of a disaffected man, whose passion have been bought to a boil and he has agreed to be a suicide bomber, and in turn takes on the identity of a man who has been brutally affected by the horrible communal riots in Gujarat. He has been recruited to strike at one of the most significant celebrations - the speech of the Prime Minister from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15th.




He (taking on the identity of Numair Qazi - played by the actor Anurag Sinha) comes to Chandni Chowk in the older section of Delhi (right next to the Red Fort, a crowded area where Hindus and Muslims live next to each other and take part in each other's celebrations). The idea being that he will make friends with a college professor Ranjan Mathur (played by Anil Kapoor) who lives in Chandni Chowk along with his wife Roma Mathur (played by Shefali Shah). He is the perfect example of a person living in harmony in Delhi - he is an Urdu professor at Zakir Hussain College, and lives with both Hindu and Muslim neighbors.
When in Chandni Chowk, Numair discovers a lot of things that are alien to him. Hindus and Muslims live among each other, they help out in the religious activities of each other (the Chandni Chowk area takes on an air of celebration during festivals of all religions - Hindu, Sikh and Muslim), and even those local politicians from either religion who supposedly play to religious fervor are actually friends of each other and are doing all this for political reasons. He was supposed to be tricking the professor by getting his help and managing to sneak in bombs and blow himself up. Does this experience of communal amity that he sees change his plan ? With the CBI and the police on the trail of terrorists, can he be caught before he can blow himself up ?
This movie was not a big hit commercially, but it is a serious movie for those who are interested in such a topic, and is decently well made with good acting. Well worth a watch.

Sunday (released in 2008) - Starring Ajay Devgn, Ayesha Takia, Arshad Warsi and Irfan Khan

Rohit Shetty is now counted as one of the most successful Directors, with the tag of the most money making movie in Bollywood in his pocket (through the release of Chennai Express - the quality of the movie is not up for discussion in this post). He has been making movies which are over the top, with cars flying all over the place; when a person is hit, he can go flying for long distanes, almost to the extent of behaving like you would expect in a cartoonish movie. However, this film somehow did not carry the Rohit Shetty traditional feel, and did not so well at the box movie (which may be why Rohit Shetty has been making all his movies post Sunday as over the top, and most of them have been known only as entertainers, but painful for critics to review). The movie starred his traditional stars - Ajay Devgn and Arshad Warsi, and also starred Ayesha Takia and Irfan Khan. Music was by a whole host of music directions, with almost every song having a separate music director, but the songs were not particularly impressive - which is the story of the movie (nothing was really that impressive). The movie is actually a remake of a 2005 Telugu film.
So what is the story all about ? It seems like you have heard of this one before. A girl has a strange disease, whereby she can forget entirely what she been doing, even for as large a time as a full day. And somebody is murdered, and the girl cannot even remember what happened. In fact, initially she does not even realize that she is missing a whole Sunday from her life. This girl is Sehar (played by Ayesha Takia). She stays with another girl called Ritu, and one day, almost forcefully, Ritu takes Sehar out to a local club - because Sehar tends to forget where she has been, she prefers not to socialize like this.




Her mother wants Sehar to link up with a policeman, ACP Rajveer Randhawa (played by Ajay Devgn), who is a typical cop in the sense that he can be corrupt when he wants to be. His mother and Sehar's mother know each other and want both of them to get married, but Sehar has rejected the idea since she got to know about the corrupt ways of Rajveer. After the club, Sehar wakes up in her flat, but soon realizes that something is wrong - that she is missing something. She meets a couple of strange characters - one is a taxi driver and one is a struggling actor. After some discussion with Rajveer, they come to the conclusion that she given something in the club because of which she totally went out and forgot what happened on Sunday.
Slowly, Rajveer finds out that Sehar is related in some way to a murder of another girl that happened, and that the taxi driver had left Sehar near where the girl was murdered, and surprisingly the corrupt cop did a quick investigation and finally caught the guy who had murdered his own cheating girl-friend and then later killed the one with whom she was having an affair. Because Sehar was nearby, he thought that she had witnessed the murder, and was after her for that reason. Finally Rajveer manages to solve everything.