Kambakkth Ishq

Rating : 2/10
Release Date : 3rd July, 2009
Time : 142 minutes
Director : Sabbir Khan; Writer : Sabbir Khan, Ishita Moitra; Music : Anu Malik
Starring : Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Aftab Shivdasani, Amrita Arora, Vindu Dara Singh and Guest Appearances by Sylvester Stallone, Denise Richards, Boman Irani, Kirron Kher, Brandon Routh

All the beautiful locations, the Hollywood stars guest appearances, the cool threads, the various long legs, lingerie and swimsuit shots, the repeated use of swear words cannot hide the fact that the movie is an asinine farce, running on empty, with no script worthy of its name, no plot, nothing holding the film together. Everything in the movie reeks of trying to be big, bigger than anything before – the stunts, the Hollywood biggies, the completely unnecessary locations (the whole Italy shoot was redundant). The sad thing is that the current movie-starved audience may still make this one a commercial success...kambakkth luck !


Akshay Kumar, super stuntman hates Kareena (a part time model who is trying to be a surgeon). Just to emphasize that point and ensure no one doubts this fact, they call each other bitch/dog/bastard a couple of dozen times. At one point, though, Kareena has to perform an operation on Akshay and mistakenly leaves her musical watch (which plays ‘om mangalam’) inside him. Then she has to pretend to be in love with him to retrieve it. That’s really about it. Except there are many stupid sub-plots to accomodate Aftab Shivdasani, Amrita Arora, Kirron etc etc

Kareena pouts as only she can, shows off her long legs, her size zero figure and cleavage repeatedly. No complaints so far. Akshay, though, is so way over the top, – right from his clothes, which reek of someone desperately trying to be cool, to his very jerky and loud acting, that it makes you cringe. He seems to have lost his way. He’s much better than this and I wish he would do a pure, slick action thriller and not farcical comedies.


Its loud, screechy, makes you laugh about once per 25 attempts, vulgar in parts, completely implausible in all other parts. The kids and all of those with a similar IQ loved it. All others will hate it and will think twice before watching the next Akshay starrer, especially after its coming so close to his previous turkeys.

P.S. There’s plenty of eye candy throughout the film but the sheer number of such shots and the swear words really make me question the U certificate.

Welcome to Sajjanpur

Rating : 5/10
Running Time : 133 Minutes
Release Date : 19th September ‘2008
Director & Writer : Shyam Benegal; Music : Shantanu Moitra
Starring : Shreyas Talpade, Ila Arun, Amrita Arora, Divya Dutta, Yashpal Sharma

Without Shreyas Talpade I would probably have gone a notch lower. But as all people who’ve seen him in Dor or Iqbal would testify, he brings so much credibility to his role, such delight on his face that you tend to go with the flow and forget minor niggles like the slowish pace of the film, the too stereotypical characters etc

He is the letter-writer of the village. Having good writing skills since an childhood, laden with the burden of his teachers forecast that one day he will become a famous writer, he now sits under a banyan tree, has a ratecard (Rs2 for a postcard, whether you make him write only on one side or not etc) and uses his writing skills to spice up the message, infuse emotion in the letter to make sure the point hits home when the receiver gets the missive. His skills are now famous and people come from nearby villages as well to get him to write

Since all people come to get him to write – in one case a man comes to even get him to type an SMS – we pretty much get to know all that’s happening in the village.
 The elections, where Yashpal Sharma, ex-Sarpanch and strongman / toughie of the village (again ? he’s more talented and should get more variety in his roles) is making his wife stand for the elections (I never understood why he couldn’t stand himself again ?) and faces opposition from an unlikely quarter, a eunuch named Munni Bai
 The attraction between a compounder and the Subedar’s widowed daughter in law, including a ‘ticklish’ examination
 The ‘missing’ husband, where an old classmate (from the IInd standard), Kamla (Amrita Rao), gets Mahadev to write letters to her husband, who left shortly after marriage to work as a labourer in Mumbai and now has been gone for four years. Again, I never understood why they didn’t know of each other despite living so near each other or why she didn’t start writing to him earlier and waited four years.
 The manglik daughter, where a frantic Ila Arun is trying to get her daughter, a sassy Divya Dutta in pigtails who rides a scooterette, get married but obviously needs advice on what rituals to be performed prior to the wedding to get rid of the ‘manglik’ status

We meet all of them and some other zany characters. However, I found the whole thing a bit ‘forced’ – its like how just getting a person to speak in a rustic dialect (the humra’s and the bitwa’s etc) doesn’t make a true villager, the whole rural village thing came across as something too sweet, too syrupy, almost as if we were watching through rose tinted glasses. And again, it’s a slice of life with nothing major happening – just a steady stream of day to day incidents as described above.

This one is at best a one time watch. It makes you chuckle a few times but rarely laugh.