Aagey Se Right

Rating : 4/10
Release Date : 4th Sep, 2009
Time : ~ 120 minutes
Director & Writer : Indrajit Nattoji; Music : Amartya, Ram Sampat
Starring : Shreyas Talpade, Kay Kay Menon, Mahie Gill, Shehnaz Treasurywala, Shiv Pandit, Shruti Seth, Vijay Maurya


This is a film I would’ve ‘bought’ as a one-line synopsis – a cop who loses his gun and then tries to trace it as the gun becomes embroiled in all sort of situations. But I would’ve sold immediately, even at a loss, on seeing the final product…a silly, jerky film that wastes the premise and the considerable talent at its disposal


You get a wimpy, mother-pecked cop (Shreyas Talpade) who runs around like a headless chicken. A chaste Urdu spouting jehadi (Kay Kay Menon) who, after watching one song & dance, becomes a tapori shaayar who renounces violence and his beard. A highly irritating Shiv Pandit who is in love with an equally irritating Shruti Seth, who in turn is an extremely irritating police commissioner’s (Rakesh Bedi’s) daughter. You get a slightly over the top Mahie Gill as a sensationalist TV reporter who is in cahoots with a TV friendly cop.

The silver lining and the only thing responsible for the 4 rating are Vijay Maurya's turn as the south Indian accented tapori. Quite funny once you get used to the accent, especially when he turns to his stationary bodyguard as someone he was interrogating runs away “Mr Wilson”, “Yes sir”, Waiting for Christmas ?”…
Also, special mention of the song, picturised on Shehnaz, the one which converts Kay Kay – More Piya - its actually very nice, very hummable, a kind of jazz-ish number. And of the funny notices which seem to crop up everywhere – lists of do’s and don’ts, road signs, notices in offices etc


Shreyas Talpade and Kay Kay continue their downward spiral in chase of the quick bucks. The rest is one mangled blur…

Golmaal Returns

Rating : 6/10
Running Time : 140 Minutes
Release Date : 31st Oct 2008
Director : Rohit Shetty; Writer : Rumi Jaffrey; Music : Asheish Pandit, Pritam, Vishal Dadlani, Shekhar Ravjiani
Starring : Ajay Devgan, Arshad Warsi, Kareena Kapoor, Tusshar Kapoor, Shreyas Talpade, Celina Jetley, Amrita Arora

The rating is so high just because they made me laugh – a lot ! Its asinine for most parts, there are a lot of PJ’s thrown in, the plot has more holes than my socks and it drags a bit towards the end. Yet it manages to entertain, crack enough good ones, poke enough fun at the producers, Saawariya or Balaji films to keep us in a state of mild amusement throughout with several sharp upwards spikes in the middle.

Thankfully, they chose to abandon the earlier storyline and most of the characters – keeping just a few (I thought the first Golmaal was terrible) so you can peacefully watch it without being at a loss. Ajay Devgan is married to Kareena, named Ekta in the film just to allow some merciless leg pulling of Ekta Kapoor and her inane serials. They live with their siblings, Kareena’s brother Tusshar (who’s mute) and Ajay’s sister, Amrita Arora. Kareena always suspects Ajay of having affairs and so one night when he doesn’t return as he was rescuing damsel in distress, he prefers to lie rather than risk the truth. That lie leads to a lot of complications, some of which involve, Arshad Warsi as the cop who doesn’t like Ajay but is in love with his sister, the snake-tattooed guy, a Rani Mukherjee from Saawariya clone, a dead body, men in drag etc etc.


Some of the best moments come when they’re ripping off something – there’s a hilarious sequence when they’re going hell for leather behind the Kingfisher tune (ooh lala le oleo), another where Ajay spouts dialogue mentioning every one of his films, again when Kareena uses all the Hindi serial names or when they use music from ‘Tashan’ and towards the end when they start beating Tusshar just because he’s from Balaji Productions (in real life).

Ajay was very good in this one, Arshad seems to have re-discovered his spontaneity (had been a bit flat in some of his earlier ones), Tusshar was good though I think they over did the mute jokes while Shreyas was wasted in his role – it was too slapstick for his talents. Amongst the women Kareena looked hot (though do you also feel that she's lost too much weight ?), while Celina, thankfully in this one, keeps her clothes on.

I’ll leave you with a couple of PJ’s that are used – they’re both questions really. What would Lara Dutta be called if she married Brian Lara ? Whats the difference between a secretary and a personal secretary ? If the answers (the first one is obvious) can make you smile, then you have a hope of enjoying the film. Else save yourself the effort or the expense.

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.