Action Replayy

Rating : 3/10
Release Date : 5th November, 2010
Time : ~140 minutes
Director & Co-Writer : Vipul Amrutlal Shah; Co-Writers : Aatish Kapadia, Suresh Nair; Music : Pritam
Starring : Akshay Kumar, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Aditya Roy Kapoor, Om Puri, Kirron Kher, Neha Dhupia, Rannvijay Singh, Rajpal Yadav, Sudeepa Singh

Take "Back to The Future" (a classic). Attempt Indianisation via heavy dollops of unwanted emotion, inane dialogue, silly characters, logical flaws and a ludicrous ending. And you get some idea of the angst I feel after having watched this film.


Aditya doesn’t want to get married to his girlfriend as he feels marriage leads to terrible things. Case in point are his constantly bickering parents, Akshay & Aishwarya. However, when on their 35th wedding anniversary they seem to be on the verge of splitting up, he suddenly cannot digest it, he rushes to his girlfriends grandfather’s place, gets into his time machine and travels back in time to try and make sure they love each other when they get married. Sounds illogical ? It is…


All characters are shallow, a horrible stereotype without any depth or likeability. Each person seems to be wearing floral, psychedelic colours and were denims even in existence in India in 1975 ? The shoddy animation in the beginning and slapstick ending ruins the film completely and the rather simple plot is stretched and stretched till our sanity is close to breaking point.


There is too much emphasis on looks, camera angles and clothing rather than the script. In the edit (quite a few jumpy cuts in the film, BTW) they seem to have forgotten simple things like what is it that Aditya tells his parents & grandparents to become friends with them and start living with them ? At the end there is a reference from each of the grandparents, while bidding goodbye to Aditya, saying they will miss him, miss his constant compliments but we never saw him interact with them or compliment them !

Akshay’s transformation was mildly interesting though his overall look was terrible. Aishwarya’s make-up looked odd but still looked good. And while Aditya showed some breeziness, the film struggles as a whole, purely due to script and edit issues. Neha looked good.


The sad part about this film is that with a little more effort, it could’ve been brilliant. In its current form, it is highly irritating…its a shame that 25 years after Back to The Future we werent able to make a film that could even come close...time for me to do some time travel and watch it again !

The Social Network

Rating : 8/10
Release Date : 4th October, 2010 (USA)
Time : 121 minutes
Director : David Fincher; Writers : Aaron Sorkin, Ben Mezrich (based on his novel, ‘The Accidental Billionaires’); Music : Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
Starring : Jesse Eisenberg, Rooney Mara, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer, Josh Pence, Justin Timberlake

How would you like to be the world’s youngest billionaire, one of the coolest internet entrepreneurs but totally without friends and a reputation of being an asshole ?


In quite an amazing behind the scenes look at the man behind 38.5% of my personal internet browsing time, we see how Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook (yes, yes, we all know it started as just a way for geeky Harvard types to connect with each other…but this goes into a bit more detail than that).

Mark is a geek. His social graces and knowledge of what to say or more importantly not say become painfully aware to us and his girlfriend, Erica, in a rapid-fire conversation occupying the opening few minutes. Mark’s angst at Erica then leads to Facemash, one of his first few internet inventions. Its so popular that it causes the Harvard server to crash. At the resultant hearing, an irritatingly smug Mark, instead of being contrite before the board, tells them they should be thanking him for exposing the weak security behind the server. The tone is then truly set for what follows…


Other key characters are Eduardo, a really nice, well meaning guy, no slouch himself on the net (gives Mark the algorithm that makes Facemash work) and is the co-founder and CFO of thefacebook.com. Or so he thinks. Sean Parker, inventor of Napster, golden boy with the golden curls, based in the land of the Golden Gate, is also an important player. He removes the ‘the’ from thefacebook.com and also some other things / people. For a period he has Mark eating out of his hand. And there are the Winklevoss twins. Also from Harvard. Olympic rowers. And the guys who came up with the idea of a place for Harvard people to connect.


It’s a fascinating film with several layers. Its great to know how facebook came to be what it is, the story behind some of the features (relationship status, for example, including a place where it comes to bite one of the inventors). Its also interesting to see the dynamics behind some of the lead characters and how they are cast. Mark is cast as a smart guy but a prick. Shaun is made into a playboy but a little sleazy. Eduardo is a genuinely nice guy but perhaps out of his depth (FB may not have become what it is if he’d had his way). And the Winklevoss twins are as uppercrust, rich blue-blooded Americans as is possible, seeking a meeting with the President of Harvard accusing Mark of stealing their idea and where it was reassuring to see bureaucracy being the same in American educational institutions as in ours.


Another layer which was fascinating were some of the business calls being made. What was the philosophy behind FB ? Would you have expanded it the same way (via educational institutions)? When would you have introduced advertising ? An interesting case study by itself.



Quite incisive without quite trying too hard, gripping (great editing in terms of the flashbacks – hard to follow at first but excellent when you get the hang of things), nice choice in terms of the subject matter chosen (can imagine another film on Zuckerberg dealing with entirely different aspects of him / FB) and quite simply superlative casting make this a great watch. Cant wait to see it again !

PS : Loved the Tagline….

Golmaal 3

Rating : 5/10
Release Date : 5th November, 2010
Time : 155 minutes
Directors : Rohit Shetty; Writers : Robin Bhatt, Yunus Sajawal; Music : Pritam
Starring : Ajay Devgn, Arshad Warsi, Kareena Kapoor, Tusshar Kapoor, Shreyas Talpade, Kunal Khemu, Mithun Chakraborty, Ratna Pathak, Johnny Lever, Sanjay Misra, Mukesh Tiwari, Vrajesh Hirjee

The sole purpose of viewing the film is to have a good laugh. And it succeeds in delivering that, though for the most part with the crudest of humour, liberal doses of slapstick and amazing facial contortions by all actors. Again, this is just a loose array of gags, strung together very tenuously with something vaguely resembling a story.


Gang One, Ajay Devgn, Shreyas Talpade (he with the stutter) and Kareena Kapoor try many unsuccessful businesses. And of late they always seem to come up against equally unsuccessful Gang Two, Arshad Warsi, Tusshar (he with no vocals) and Kunal Khemu. They live with single Dad (Mithun), while Gang One ke paas Maa hai (Ratna Pathak) (sorry, couldn’t resist).


Turns out Mithun and Ratna had a thing going in their youth and on the instigation of Kareena, they get married with Mithun & co moving into Ratna’s house. The obligatory settling in difficulties happen between warring brothers, some more expensive vehicles are blown up (film budget is more since it’s the 3rd instalment), some more impossible stunts happen (they have to really push the limits because it’s the 3rd instalment) and eventually, it ends almost seamlessly into the making of Golmaal3 (quite liked it – noticed that quite a few of the audience stayed on for the entire end-credits this way).



Ajay Devgn looked extremely fit, Arshad looked quite unfit (needs to lose a few kgs) and Kareena looked like a million bucks of any currency you choose. Everyone did their roles with apt gusto, even the veteran Mithun doing his share of contortion-acting with enthusiasm. There was some thought put into some of the side characters too. A don (Johnny Lever) who has short term memory loss. His sidekick, who mis-spells everything under the son. Kunal Khemu who comes up with non-sequitur couplets for all occasions.


A few places you laugh because its genuinely funny, a few where you laugh almost inspite yourself and through the rest you kind of grin or frown and bear it. Never is it worse than the third degree. It is, after all, Golmaal 3 !