Aisha

Well some movies are like - one look and u get that gut feeling - man this is gonna suck. Like when it is a Yash raj movie set in Punjab, Akshay Kumar is the hero, it's Bhandarkars take on reality, Anil Kapoor producing the movie showcasing Sonam Kapoor's wardrobe. The last one is Aisha.

Why would any one want to watch Sonam Kapoor in branded clothes wearing LOreal lip gloss. Well I see enough of that already. Why make a movie for that. It has a great supporting cast - Abhay Deol is just so lovable as Arjun Burman, Aishas best friend Pinky, her pet project Shefali, foolish Randhir Gambhir everyone else is just perfect in their part. And then there is Sonam Kapoor. Rather there is Sonam and more Sonam and then even more Sonam, so much so that i started wondering why she din't play all the roles in the movie.

Hello everyone I am Aisha, My dad produced this movie revolving around me to give my soo-not-happening career a boost. So everyone in the movie has nothing to do except dance to my tunes. Well these people are just there to revolve around me and my so not happening life pretty much like my real life career. So after setting up Maasi, I see the comic-relief-guy-friend Randhir spilling drink over Shefali and decide to make a match out of it. Yes thats how whimsical and jobless I am - I am doing something for Animals or something when I am not poking my nose into every one else' affairs, btw focus on wardrobe. So I spend some of my dads money and give the girl a make over (well guess who spent dads money and got a make over after Delhi-6 and Sawariya) and try to set her up one by one with guys I find not good enough for myself. Obviously every guy in the movie is there to fall for me. But I love my childhood friend. Ofcourse he too loves me but for no particular reason he keeps flaunting the hot chick by his side through out the movie till she decides to marry the hunk. Best friend marries comic relief guy and Shefali her old sweet heart and aal izz well. Everything is just so convenient and I get some job. So what was the point - yea I own almost as good a collection as the Sex and the City team.

Despite its wafer thin plot, Aisha is not a bad film, just that it is a Sonam Kapoor film. And she is no Alicia Silverstone.

Laaga Chunari Main Daag

This one sure was expected to be an adventurous venture after all the reviews i had heard. But hey, it was hilarious, the trouble being it was so not intended to be. Well how hard it is to make a movie about a serious issue like Prostitution and make u laugh. Almost impossible, that was before LCMD.

So there is Vibhavari and Shubhavari - such different names - two happy sisters affectionately called Badki and Chutki, living in a palace in Banaras. Oh btw they are very poor. All they have is the palace and a coughing father and a sewing mother and yes evil relatives. They are happy singing the wonderful 'hum to aise hai bhaiya'.

But the Palace needs to paint, who else but Badki - the son Daddy could not have - goes to Mumbai to make enough money, while Chutki does her MBA. So everyone Badki meets is bad, how sad. No job and no place to live, she takes the only path left - one a Son would not be able to take - Prostitution. And soon they are rich enough not just to paint but to redo the interiors of the palace, 'Marble flooring' she says. Ofcourse now she is a diva with her own place in Mumbai like normal call girls u see. So Chutki joins Badki in the bad city. Ahh and the inevitable happens - realization that her sis is a call girl. And a stunned Chutki says 'u r so great'. Oh so surprisingly Badkis flame happens to be the badka of Chutkis fiancee, who on hearing the truth that Badki is a call girl says - 'u r so pure'. and thus ends the journey of a woman. Arey o yashraj, kitne writers the.

Honestly when I laugh at movies I somewhere feel bad that so many people has put in so much effort. But this one, they didn't even bother.

Atleast the movie made me realize how good an actress Konkona is, she managed to make Chutki likeable. The rest is laughable.

IHLS

Simply put IHLS is a bad movie. but its hard to hate Candy floss. Especially K Jo brand candy floss. He made a very sweet KKHH entirely out of it. And it is hard to not use cute with anything associated with KKHH except the story which is pure Bullshit btw.

IHLS is a much younger first cousin, so we have a damn cute Imran Khan as the cynical Jay and decent looking Sonam as the romantic Simran, and Ketan Dave as Jays HIMYM-Barneysque best friend who gets all the catchy one liners and almost manages to steal the show right under Imran's cuteness. Honestly Imran is not a great actor nor a good dancer and that shows. But when u r that cute who cares. Imagine Imran and Kats and the cuteness overflow. Again Sonam is a misfit in all those hip contemporary Ts and shorts. And to think someone dared to produce a movie revolving around her - bravo Paa !

I don't see much reason to take IHLS seriously. Except the spoof on K Jo there's nothing original. Well the whole movie seems like a spoof of Chopra-Johar brand of film making with all scenes giving a deja-vu. If only makers also decided to not take it seriously it would have been much better.

Raavan

Here is the deal. 5 minutes into the movie, Sita is kidnapped. That was quick, Can't wait to see the rest of the movie, I thought, but I had to, for a flat 100 minutes.

Meanwhile Sita jumps off a waterfall and it is captured so beautifully, u r awestruck by the cinematography and the exotic beauty of Athirapally waterfalls , but by the third time it is shown u just think she hit a tree and she s just fine..
Then Sita shrieks, Beera makes faces, Ram shoots/runs/wears sunglasses, again and then again and then again..
Get up take a walk - Sita is shrieking Beera is making faces and Ram is shooting/running.
Take a nap - hey Govinda is Tarzan, and Sita is still shrieking Beera is still making faces and Ram is still shooting/running.

Time : Infinity
Flashback : Sita is dancing, again dancing then again dancing, no more I wonder why Ram is not missing Sita.
Beera has fallen for Sita seeing her jump down the waterfall.
Flashback : Surpanakha is pulled by her nose, humiliated and commits suicide. So it's a revenge saga. Sita lowers her shrieking decibels. But why is Beera running a parallel govt, Is he a tribal/naxalite/maoist. Oh nothing matters just take this thing forward.

Tarzan meets Sita, just like that, my guess - they have run out of locations. So bring on the climax.

Ram kills Beera's bro. Ram is ruthless, get the point.

Ram and Beera fight, Beera lets Ram go & sets Sita free. So much for the revenge !
There it is - Ram asked Sita to take Polygraph test. Just when u thought this can't get any worse.

There is a promising idea, a bolder Sita who refuses to take Agnipareeksha. Plus amazing cinematography, Priya Mani, Ravi Kissan, But the fact is all these can't make a good movie unless there is proper script and screen play. Like those in-love-antics-of ash abhi around release time. But not any less boring.

Raajneeti

Mahabharat + Godfather garnished with 'widow-sympathy-votes' Madam angle - all the excellence of the above mentioned sources of inspiration .

Strangely I kind of enjoyed the movie (in the time of Kites, Raajneeti is pretty much Godfather), especially the first half. Second half is an outright remake of Godfather - with a lot of scenes giving a sense of Deja vu. And then from a hurried meeting between Kunti and her Jyesht Putr to the climax a steep fall. Adapting the war for power to election in current scenario is a commendable move, but politicians shooting each other in public! Well the only plausible explanation seems to be that Jha realized its 3 hrs and has to end the movie. So boom dhish dhish dhish ..

Once the movie starts revolving too much around Ranbir Kapoor's Micheal Corleone it goes down and downer - why the American Girlfriend - cut her and 5 min well saved. One remarkable aspect is almost all the roles demand only a single expression from the actor hence everyone manages to give a decent acting wala feeling. Like Ajay Devgan makes that 'Angry young(now old) man side angle face' (considering his role, that might well have been his natural expression on the sets) through out and very well he is playing an angry man. Arjun Rampal couldn't manage any expression but he made Khadi look hawtt. Bajpai managed to hold on do a decent Duryodhan-esque expression even in those shiny suits. Ranbir's overworking PR has done a very good job in hyping a decent performance - his tally of 2 expressions (in each half) is next only to Nana. Nana smiles , scratches his head , smiles wickedly , becomes serious and not eccentric - and he does it well. Kat looked bad in first half(whoever put that big bindi on her face hates her) but made up in the second half once she came in simple cotton sarees. But the worst job in acting department was done by Kunti who looks younger than her sons with the exception of Ranbir and her wooden expression-ed son that is Rampal.

Still recommending as this is the best I have seen this year.