Tees Maar Khan

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Akshaye Khanna

Director: Farah Khan

Rating: **

Farah Khan tried all the industrial tricks to give a real hit during the Christmas with the hit pair Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif in Tees Maar Khan. However, all the hype created around ‘Sheila Ki Jawani’ could not safeguard this latest Farah Khan flick.

Akshaye Khanna plays a superstar Aatish Kapoor, who dreams to win an Academy Award one day. Katrina is a wannabe actress Anya, who also happens to be the girlfriend of Tees Maar Khan (Akshay Kumar).

The conman disguised as a Hollywood filmmaker ‘Tees Maar Khan’ plans a big train robbery of 10, 000 kilograms of antiques and goes for a fake shooting of a film. He even goes on signing Aatish Kapoor as the hero and appoints some villagers for this purpose.

But then, the viewers will scratch their hair to find logic behind Aatish signing for the act. The film does not have the typical flavor of Farah Khan films.

It seems she messed up the things after signing Akshay and Katrina or more concentration went to the much talked item number ‘Sheila Ki Jawani’. The spice factor is missing and tries to go by the slapstick way.

The film is a remake of 1966 movie Caccia Alla Volpe but one change in the Hindi version is that the robbery is shifted to train than the original ship.

However, Farah could play around the interesting train plot and somewhere the magic and charm got lost. It seems Sheila is the only spicy thing in the story with her raunchy choreography.

Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Jee

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Emran Hashmi, Omi Vaidya, Shruti Hasan, Shazahn Padamese, Shraddha Das

Director Madhur Bhandarkar

Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Jee is a movie, which as the title suggests, is about the essence of a human heart which almost always retains its child like quality. The heart is where life's entire essence is.

Thus to prove this point, director Madhur Bhandarkar has significantly dealt with the subject of love in a very humorous way.

The movie stars Ajay Devgn portraying the character of Naren, a middle aged manager of a multinational Bank. There he falls head over heels in love with a young girl barely out of her teens called June Pinto, played by Shazahn Padamese.

Omi Vaidya as Milind Kelkar is the typical idealistic poet living in his own transient world has a deep crush for a girl called Gungun Sarkar played by Shraddha Das. Gungun who is a very ambitious and career minded gal has a thing for the playboy Abhay played by Emran Hashmi.

Abhay or Emran is strongly attracted to a young and vibrant gal called Nikki, played by Shruti Hassan who is an out and out loud mouth. Nikki does not hesitate to call a spade a spade, a trait which is simply loved by the Casanova Abhay.

This entire gamut of affairs and secret liaisons creates a total chaos and as each event gets entangled with the other the movie becomes one big platform of drama and melodrama.

Madhur Bhandarkar, who is known for making realistic cinema, has put in the flavor of realism in this movie too, with the characters all very believable and something which a common man can relate to. The music has been scored by Pritam. The movie releases on the 28th of January 2011 so watch out for this one!

Band Baaja Baaraat

By Subhash K Jha

Starring Anushka Sharma, Ranveer Singh

Directed by Maneesh Sharma

Rating: ***

Have you ever wondered what they mean when they talk about the chemistry between a screen pair? Watch this delightful ode to the Great Indian Wedding.It solves the mystery of chemistry for keeps.

The super-accomplished Anushka Sharma and debutant, quite easily the discovery of the year, Ranveer Singh (is this really his first film?) whip up a wondrous camaraderie in scenes written with such skill and craft you really don't see the labour that has gone into building this love- shove during the time of weddings-sheddings in the heart of Nayee Dilli.

Capital pleasure, anyone?

Band Baaja Baaraat (BBB) is an utterly joyous and enjoyable look-see at the world of Punjabi weddings in Delhi as seen through the eyes of two wedding planners, partners in business Shruti and Bittu who have sworn from Day 1 never to get involved with one another.

'Pyar' (love) and 'Vyapaar' (business) just don't jell. The couple keeps telling one another this.But are the Gods listening? The skilfully-written superbly crafted rom-com takes the no-holds-barred pair's relationship through a lavish labyrinth of shaadi shindings replete with Bhangra tracks (Salim-Suleiman) that provoke your heart and feet to jump up and dance.

Outwardly the film looks like Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding put into a maze of wedding festivities that seem to meander from one joyous jig to another until we come to a point where we ask in unison…now what?

With a smoothness of touch that shows the hand of a writer who knows his job thoroughly (full marks to the dialogue and screenwriter Habib Faizal) BBB changes the profile of Shruti-Buttu's relationship midway.

What remains unchanged is that sense of joie de vivre which comes to a film on that rare occasion when the writer and director know where they're going and how to take the characters there without giving away the signposts to the audience.

Delhi, that city of bustling streets, speeding autorickshaws, restive bus stops, bottom pinchers and money filchers has never been more vibrant and alive in any other recent film. Aseem Mishra's camera penetrates the heart of the Capital and the souls of its two unforgettable protagonists.

Unlike Yashraj Films' Bunty and Babli some years ago, Bittu and Shruti are fooling no one except themselves.

“Tujhe saanp-seedhi ka khel bahut pasand hai na?” Bittu challenges Shruti towards the end.

Oh, the games people in love play with one another to ward off the inevitable embrace! This vibrant voluptuous ride through the kaleidoscope of weddings as the two wedding planners forget that there is a planner far more powerful than they to plan their destiny, is as engaging as it is caliber-defining for the rom-com in Hindi cinema.

What does one say about the two principal performers without tripping over with the excitement of being in the midst of remarkable talent?! With just three films Anushka Sharma has grown into one of the most watchable and eloquent contemporary actresses.

To the role of the spirited Shruti Anushka adds the kind of spice that one associates with Kajol and Rani Mukherjee.In two key sequences with Ranveer Singh (where she conceals her true feelings and much later lets them all out in a tumble of smirking hurt) Anushka blows the screen apart.

As for the film's hero debutant Ranveer Singh sinks his teeth into Bittu's part with a self-confidence that comes to actors after at least ten full-fledged films. And that too if they are gifted. Here's new talent in a film industry dominated by jaded superstars.

Ranveer's spirited screen presence and quicks-silver comic timing makes the older stars look…well old, if not outdated. In the climax where he calls himself an ass for denying his feelings, Ranveer is a revelation.Go for this newcomer, producers. He will soon be booked for the next three years.

The supporting players are largely unexposed artistes. They add to that sense of feisty freshness that runs across the film.

Bravo, Yashraj for bringing such exceptional new talent to our cinema. Bravo, debutant director Maneesh Sharma for taking us through the organized chaos of traditional weddings in movements of pure pleasure and enjoyment that communicate themselves to the audience.

Hours after watching the film I've still not stopped smiling.

No Problem

By Subhash K. Jha

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Sushmita Sen, Sanjay Dutt, Akshaye Khanna, Suniel Shetty, Kangna Ranaut, Paresh Rawal

Director: Anees Bazmi

Rating: * ½

The bad news is that good films are not doing well. But the better news is that bad films are also being rejected.

"No Problem", if we must talk about it, is no better or worse than all the other, comedies that have come and groaned. A series of wildly improbable characters and ideas strung together in sequences of flabbergasting haphazardness, this is the sort of comic romp where the laughter is lost in transit.

The credits boast of four writers. But there is no rhyme in the crime no logic in the laughter.

Just fasten your seat belts and let Anees Bazmi, a fine writer when given better circumstances, take you for a ride. The film opens with Sanjay Dutt and Akshaye Khanna playing two con men Yash and Raj (Yash-Raj, get it? ha ha) rescuing a baby gorilla from the dicky of Paresh Rawal's car.

The baby gorilla and its grateful parents show up in the climax where all the male characters (approximately 33 at last count) are dressed as Sardarjis to sing a song that goes "Kad lamba chaudi chest chest".

Ahem. Chest joking, I guess.

Not too many sequences make much sense in this homage to hectic incoherence. The gags are as flat as Neetu Chandra's belly. She has some funny moments with Suniel Shetty (playing the assassin named, with excruciating unoriginality, Marcos). But the funniest character in the plot is Sushmita Sen. A schizophrenic wife to bumbling-cop Anil Kapoor, she does the split-personality act with lip-smacking relish.

You often wonder what a woman as gorgeous as Ms Sen is doing in a place as farcical as this where anarchy prevails. Nothing makes sense. Nothing is supposed to. The film is shot in South Africa. For what purpose, we will never know. The film's confounding idiocies could have easily been located in Matunga or Mangalore.

The most important component of a situational comedy is that the actors must LOOK like they're having fun. There is not much below-surface camaraderie among the actors. Anil Kapoor brings in a zany fun into his self-deprecating role. But really, just the ability to laugh at oneself is not enough.

You have to communicate that laughter to the world that's watching you. On that score "No Problem" simply parts ways with the audience.