Piku

Piku (2015), directed by Shoojit Sircar of Vicky Donor (I really liked it) and Madras Cafe fame, is a moderately entertaining feel good flick, with a glamoured-down Deepika Padukone (she is wow!), now-in-his prime Amitabh Bachchan (hamming & enjoying it) and out-of-sorts Irrfan Khan (romancing the cork) in the leads. The disease of make-believe Bengaliness is not as bad as Sanjay Neela Bhansali's magnum hocus-pocus Devdas, but could have been easily avoided by having the actors' real-life ethnicity right. For example our Bishu Babu (Bishwadeep Chatterjee), who excels in a minor on screen presence and a major off-screen avatar (Sound Design). There is no chemistry or physics on display in the game of restrained romance in motion in this ageing road movie gone home. Kolkata looks suitably sexed up as material for down-to-earth, greying, collapsing, quaintness personified dreams. Juhi Chaturvedi the writer often comes out with interesting situations/sequences/dialogues. But the well-intentioned hard-working performers are often not upto her inventiveness. Or is it the Director ?

Tanu Weds Manu Returns

Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015, Dir: Anand L. Rai) is one of those rare movies where a return is not missing the turn. The two avatars of the very talented (and loving & living it) Ms Kangana Ranaut steal the show, sometimes from each other. The Haryanvi lass from Jhajjar, however, is a hard act to beat - the sports quota athlete from Ramjas college is an almost perfect impersonation, feisty and fragile, fairytale yet down to earth. Himanshu Sharma's script/dialogues are spot on, except in the end when the suddenly manipulative plot returns the chubby cheeks bye-candy Manu (Madhavan) to born again bhabhiji Tanu, instead of the Karate Kusum we have all by now fallen in love with. The music by an ex-NID Film & Video student (calling himself Krsna Solo now) is passable, except for the pretend Haryanvi-in-English ditty 'Old School Girl' (Singer: Kalpana Gandharv) and 'Banno Tera Swagger Laage Saxy' (Music Director: Tanishk & Vayu; Singers: Brijesh Shandllya & Swati Sharma). Deepak Dobriyal is mostly over the top, but sometimes funnily so. Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub’s Chintu is a well essayed opportunist with a heart on hold. The faux-topical treatise about Haryana khapdom gutturally against gung-ho lovers is one of the few but glaring false spots in the script.