KISMAT KONNECTION - forgettable Bollywood rom-com

KISMAT KONNECTION (DESTINY CONNECTION) is a rather anonymous Indian rom-com. Shahid Kapoor plays a hard-up architect who thinks Vidya Balan is his good luck charm. Egged on by Juhi Chawla's fortune teller he wheedles his way into Balan's life, despite the fact that he's planning to build a supermarket on the site of her beloved community centre. Comic capers ensue.....or not. Less screwball than formulaic and entirely forgettable.

KISMAT KONNECTION was released in summer 2008 and is available on DVD.

Random DVD Round-Up 1 - HALLA BOL / RAISE YOUR VOICE - Paisa Equals Power

HALLA BOL is an Indian drama that asks whether justice can prevail in an unequal society where the rich dominate power structures, and demands that typically self-interested people put their safety and reputations on the line to ensure that it does. The movie features a strong performance from Ajay Devgan as a callow film star struggling with his conscience to stand as witness to a murder loosely based on the infamous Jessica Lal case. For a Rajkumar Santoshi film I found the direction uneven; the moral message a little naive; the dialogue stilted; some of the action just ludicrous; and the first half slow. Indeed, this three hour movie should have been a much tighter one hour fifty. This is not a movie that lives up to the high standard of similarly-themed films like DAMINI. On the plus side, the second half is genuinely gripping and I loved the score from Sukhwinder Singh - who is no longer a particular type of voice but a good Music Director in his own right. But perhaps the best reason to watch this is to see the strong performance from Pankaj Kapoor as Siddhu - the moral heart of the film.

HALLA BOL was released in summer 2007 and is available on DVD.

GURU - handsomely produced but cumbersome

GURU is a handsomely produced but cumbersome film based on the life of Indian rags-to-riches businessman Dhirubhai Ambani.

Co-written and directed by Mani Ratnam (director of the infinitely better YUVA), GURU is unambitious in its narrative structure and thematic material. It follows a young man as he leaves his small Indian village and learns his trade in the markets of Istanbul. Cue a credibility-busting "item number" involving excruciating belly-dancing from Mallika Sherawat. Composer A.R.Rahman should know better too. Guru returns to India and marries a disabled girl, ostensibly in order to get the money to stake his business. He starts a cloth trading company, successfully breaking up the corrupt local bosses with the help of a local crusading journalist. Before long he is running one of the biggest companies in India, if not the world. Naturally, there is some bribery, some corruption, some adversity, some triumph over adversity. And then it's over. But nowhere do we have the kind of emotional exploration that we see in a film like GODFATHER II - another film about a powerful but corrupt man.

With the nicely drawn visuals offset by the weak narrative in the second half of the film, do the performances tip this into a must-see movie? Basically, no. The movie stars Bollywood's Brangelina, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai as the businessman and his wife respectively. Bachchan has done better work, not least in YUVA. Rai returns to her plastic big-Bollywood persona - a million miles away from her early performances in art-house movies CHOKHER BALI and RAINCOAT. The talented Madhavan, Mithun Chakraborty and Vidya Balan are good in the supporting cast, but this is small recompense in a near-three-hour slog.

GURU was released in Canada, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA on January 12th 2007. It is now available on DVD.

LAGE RAHO MUNNABHAI/CARRY ON MUNNABHAI - Pure popcorn entertainment

LAGE RAHO MUNNABHAI is an outstanding Bollywood feel-good comedy. I haven't had such a good time in the movie theatre in a long time. This isn't really a sequel to the original smash-hit movie, MUNNABHAI MBBS. Rather it is another movie in a franchise that riffs on the original formula. Munnabhai is a Bombay goon who kidnaps people, beats people up and generally lives a disreputable life. He is played by the charismatic and versatile Hindi actor, Sanjay Dutt. Munnabhai has a side-kick called Circuit, who is played by the supreme comic, Arshad Warsi. These guys have real comic chemistry and timing - and the comedy is broad - witty, crude dialogue and physical slapstick. In this new movie, Munnabhai is in love with a radio DJ played by the beautiful Vidya Balan (last seen in PARINEETA). In order to impress her, Munnabhai pretends not to be a doctor this time but a Professor of history. He wins a radio quiz with his knowledge of Mahatma Gandhi and hopes to win her heart. Unfortunately, as the hallucination of Gandhi who follows Munnabhai around tells him, she's in love with the professor, not the goon. So follows a simple, honest, but utterly charming slapstick comedy with the usual mistaken identities and Heart-Warming ending. It may not be rocket science, but I see enough unfunny comedies and Movies with a Meaning that are just manipulative and empty to know a winner when I see one.

LAGE RAHO MUNNABHAI/CARRY ON MUNNABHAI is on release in India, Australia, the US and UK.