Aiyyaa : Movies Review

Cast: Rani Mukerji, Prithviraj

Director: Sachin Kundalkar

Rating: **1/2

To enjoy a film like 'Aiyyaa', logic and rational definitely have to be left behind. Sachin Kundalkar creates a funny, slightly eccentric, filmi protagonist but he expects her charm to carry a film that is saddled with a ridiculous plot and side characters who are intended to be amusing but border on the annoying.

Meenakshi (Rani Mukerji) loves melodrama and is crazy about typical Bollywood films and music. Needless to say she also aspires to have a classic Bollywood romance rather than settle for an arranged marriage. Coming from a typical middle-class family, she has no choice but to go through the routine of meeting prospective grooms with their families, complete with a tray of poha and sreekhand. Despite several rejections, Meenkashi manages to find a perfectly eligible candidate. However, she is not too keen about the alliance because she finds herself insanely attracted to a very intense-looking Tamil college student (Prithviraj), who saunters around with blood-shot eyes and is rumoured to be an addict.

The plot might sound perfectly plausible but the narrative soon veers out of control. Too much time is spent in building up the intrigue around Surya (Prithviraj). The sub-plot about the weird, oversexed colleague is completely unnecessary and not even remotely entertaining. I understand that the director wanted to create a family that is completely eccentric but the gags associated with them are so bad that the humour repeatedly becomes slapstick. Meenakshi's hopeless pursuits get tedious beyond a point and her scene with the drug peddler should definitely have been chopped off at the editing table.

Despite the loopholes, Rani Mukerji's performance rises above the disappointing script to create an endearing character who is hopelessly in love with a man who seems completely wrong and shows no interest in her. Prithivraj has little to do but does complete justice to his image of the brooding, tall, dark and handsome heartthrob.

Watch it if you can overlook the flaws, Rani's fun side promises some genuine laughs.

Jism 2 review

Cast: Sunny Leone, Randeep Hooda, Arunoday Singh

Directed by Pooja Bhatt

Rating: 1/2 *

Breathing is an operation of inhaling and exhaling. Sunny Leone makes this process a delight as her lovely lady lumps rise and descend like waves in a stormy sea. So the biggest selling point of Jism 2 is that Sunny breathes a lot and offers the same twin reasons to watch this film that she has in her entire filmography. Her indecent exposure has worried many but there are way bigger exposés in store here. For starters, how Arunoday Singh manages to unconvincingly pull off two satellites clipped on to his head as ears or how Randeep Hooda breaks into the hamming hall of fame without slipping in any ants in his pants. The film lives up to its title by allowing one to examine the human body in more ways than most doctors get to. Regrettably, it is your jism which is reduced to rubble in the process of watching this dribble.

The movie opens to a shiny and smooth canvas- a topless back of porn star Izna (Sunny Leone) who is purring her sob story perched on a rock by the sea as the waves wash her sexy every few seconds. Her crime: falling in love. Our crime: watching this movie. Punishment for both: death by exhaustingly theatrical overacting. This Masterclass on how an actor shouldn’t prepare is delivered by the two male leads: Ayaan (Arunoday Singh), the most unintelligent officer of the Indian Intelligence and terrorist mastermind Kabir (Randeep Hooda) who is as masterful with the violin as he isn’t with the monologues (where he breaks into an SRK from ‘Darr’ or a Naseeruddin Shah from ‘Sarfarosh’), only louder with more spitting and less speaking.

If you really want to know why Izna is troubled, skip this review to reach the trailer at the end of this page. Her misadventures begin when secret service agent Ayaan wakes up next to her and offers her a mission to extract some super-sensitive data from the clutches of a globally-wanted terrorist Kabir. While Kabir’s present location is established in Sri Lanka where he is disguised as a musician, they’re defenseless against his arsenal: his gun and violin, both of which cause equal amount of pain. Sunny is selected for this as she has a past with this deadly criminal and hence the only person who can get close to him without being shot down or have her ears bleeding, courtesy his violin. 

After little opposition, Izna packs her baggage and boobage and jets off to Lanka. Her mission ends up in many emissions and takes us into an insufferable journey. This comprises loud acting where everyone screams, emphatically squats about the screen and no one listens to anyone, apart from Izna’s conjoined planets that float about like they’re nodding in approval of whatever was happening in that scene. If they happen to be your sole motivators to watch this film, just browse through this slideshow for a teaser:

Sunny side up

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   Yahoo! India Movies Wed 1 Aug, 2012 2:30 PM IST
   
   

   A picture is worth a thousand words.

Why this film is more erratic than erotic is because it only borders on extremes. Neither of the actors can tread the line between screaming their heads off and being so subtle that they resemble the contents of a washing machine in action. Also, there seems to be some confusion about the role of a porn star as Izna admits to being one but functions as a prostitute. It’s like saying oranges and lemons are both citrus fruits, so oranges are lemons.

Randeep’s tongue runs deep into Sunny when he gropes her for a face rub. A scene later, he becomes a melancholic and weary poet, rambling, “Zindagi tujhe toh sirf khwaab mein dekha hai maine.” Basically, he wants to present his versatility as an actor. If that has to be done at the risk of appearing to have multiple-personality disorder, so be it. If Arunoday Singh’s ears had dialogues, they would surely bag a few supporting actor nominations. But since they didn’t, it’s best that he flaps them together to fly South where the film industry is a little more lenient. If you’ve seen the promos or visited her homepage, you don’t need to be told about how Sunny sparkles on the screen. But unfortunately for her, what you see is all you get. Pain and pleasure have the same expression and Sunny proves this by maintaining the same demeanour while sobbing over her lost love and when she’s aroused. Heavy breathing, Ooh-ing and Aah-ing on a loop fill up 90 per cent of the film. And if this wasn’t enough to cause diarrhea, there are dialogues like, “Usne mujhe chooa, toh aisa laga ki jannat ne choo liya. Aur phir woh chala gaya apni khusboo chodke, mere tan pe, mere kapdo pe.” Ever heard of a Laundromat?

The Bhatt camp is infamous for daring to cinematize topics that most would shudder to even consider. But their recent ventures, from Murder 2 to Jannat 2 to Blood Money have taken those topics and drawn a Dali moustache and floppy ears on them. And if they couldn’t have had a worse hand, their actors have brought the show down like pack of dominoes. Director Pooja Bhatt hasn’t faced the camera for 11 years and her last gig behind the camera was directing Himesh Reshammiya-starrer ‘Kajraare’. We rest our case.

While the entire premise of this film is baseless, Ayaan offers Izna a chance to escape her whoring hell to deceive a criminal (her ex who had inconsiderately dumped her without informing) by throwing herself at him. Why? Because it is for the country! For a country bar’s afternoon screening, may be.

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