(According to Pranav Ajagekar Happy Ending is a 3 star movie)

spoilers alert it is never a particularly good idea to marry a happy ending to a rash of loose ends, but the result that the director duo of raj nidimoru and krishna dk extract from this quirky and risky exercise is none-too-unhappy. from last year's zom-com go goa gone to this crazy "comedy about romantic comedies", the directors haven't really shifted gears quite to the extent that they might appear to have done. they are still into crafting whimsical, bollywood-style send-ups of popular hollywood genres. in the rather patchy but inoffensive happy ending, the narrative style is bright and breezy enough to help them paper over the flaws in the screenplay. and the tone they adopt here is much less zany than the one they did in go goa gone, and so this film is infinitely easier to relate to. happy ending enmeshes the wildly absurd with the mildly funny to deliver two-and-a-quarter hours of harmless entertainment that does not overly try the audience's patience despite the many holes that it is riddled with. it mocks the filmic concept of the "till death do us part" kind of love. the commitment-phobic male protagonist at the heart of the film's plot falls in and out of love as if it were a swimming pool. the film also takes humorous jabs at how commercial films are conceptualized and written in the mumbai industry. and happy ending of course seeks to show up the futility of the honeyed dreams that romantic comedies peddle to a gullible audience. for producer and lead actor saif ali khan, happy ending represents a breezy rejig of his hum tum and salaam namaste persona of a decade ago. the confused philanderer act that he attempted with mixed results in the more recent cocktail now appears well past its sell-by date. yet, the many collegiate hook-ups and break-ups he pulls off in happy ending do not look completely at odds with the film's purpose. happy ending seeks to have us believe that there are no happy endings in real life. so, when we meet our man yudi jaitley, los angeles-based one-book wonder, his bestseller has dropped off the shelves of bookstores been put in the cut-price corner. what's worse, his bank balance has sunk dangerously low and he has defaulted on his car loan repayment. the swanky red crock is towed away and he is in grave danger of losing "the fame, money and girls" that he has had for the asking all these years. it is five and a half years since his book was published, and in this period he has dated eight and a half girls. with the ninth one, his dentist (kalki koechlin), he is, as always, in two minds. so the lady puts a tracker app on her mobile to constantly monitor his whereabouts. a voluble mumbai film producer (govinda) lands in los angeles in search of a writer who can rustle up a "kickass" rom-com: "a bollywood film written in hollywood style". yudi gets a lifeline. his drinking mate and foul weather aide is a married guy (ranvir shorey) who just can't shake off the vice-grip like that his wife has on his life. there is another bloke around yudi whose voice he heeds, and he is his own inner self - an ill-kempt, cynical, irritable creature (saif ali khan again) who does his best to warn him of the pitfalls that lie ahead. the biggest of them all is a rival writer (ileana d'cruz) whose pulpy romantic novel, crazy hearts, has dislodged yudi's operation payback from the list of bestsellers. there is no love lost between the two writers, and sparks fly when a desperate yudi begins to grab at straws for survival. as far as love stories go, happy ending goes nowhere. to be fair, the audience is warned as early as in the opening sequence in a movie hall. saif's yudi is munching popcorn noisily as his girlfriend (kareena kapoor in a special appearance) tries to let him know that she loves him to distraction. the hero is certainly mighty distracted. he makes no effort at all to reciprocate the girl's emotion. she stomps off angrily and dumps him, declaring that their relationship is going nowhere. if you expect happy ending to get somewhere, you are watching the wrong film. do not expect the world from happy ending and you might actually find in it enough enjoyable patches to make a trip to the multiplex worth your while.
View all reviews on Happy Ending

(According to Pranav Ajagekar Action Jackson is a 4 star movie)

spoilers alert when a reviewer is confronted with a bollywood star vehicle as spectacularly vacuous as action jackson, the usual tendency is to go a touch easy with the potshots. in other words, one dismisses it as a film meant only for diehard fans of the lead actor and leaves it at that. but in the case of prabhu dheva’s latest all-out mockery of moviemaking, one would be inclined to think twice before making any such unilateral claim. would any actor’s fans, at least those that are in their right minds, be so undemanding as to lap up something as excruciatingly trashy as action jackson? the film proffers the worst of everything – obnoxious characters, mindless situations, juvenile action sequences, raucous music, bizarre dance routines and pathetically cheap gags – with nary a sign of any redeeming feature that could lessen the blow. prabhu dheva the director seems to have lost it completely. but what, pray, was ajay devgn thinking when he chose to be part of this monstrosity? a title card at the end of action jackson declares that this is “a film by prabhu dheva”. a film? if this is cinema, anything shot with a movie camera is cinema. the titular star struts across the screen flaunting his muscles in two separate avatars – one is a small-time mumbai hoodlum who pours rum into pani-puris, the other is the loyal right hand man of a bangkok mafia don. one is called jay, the other is vishy. it is all so wishy-washy that you would want to send both the blokes to the cleaners. the identity of the don’s loose cannon surfaces minutes before the intermission, and he causes just enough mayhem to show that he means business. what that really means in essence is nothing at all. so do not even apply your mind to deciphering what is going on. it could be seriously damaging. this year, bollywood has foisted a massive amount of muck upon us and not only got away with it, but, on many occasions, also gone laughing all the way to the bank. if action jackson, too, does as much, the joke would on the audience, and the audience alone. it would be a sorry reflection on this nation’s moviegoers. from the first scene to the last, action jackson is cringe-inducing film that revels in scraping the bottom of the barrel. it is so execrable that it makes you wish you had walked into the movie theatre armed with a remote control handset with only two options – stop and fast forward. the film opens with a brace of daylight killings by a bunch of thugs in a picture postcard part of the world. the weirdly attired murderers, we figure, are looking for a fugitive called action jackson. they do get a lot of action all through the film – they are mostly at the receiving end – but jackson proves to be a slippery customer. he has a lookalike after all, and the two men keep swapping places, creating widespread confusion, not the least for those members of the audience who still haven’t switched off completely. don’t even think of slipping into a nap to escape the assault. action jackson is a prabhu dheva film, so the soundtrack is so deafeningly loud that it could rattle the dead out of their graves. as for the other characters in this free-for-all action flick, none comes anywhere near the realms of sanity. there is this glass-eyed mafia don named xavier fonseca (tamil actor anantharaj in his first bollywood outing). his name is intriguing all right; the rest of him is pure bunkum. but even he is an epitome of restraint compared to his crazy little skimpily clad sis, marina (debutant manasvi mamgain), who is so violently obsessed with her bro’s most trusted hitman that she raises hell when the latter spurns her advances. also in the pulpy plot is a down-on-luck lady, khushi (sonakshi sinha), who seeks happiness in catching a stranger with his pants down, and a dutiful wife (yami gautam) who comes out of the woodwork once in a while in the second half to push her man into breaking a few more bones. even by the pitiable standards that action jackson sets for itself, kunaal roy kapur as the bumbling sidekick of one of the two ajay devgns presents a sorry sight. it there is anything here that sinks lower than kunaal roy kapur is forced to do, it is the film itself. action jackson, a surefire golden kela contender, could give humshakals a run for its money. give it a miss.
View all reviews on Action Jackson

(According to Pranav Ajagekar Pk is a 5 star movie)

while entering the theater, i was excited and so were many people in my vicinity. being a rajkumar hirani flick, one can hardly expect disappointing but you never really know. after 3 idiots in 2009, it took hirani a hiatus of five years to come up with pk. but does this deliver enough to live up to its promise? well, i feel proud to say this, hirani has not let us down. aamir khan this time in pk has left no stone unturned and has put in his best for his role. from his physique to his language, the actor is simply brilliant. indulging himself in a role of an innocent outsider(the role which suits aamir perfectly), he speaks more with his expressions than any of the actors do with their words. with aamir on the frontier, it is hardly fair game for the remnant of the crew to show their finesse. quite to the contrary, anushka plays an adequately important role in doing her best to ameliorate the humour. sanjay dutt who appears in parts is also fabulous. now, the screenplay. magnificent. every dialogue and the successive is written, furnished and polished with extreme care and prowess. music by ankit tiwari does not differ from the director's previous movies, they are quite decent and go hand in hand with the plot. i went to the theater excited and came out learning something. pk is a movie which entertains you every minute with its creativity in successfully creating an atmosphere of humour and exuberance. pk is out to provoke but not to shock. the film asks questions via its idiot savant protagonist, but does not attempt to deliver facile, absolute answers. and that makes it all the more effective. pk is an adventure which will make you laugh heartily, make you feel heart rended and make you learn to let go, simultaneously promulgating a message. pk is something i would describe, as an emotional roller-coaster. pk is an experience of a life time. if you have people with orthodox thinking in your proximity or people who are led to blind beliefs of religious drama or are puritanical, pk is just the movie for them. for others, this goes without saying, a must watch. my rating - "an emotional masterpiece" traditional rating - 9.5/10.
View all reviews on Pk

(According to Pranav Ajagekar Ungli is a 5 star movie)

genre: drama cast: emraan hashmi, kangana ranaut, randeep hooda, neil bhoopalam, sanjay dutt director: rensil d'silva spoilers alert the central premise of ungli is as unoriginal as they come: a gang of four vigilantes sets out to name, shame and tame the corrupt in the city of mumbai after one of their own is battered in a case of road rage. in a state of panic, the police establishment deputes an upright and headstrong cop (sanjay dutt) to go after the masked and mysterious citizen crusaders. how hackneyed is that! ungli , rensil d'silva's second film as director, is a lackadaisical thriller that gets its fingers into boiling hot water in trying way too hard to make the right noises. the screenplay (by the director himself) and the dialogues (milap zhaveri) are stilted. not surprisingly, the characters are unconvincing too. and the actors - there are some competent ones in the film - are given no scope at all to rise above the morass. the plot hinges on preposterous contrivances in its bid to expose the underbelly of a rotten system that crushes the common man under its weight. ungli does not gather any momentum because it isn't a single overarching embodiment of evil that the gang decides to take on. instead, what the film presents are several stray faces of everyday corruption. the justice-seekers abduct the wrongdoers and take them to task in ways that are reminiscent of schoolboy pranks rather than no-nonsense sorties. the gang's targets are revealed one by one, and the quartet takes it upon itself to set things right for the victims. an old man is pushed around in the pension office and his file kept pending by clerks who do not lift a finger unless their palms are greased. a smarmy politician uses his clout to flout the law and plaster the town with ugly hoardings. a regional transport officer shells out driving licenses to all and sundry for a consideration. an auto-rickshaw man refuses to take an old lady to andheri west unless she pays double the legitimate fare. a well-connected fixer sells plum postings to pliable policemen, besides stashing the lawmen's unaccounted wealth in a strong room in his residence. but don't large swathes of the audience know these people and their ways far better and more intimately than the makers of this film ever will? the gang of four - a television journalist (randeep hooda), a medical intern (kangana ranaut), a computer engineer (neil bhoopalam) and a motor mechanic (angad bedi) - pull off daring acts and the media gleefully laps up their pop heroism. in due course, they are joined by a rogue policeman (emraan hashmi), who has been thrown out of the city's bomb squad and roped into the mission to nab the ungli gang. there is of course a back story to the foursome's decision to take the law into their hands. but, like everything else here, it is seriously wanting in credibility and depth. the rest of the film delivers a whole lot of hogwash about a compromised police force and the mounting frustration of ordinary folk who must stay within the confines of the law even when they know that the rich and powerful can bend the rules at will. with a runtime of well under two hours, ungli is not a long film. but that does not make it any easier to sit through. among the few positives on view, both the editing (deepa bhatia) and camerawork (hemant chaturvedi) are first rate. while the former keeps the film crisp and sharp, the latter lends it a distinctive visual feel. but much of the fine technical work is wasted because the rest of ungli never manages to point in the right directions. ungli has a few attributes that you will not usually encounter in a karan johar production. it has no big stars, no elaborate song and dance set pieces and no major love story. but when a film is more interesting for what it isn't than for what it is, giving it a miss might be the most prudent option.
View all reviews on Ungli