(According to Rajesh Kumar Action Jackson is a 4 star movie)

cast: ajay devgn, sonakshi sinha, yaami gautam, manasvi mamgai director: prabhudeva watching action jackson can be a challenging proposition. this film changes personality like a person suffering from dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder). the first half plays out like an unscripted comedy while the second half sees a sudden transformation into stylized action territory. it’s as if director prabhudheva wanted to make two distinct movies with the same cast. when he couldn’t make up which genre to go with he put the two together to make an ambiguous mix-genre movie that’s too inconsistent to garner any appreciation. the story starts off with vishy (ajay devgn) who’s basically a textbook south indian movie hero kind of character. tough guy with a golden heart. who will beat up anyone for the right price, but will always have the time and inclination to dish out justice. when khushi (sonakshi sinha) runs into vishy she accidentally sees him without his pants (and underwear) on. believe it or not, this incident brings this otherwise out of luck girl some good luck. she decides to humour the situation further and that’s when they fall in love. while this superstitious love story is unfolding, we’re introduced to the bad guys. there’s xavier (anand raj) who is india’s biggest don operating from bangkok. his trusted man in command is a big bulky body builder who’d give khali a run for his money. there’s xavier’s psychotic sister marina (manasvi mamgai) who’s totally smitten with ajay devgn’s character. and you even have the novelty of puru raajkumar playing a corrupt cop. the bad guys all want a piece of devgn’s character. and as the film progresses you’re introduced to yami gautam’s role and the bearing she has on the life of action jackson. if that sounds like it’s all over the place, it is. action jackson, the movie, tries to be too many things all at once. it’s drawing too many similarities with pradhudheva’s previous films like wanted, rowdy rathore and r… rajkumar. the entire first half is like a series of gags picked up from various south indian movies as well as hindi comedies and stitched together. and just when you think you’re possibly watching a cheap rip-off of a sajid khan film, the film changes its entire perspective in the second half. it goes from being a brainless comedy to being a kill bill spin off with high-flying katana inspired action. it’s a 360 degree turn in treatment too. the mood swings from the gaudy and gawky pastel coloured tapori mumbai theme to a slick, leather, swords and martial arts kind of hollywood production. and suddenly sonakshi’s character just disappears for the longest time. the portions with manasvi mamgai, anand raj, kunal roy kapur (who plays the comedian and devgn’s best friend), yami gautam and ajay devgn are exhilarating. they certainly have the right kind of irreverence. but then, the director’s and writers’ efforts to stitch together the two contrasting plotlines just messes things up. it all boils down to prabhudheva’s inability to make his mind up. on one hand he had a great concept for an action film. it was slick, edgy filled with equal part quirk and action. but it was a big risk because indian audiences had never seen something like that before. manasvi’s character of marina for example is a certified megalomaniac who treats men like sexual objects. if only they’d explored that side of the story further. we’d have had our very own version of pulp fiction. but prabhudheva chooses the much safer, been-there-done-that comedy approach. he employs loud, south-movie, potboiler humour, random item songs, dance numbers and tries to create an audience friendly masala entertainer. but the combination backfires. so you have ajay devgn looking caught-up in an awkward situation. on one hand he’s playing a crass street thug and on the other he’s an intense and witty action man. it’s a contrast that just doesn’t work. devgn looks totally out of place dancing to prabhu
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(According to Rajesh Kumar Main Aur Mr. Riight is a 3 star movie)

cast: barun sobti, shenaz treasuryvala, kavi shastri, maia sethna, danny saru direction: adeeb rais genre: romance duration: 2 hours 10 minutes main aur mr. riight is a film which essentially belongs to aliya raj (shenaz treasuryvala), who is self confessedly synonymous with style, class and perfection (all in bold capital letters), including the sandwich that she makes. her world revolves around her profession (she is a casting director for films) and her bunch of friends, who sometimes find her as a case of ‘mental imbalance’ because she is single and unmarried! the usp of her group is that, except for her everyone else is a couple. the reason why aliya is single is only because she hasn’t found her ‘mr. right’ so far, because there is hardly anyone who fits her bill (read ‘terms and conditions’) of being ‘mr. right’. being the single one in the group and unable to take the constant nagging from her friends, she decides to ‘create’ her mr. right by engaging a wannabe actor cum struggler cum a hardcore salman khan fan sukhi (barun sobti) by telling him to play her boyfriend, for which he will be paid handsomely. the lure of money and the ‘opportunity’ to play a role makes sukhi accept the offer. then begins the transformation of the struggler sukhi into the suave foreign based hridaan dalmiya, who is ‘mr. right’ by all means, courtesy aliya’s intensive grooming. and when she flaunts hridaan at a friend’s wedding, needless to say that he becomes the apple of the eye of every girl and the object of envy of every guy in the group. as time passes, sukhi aka hridaan teaches the group many a thing about being honest and truthful to each other, which creates many revelations in the close knit group, which makes him even more dearer to everyone in the group. at the same time, knowingly or unknowingly, sukhi actually starts falling in love with aliya. everything goes on perfectly as per aliya’s foolproof plan… till the time a hotel waiter recognizes sukhi in front of the whole group. if you fancy american romcoms, you would be able to predict the ending of this film right at the beginning. it has drawn inspiration from various films, the most prominent being jennifer aniston-starrer picture perfect (1997). main aur mr. riight technically becomes the debut film of director adeeb rais. he however has a long way go to become an impressive filmmaker. while the first half of the film is still bearable (mostly because of the establishment of the characters), the second half of the film is unwontedly stretched and seems to be going nowhere. the direction is amateurish with poor shot taking, bad performances and cliched story telling. overall, the film has no story or script to boost of and poor direction makes it ever worse. television actor barun sobti makes his bollywood debut here and is probably the only saving grace of this film. perfectly cast as a diehard salman khan fan, barun amuses you with his desi humour and does complete justice to the role. shenaz treasuryvala fits the role too, but her character is poorly written. the film’s music (dj akhil talreja, shibani kashyap, astitva band, ravi shukla, dony hazarika and sunil singh) is hardly anything to write about. except for the yesteryear’s hit track (‘yaar bina chain kaha re’) which has been incorporated in the film, there is hardly any song which lives afresh in memory at the end of the film. the film’s editing (anupama chabukswar) is poor, while cinematography (pathan parvez khan) is shoddy. the screenplay (adeeb rais, aseem rais) is something that only the writers could probably explain. after the success of delhi belly in 2011, shenaz treasuryvala returns to bollywood with this film. television heartthrob barun sobti marks his bollywood debut with main aur mr. riight. it was rumoured that filmmaker punit malhotra will be acting in the film.
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