Fanaa
Starring: Aamir Khan, Kajol
Director: kunal Kohli
Alright, so it's finally here, the film we've been discussing for days now and the film we've been eager to see for some months. Hum Tum director Kunal Kohli's Fanaa starring Aamir Khan and Kajol is this week's big new Bollywood release.
At its heart, it's a love story between a blind girl from Kashmir and a tour guide she falls for on a trip to Delhi. They sing songs, they do some sight-seeing, they make love -- and then he vanishes, convincing her that he's dead.
Seven years later he runs into her again. By now she's regained her sight, she has a son from her relationship with him, but she doesn't recognise him. Oh and yes, there's one more hitch -- he's a terrorist and she doesn't know it.
Eventually he reveals to her that he's the man she loved and the father of her son, and that he's never stopped loving her. She hasn't either. The couple marries, but she still doesn't know what he does for a living. When she does stumble upon his real identity, she must ask herself if this is really the man she's always loved.
The problems in Fanaa start pouring out from the very start of the film, and most of its flaws arise from its careless script and its fractured screenplay. Now I've complained incessantly about how films like Pyare Mohan and Tom Dick And Harry are insensitive towards the handicapped, and in Fanaa, I find that the problem's a little different, but it's there nonetheless.
Kajol's mother Kiron Kher practically badgers her blind daughter into finding a soulmate when she leaves for the Capital. It seems almost obligatory for this blind girl to come back with a partner who will have her. So much so that nobody even blinks an eyelid when she's being wooed passionately by an incorrigibly flirtatious tour guide.
In fact, her friends encourage her to respond to his advances, and the parents are overjoyed when she tells them she's found a partner. I could be wrong but I find that this attitude is completely regressive...
The film's first-half in particular is campy as hell, with Aamir spouting cheesy shayiri and the kind of one-liners that make you cringe with embarrassment. And then, I suppose in these times of instant coffee and instant noodles, nobody finds it strange that this couple meet, they fall in love, and they even sleep together ALL in seven days!
Fine, but I'm not going to overlook the fact that the film is full of all these creative liberties or freakish coincidences -- call them what you may. Whether it's the fact that she miraculously gets her eyesight back after one random surgery, or that years later when he's battling for life and death whose doorstep does he land up on but hers.
Even the fact that she doesn't recognise him from his voice when she meets him years later. You know your typical Hindi films are full of such inaccuracies and liberties, but this is hardly the stuff you expect from an Aamir Khan picture which is always positioned as being more real and smarter than the rest!
My most basic problem with Fanaa really is that it's so darn boring. The film drags on and on without either purpose or plot. It's dull and it's slow and it really tests your patience because you know exactly what's going to happen, yet you have to wait for the film to unfold at it's own leisurely pace.
The screenplay is littered with songs that aren't particularly hummable and they only further slacken the film's pace. Now of the actors, Aamir Khan is efficient, but he's saddled with such a poorly-written character that you can't even blame him for failing to rise above the script.
After all, till the end of the film he seems this wishy-washy guy who can't decide if his heart is really set upon the mission that he's on, or if he's doing it because he's being made to. It is undeniably Kajol who steals the show -- not because of a sterling performance because there's no great histrionics expected here -- but because she has this presence on screen that's unparalleled by her contemporaries.
She looks a million bucks and she infuses life into that role. As for their chemistry together, alas, it just isn't there! In the end, as you leave the cinema after a screening of Fanaa, you feel almost like you're coming back from war.
It's been a loooong three hours in there, and what you remember at the end are the glaring inconsistencies... Shot remarkably by cinematographer Ravi K Chandran, the film is neatly packaged but it completely lacks soul. Then that's two out of five and a thumbs down for director Kunal Kohli's Fanaa, a film that fails to engage you. It's a disappointment, no question about it.
Rating: 2 / 5 (Average)
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The Da Vinci Code
Starring: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina
Director: Ron Howard
A week later than it was meant to, but The Da Vinci Code has finally arrived at our cinemas this week. For the uninitiated, let's go over a brief background of the film.
Based on author Dan Brown's best-selling novel of the same name, the film is centred around Harvard academic Robert Langdon - played by Tom Hanks - who's called in by the French police to the Louvre museum one night, where the head curator has been murdered, leaving behind a trail of symbols and clues.
Langdon teams up with cryptologist Sophie Neveu - played by French actress Audrey Tautou - who has a personal interest in finding the murderer, and together they unravel a series of stunning secrets hidden in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Now all these little mysteries lead to a covert society dedicated to guarding an ancient secret that has remained hidden not for years or decades, but for close to two millenniums - that's 2000 years.
Langdon and Neveu set off on this thrilling quest through Paris, London and Scotland, collecting clues as they desperately attempt to crack the code and reveal secrets that will shake the very foundations of mankind.
Okay, now in my opinion, very much like Fanaa this week's other new release, the problem with The Da Vinci Code is that it's just too boring. You know an audience will forgive a film many faults, but if a film fails to keep you engaged, if it fails to retain your excitement, then you know the film isn't working.
That's pretty much what happens with The Da Vinci Code. It's so faithful to the book that it takes the real fun out of the film. You know you're expecting plot twists and turns and all these little mysteries and you're hoping they'll do it in a manner that makes it exciting 'cinematically'.
But what you get is a dialogue-heavy piece that just ambles along sluggishly. The difference between a book and a film has got to be the visual element, it has to be the spectacle, but you get none of that here. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean the film sucks.
It doesn't mean it's unwatchable. It only means that the film fails miserably in achieveing any true greatness. At best, director Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code is average fare. And that's a pity, because it could have been so much better.
Rating: 2 / 5 (Average)
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X-Men: The Last Srand
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen
Director: Brett Ratner
Of course if you want something less cerebral, more event entertainment, then there's the third instalment in the X-Men films, X-Men The Last Stand that's also made it to the cinemas this week.
Set in the mutant world that's divided into two factions, this new picture has a big task ahead of it -- and that of course is living up to the earlier two films which are regarded by movie geeks and fans of the original comic book as the finest adaptations ever.
All the usual suspects are back for the third round -- Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Jean -- but this film has a new director on board -- Brett Ratner and the big question of course is whether Ratner can prove he's as passionate about the source material as his predecessor Bryan Singer was.
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