All the Best 2009

There is no end in sight to the woes of Veer and Prem, played by Fardeen Khan and Ajay Devgan. Veer, a wannabe rockstar, and Prem, a car aficionado, are good at one thing - cooking up lies and fooling other people to cover up their own truth.

Veer has been footing the bills of his luxurious life in Goa besides helping the cash-strapped Prem from the pocket money he gets from big brother Dharam (Sanjay Dutt) who doesn’t stay in Goa. Veer has lied to his brother that he’s married to Vidya (Mugdha Godse) to get thicker wads of pocket money. Prem, in turn, is married to Jhanvi (Bipasha Basu). She runs his ancestral gym with second hand treadmills that often speed up instead of stopping.

All is well, until Dharam shows up to meet his younger brother and his wife. Mistakenly, he takes Bipasha as Fardeen’s wife and Mugdha as Devgan’s girlfriend. What follows is a comedy of mistaken identities as Prem and Veer pile up lie upon lie to keep the charade going until times comes for Dharam to leave for his home in Lusoto. But then, there’s a coup in Lusoto and Dharam’s stay is extended.

On the sidelines there’s a menagerie of madcap characters including a tenant who’s eager to move into Veer’s sprawling bungalow. He’s turns up with all the furniture loaded in a tempo outside Veer’s house but gets a bashing from Dharam. Or the local don (Johnny Lever) who seems like the offspring of Sir Judah from Karz, for he talks with his cronies by jangling a spoon inside a glass.



Rohit Shetty, the director of ‘Golmaal’ series, comes up with a breezy, bouncy comedy that abounds with silliness but still packs in ample laughs. True to his signature style, the young director spices the comedy up with tons of action. Cars turn turtle, get blown, and even do the pirouette.

Ajay Devgn (with an ‘a’ flicked out of his surname) does some dangerous stunts besides showing his comic flair. He is best in the scenes with Sanjay Dutt. Playing a suspicious brother given to groping the women around him in moments of panic, Dutt becomes the catalyst for humour in many a scene. Fardeen is lovable as the over-the-top goofball. Bipasha and Mugdha are mainly there to glam up the comedy. Johnny Lever and Sanjay Mishra chip in with their brand of humour.

The movie could have done better without a song (Pritam) or two - they’re peppy but nothing to hum about. The action is good but the climax - when a bunch of Africans land up in Goa - gets a bit chaotic.

Still, the movie is fun to watch.

Jail 2009

Reality Bites! And director Madhur Bhandarkar has been repeatedly pinching us with his ‘realistic’ potshots at different faces of our modern society – from the glitzy ramps of Fashion to the sleazy pubs of Chandni Bar. Now, with Jail, the director saunters behind the barbed fence to provide us a peek into the lives of the people we call ‘criminals’.

As Morgan Freeman’s character said in ‘Shawshank Redemption’, “we’re all innocent in here”. So is Parag Dixit (Neil Nitin Mukesh), a handsome yuppie who’s thrown inside a prison based on the circumstantial evidence that implicates him for possession of drugs. Parag had a promising career and a loving girlfriend (Mugdha Godse) before his smooth-sailing life was turned turtle on a fateful day when he gave lift to his roommate who secretly carried drugs in his bag. The mobile phone records and the bloody shootout with police make for substantial evidence against Parag. He’s thrown inside Thane jail till his case could come up for hearing in the courts.

From thereon, Bhandarkar begins to delineate various character sketches inside the squalid, smelly, sweaty and overcrowded prison barracks.

There’s a convict named Kabir (Arya Babbar) with links to the underworld. He keeps an eye open to recruit possible shooters for his ‘Bhai’ outside. There’s Nawab (Manoj Bajpai), a butcher serving a sentence for murder. He’s on good terms with everyone, including the jail authorities, and emerges a comforter for Parag. On the sidelines are typical characters that seem plucked out of newspaper headlines. There’s a guy who’s behind bars for mowing down people with his car. There’s another one, a social activist, cooped up inside the jail for showing sympathy for Naxals. There’s also a poetry reciting inmate Ghalib, who manages to pull off a daring escape.

But it’s Neil’s character that remains the unshifting focus of the story. Through his ordeal, Bhandarkar not just mirrors the harsh reality inside a prison but also attempts to make a statement at the country’s judicial system where the speed of justice dispensation can put a snail to shame.

The movie would not have worked had the role been entrusted to wrong hands. Neil digs his teeth well into his character and brings a mix of seething angst, cathartic outbursts and hopeless resignation against his situation. Both Arya Babbar and Manoj Bajpai cut neat performances while Mugdha Godse underplays her character quite evidently.

What’s souring in this slice-of-life drama is that it eventually comes pretty close to being a collage of clichés to be expected from a film of this genre. It hardly tells anything which any newspaper reading person already did not know. The system is rotten. Hell, yes it is! The authorities are corrupt. You bet! The judicial system is slow. We all know it. So what’s new in ‘Jail’? Pretty little except a soul-soothing number by Lata Mangeshkar. Her magic hasn’t waned after all these years.

Jail 2009

Welcome To All Mp3 Music Orbit

Hi Everyone!
This blog will have mp3 songs.... very sooon