The “Underworld meets terrorism” tagline clearly seems like a marketing ploy to get the initial crowds into the theater. Because Contract has as much to do with terrorism as say, RGV ki Aag has to do with Sholay. (I promise this is the last time I mention RGV ki aag when I review a RGV product!) Having said that, if you’re game for another vengeance-ridden protagonist who has a “shoot at sight” order from the director, this one is it. The story is fairly well-written and the characters are border-line caricatures but non-standard enough to grab your attention.

First things first, as usual, I couldn’t handle the random “see my nostril hair” super-tight close-ups. My complaint like always, is more against the randomness than with the actual close-ups. I must say though, that there are some scenes which could have easily used the standard over-the-shoulder editing, but instead, close-ups or mid-shots were interspersed with shots of both characters in the same frame. I’m not saying this is path-breaking, just saying it’s a breath of fresh air from the extensive “blackhead coverage”.

Of all the departments of film-making, in Contract, the casting fascinated me the most. Many movies make me wonder about some of the decisions. What went through the writer’s head? What was the interaction between the cinematographer and the director in this shot? Contractmade me very, very curious about the casting process. What must have the auditions been like? How did they pick the actor to absolutely suit the character? So many of them, new faces and none of them looked out of place.

Now, the importance of the character in the whole scheme of things can be debated, but the actors were chosen well and almost each one did justice to the role given to them. Some of the characters were over-ridden by stereotypes set apart for them. For example, the main lead played by Adhvik Mahajan (Aman) had to have a wooden, sullen look just because no one thought of another way of portraying a peace-loving guy who has been hardened by the vagaries of life. Not to mention Adhvik’s voice which is a complete turn down.

For instance, Prasad Purandhare looked sinister in his opening shots as the cop trying to convince Aman into joining his ploy to get to the terrorists. So much so that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was behind the havoc in Aman’s life in the first place. The very sight of loud characters get my nerves crawling up my skin. So, I think it’s a huge compliment when I manage to not only tolerate them through the movie, but in fact enjoy their company for the first couple of times they are on screen.

While credit does go to Upendra Limaye and Amruta Subhash who played the loud Goonga and his louder wife, it is equally shared by the way the characters are written and the things they are made to do even though they are not the focus of the camera.

There is a certain rawness about the way things are handled in writing the sub-plots too. I’m sure you have always wondered why the protagonist, who is out to kill the villain, chatted him up first? You’ll know why when you watch Contract. Because any other way and it looks too easy to be true. But, they deserve points for trying something different.

While they let us see on screen is gritty when it needs to be, what we don’t see but is implied has an effect on your nerves too. Then it maybe, the image of a wife-beater you create in your head or how you are blind to the visuals when the twist in the lyrics of an innocent rhyme, ‘twinkle twinkle’, hits you. The latter works more so because it is a child’s voice has been used.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about creativity in the writing of the broader plot. It is a decent watch but ultimately there’s nothing new in the story. Ram Gopal Varma on his blog mentions,

Somebody asked me if Contract is a trilogy. I wouldn’t say that, because trilogy sounds more like a finale and my intent is to make a hundredology of gangster films.

I guess that’s why, he’s just touched upon the terrorism angle that’s claimed to pervade into the underworld. After all there are 97 movies to go, what’s the rush?

Staring at the computer. Checking the thesaurus. Wrecking my brain. Checking thesaurus again. There is really no other word for “predictable” that wholesomely describes Kismat Konnection’s story, dialogues, character transformations, etc, etc, etc. The title clearly says that it’s all konnected by kismat. So, no points for asking why it is set in Canada (or should that be Kanada?)

Which also means that you are demented if you complain about all the happy coincidences when boy meets girl, loses her, wins her back or maybe not. But looks like, asking for ‘unique’ coincidences is asking for too much. Movies like these have been our staple diet when we were growing up, dear movie makers! It’s high time you begin respecting that and show us something more. And just zip up on the tacky symbolic lights-out-luck-down, lights-on-fate-bright bit! It truly makes my eyes hurt from rolling.

And the dialogues have the same effect, when my brain involuntarily says out the words two seconds before the characters do. Before, I can control it from doing so. Hell, let alone the dialogues, the lyrics of the songs are just prose set to tunes, and have no poetry. And, the music didn’t work for me in the promos and didn’t work for me while watching the movie.

Well, it’s not like this one doesn’t have its moments. Juhi Chawla and the lines given to her had me in splits for the 7 minutes she was on screen. Then there’s this one scene where Vidya Balan’s character, Priya describes her idea of an ideal match, which culminates into a lovely romantic moment. But those are about the 9 minutes that I enjoyed in the movie.

The other romantic moments are either as if no one in the movie’s team has been romantic after the 80s (stuffed toys as gifts, p-l-e-a-s-e!). Or real romance is so cheesy that it’s better to portray this dream world where a squeaky toy can make a heart-broken girl smile than think of genuine romantic situations.

Vidya Balan is one actor who can convey sensuousness through her facial expressions and doesn’t really need a ‘hot’ body to convey that. Which means you need no leather pants in your wardrobe, lady! She looks great though, or at least much better than I thought she would after Heyy Babyy. Thanks to the camera decisions of mostly focusing on her upper body and more so the charming face. And that’s the end of intelligent or smart camerawork decisions. Because, the lighting had this uncanny way of making the streets of Canada look like they were studio sets. Or were they actually sets?

And it’s obvious that director Aziz Mirza has gotten so used to directing Shah Rukh Khan that almost through half the movie, I had to remind myself that it’s Shahid Kapoor I’m watching. And it completely doesn’t work when he tried to pull an Amitabh Bachchan from Namakhalal by spouting fast monologues on a sport.

But then, there’s this thing that Shahid’s eyes do that make you wish he gets the girl even if it’s the most expected thing to happen story-wise. Yet the puppy eyes fail to convince me that he’s this struggling architect who magically owns a largish house in Canada, a convertible, a large screen TV and yet is broke.

So, you’re not allowed to forget that the operative word in the title is “Kismat” - luck, fortune, destiny, whatever you would like to call it as the opening, boring voiceover monologue by Shah Rukh Khan reminds you. klearly kommon kismat konnection is more like it.

And just in case you are wondering, I am no big fan of what our film industry churned out during that period. Of course, it’s over-generalization, but I’m talking of those specific movies with very loose characterizations and even looser transformation of these characters. The kind where the makers thought they are being blasphemous if they didn’t present us with a badly choreographed song, with worse writing and cookie-cutter music every 10 minutes.

Very rarely do I allow myself to judge a movie in the first few frames. But sappy, long, unwieldy words of gratitude from the director to everyone he felt thankful to, one after the other, did it for me. Now, the actual first few frames of the movie reaffirmed the cyncism. Aerial shots of a four-horse chariot running wild on brown pasture lands. This could look beautiful, but here it just doesn’t.

Bouts of directorial creativity surface every once in a while, only for you to wish they didn’t. Because they are in the form of a two lips touching awkwardly (not kissing!) under a…table fountain!! Or picture this - yetannuder romantic number playing. Manisha Koirala is upto some random dance, suddenly one of her palms faces camera with her lover’s name written on it and a red mark on the little-finger edge of the palm. Next, the other similarly red-marked palm, with her name on it this time, joins the first palm at the red spots to form a heart!!!!! Sheeesh…film-makers, the audience has grown up…when will you?

Jaane tu is sweet, but not saccharine sweet. It’s more the fun, peppy sweet. Yet it does not reach the heights of a lasting entertainer, mainly because of the sudden limp in the story 3/4ths way down the line. It just came across as aimless and rather random after that.

However, the spoof-ish undercurrent running through the movie is completely adorable. The digs on all things “Hindi cinema” are thoroughly enjoyable. And I could almost sense how the writer is having a hearty laugh by having the audience lap up, the mother of all clichéd climaxes, without complaining.

The college campus feel of the movie is going to make the young identify with the characters and their situations. And the slightly less young will enjoy the nostalgia. I liked the way various relationships were built. Be it the mother-son, the father from the portrait-son, the brother-sister, and of course friends and lovers - all these equations came across well but yet had an anti-climatic feel about it.

Genelia and Imran Khan both bring a breath of freshness on the screen. It’s as much their timing as it’s the natural, much needed casualness they afford their characters that make them dear to the audience. I especially liked the insecure, confused, disappointed body language that Genelia presented in the second half. We know for sure that they are here for the long haul, at least for the chirpy, less serious kind of roles.

Anything “Aamir Khan” has to have music that adds to the ambience of the movie and its true with this one too. So, even with a forced in number like “pappu can’t dance” you find yourself swaying to the music. While there isn’t a shred of doubt that “kabhi kabhi aditi” is one of the most romantic numbers to have come out in recent times, “pappu can’t dance” and “nazre milana” have also grown on me with repeated hearings.

To be honest, I just don’t feel right judging a movie while sitting in the corner seat of the third row (from the screen). The camera angles, the colors, the sound - all seem off to me. So, I think it’d be unfair to make any comment on any of these aspects.

So, yeah, I had a smile on throughout the movie but the base story is a little disappointing in terms of originality. I felt a little cheated by the ultimate turn of events somehow didn’t go with the tone of the movie and thus made it land in the “much ado about nothing” category.

It has to be a strong movie to leave an impression even after 21 hours have passed since the movie got over. Even if the strongest urge is to yell at the makers of the movie asking them, “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?” The love is as drab and unengaging as could be. 2050 looks appealing for about 5 seconds. And what story they were talking about here?

I need an explanation. How can a movie set in 2050 have a song every 15 minutes? The phenomenon has reduced in the last few years. Are we going to do a full circle? At least, I hope by then, we’ll have an “ignore” button lurking around somewhere that can be pressed whenever chords play together in the name of music. At the very least, maybe all songs can be played together during interval. What bliss! In queue for coffee instead of listening to lulling music you would hate to get up from.

Anyway, time travel can be made to twist your gray cells in ways unknown to them. But, here they actually manage to make it boring by showing us how 48 years from now, we’d have a hologram irritate us while we are shopping, and how product placements are going to get only worse. I actually had enough time amidst the super-slow proceedings to actually pray that I’d be no more by 2050.

To be honest, I hadn’t gone in with any major expectations from the story. I was hoping for many firsts as far as technical wizardry in Hindi cinema goes. Zilch. I thought a sci-fi movie would mean mind-boggling action. There was action, but ‘mind-numbing’ would describe it better. I was intrigued by the decision to open with Dalip Tahil and a random woman playing secretary, both of whom have no relevance to the rest of the story. I was shocked at the pace of the first few minutes in an action movie.

I revised my expectations right there. Who said action movies have to move at a fast pace? They are defying the narrative style of the genre, why walk towards slamming the door at them in just 15 minutes. Yet, I couldn’t help smirking at the fluttering animated butterfly. The smirk turned to an eye-roll the second time, to a ‘no way’ the third and an exasperated helplessness overtook after that.

When the script is so loose…did I just call something non-existent ‘loose’?…anyway, when the script is such, I think it is unfair to judge the performances. Lousy lines cannot make even the best of actors woo their audience. Yet, Priyanka Chopra did a relatively decent job of portraying the duality in her two characters. I seriously don’t want to make a call on Harman Baweja just yet.

The Baweja family must have poured their heart into this one, but I can see only brickbats coming their way. For a story that, according to director’s note at the official site, was conceived 9 years ago, the way the movie was shot felt very superficial. Throughout I got the feel that a location or stunt was chosen and the story was more or less woven around that.

Also, I think it is the disproportionate amount spent on marketing to be blamed. Had they not created such hype, the shock of watching a bad movie might have softened. On the other hand, had they not created a movie with such random logic, goofed-up concept, fake romance, token villain (geez) and….aah too late for such wishful thoughts!

You know what the silver lining is though? Poverty will be eradicated 42 years from now - I couldn’t spot Dharavi in Mumbai (the largest slum in the city). Three cheers to that one!

thoda pyaar thoda magic is a crash course in moral science for second graders and below. And I’m pretty sure this target audience is going to thoroughly enjoy the lesson because it has song and dance, cartoons and naughtiness. So, parents can sit happy, because kids are taught animal rights, civic sense, love over war, forgiveness, importance of bonding over blood relations, being both a graceful winner and loser, religious tolerance all in a little over two hours. And I’m pretty sure there must be a couple I missed out on.

You know what this means for the adults, right? One hell of a sappy movie! Over-idealistic to the hilt, and indigestibly sweet. I doubt even songs with underwater shots of a bikini-clad Ameesha Patel can compensate for that. In fact, that’s a very high price to pay for tolerating the shrill character she plays. I know-I know, that’s what the character demands, yada, yada.

But, it hurts to watch the same excuse being used for Saif Ali Khan. He wears one sullen look throughout the movie despite being capable of very varied range of expressions. True, his character is very somber. But, the man just couldn’t cry or make me feel for him in emotional scenes. Of course, blame is equally apportioned between his talent and the way the character develops. The transformation from aloofness to bonding, from long silences to talking his heart out is a little too quick.

Is it just me or does Rani Mukherjee really look and feel almost the same in most of her movies? It’s not like she isn’t trying out different roles. Yet, somehow today while watching the movie I got this feeling of “been there, seen that”. Maybe it has something to do with that extra layer of make-up they find necessary to apply to make her look fairer. Anyhow, something was amiss and everyone involved just felt like they were going through the motions.

Also, while watching the movie today, I suddenly realized how my kids idolize RV and Shona, the characters Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukherjee play in Ta Ra Rum Pum. I can so visualize them now idolizing Ranbir and Geeta after watching this one.

Does that mean when they grow up they are going to say, “we grew up watching Saif or Rani who were in movies for kids like us” just like we say today, “we grew up watching Al Pacino or Amitabh Bachchan who made us wanna be like them.” Scary, eh? If that’s the onus they carry, they have to get better than this, because they are so capable of doing it.

I digress. Coming back to the movie at hand, the dialogues and situations are pretty plain given that it’s supposed to be about four really naughty kids. And the children enacting these roles are not super-adorable either. In a way it’s nice to see regular kids playing regular kids. And it’s better to have them do nothing compared to having them do the same old tricks that kids pull to harass adults. But that also means nothing really exciting is happening. Although some of the tributes given to various movies from yesteryears are cute.

Also, the usual melodious and lively number from Kunal Kohli movies is missing here. Although I loved the way all of them were visualized. The choreography was bare minimum and the overall effect used was charming.

The main problem though is we are in touch with a lot more cinema - Indian and foreign - compared to the generations before us ever were. So, obviously after this kind of exposure, it would be really difficult to spot something ‘new’ in terms of animation and special effects. The onus then completely lies in creatively utilizing these effects. And that the thoda pyaar thoda magic team manages to put together well. Yeah, things can appear and disappear, and inanimate stuff can dance, but how and when they do it is what counts, and that works pretty well here.

The question remains - why don’t we have movies that kids and adults can enjoy together?

I couldn’t stop laughing for about a minute after the credits started rolling. And had a smile on my face for the next few minutes. Nope! Even the most easily amused can’t term this one a comedy. I am just kicked by how the audience is taken for a ride. It’s not a super-fun ride because by no means is it a great cinematic experience or an entertainer. It’s just a smart concept that didn’t manage to keep me hooked.

In the interest of sounding a little less abstract and yet be truthful to the theme of this blog, I’m going to use an analogy. Say, you are a teacher who’s going to introduce a new topic to the class today. To make the lesson more interesting you choose to play a game. Now the idea of playing a game is really neat, but, BUT if you choose a boring game, you have lost your class. Your creativity is admirable, but the class is not engaged.

So, the idea of playing a game here is the broad concept of Via Darjeeling and I’m going to call the choice of game, the basic story. The conversation between a bunch of people discussing an event can only be as interesting as the event. As a character points out, this discussion could have been a classic study of human nature. But it’s not, because the basic premise is lame.

The story is somewhat saved by the ever-reliable Kay Kay Menon. The subtle changes in his character as he moves from one part of the movie to the next, are absolutely attributable to his performance. You can actually see some of it in Parvin Dabas’ act too. Sonali Kulkarni’s hammed up performance can also be passed off under the guise of her character’s eccentricity and ambiguity.

But, the entire set-up of friends talking, having fun, quibbling with each other, came off as extremely superficial. If one relationship oozed with extreme familiarity at one point, in the next, the same characters would be saying things to each other that made them seem like strangers. There’s only fleeting interplay amongst the characters.

So, while the individual characters were detailed, the relationships were very broadly sketched. And we are talking about the likes of Vinay Pathak, Rajat Kapoor, Sandhya Mridul, Prroshant Narayanan here. I have liked their work in one movie or the other, so am not willing to blame them completely for lack of the proverbial chemistry.

Compound that with the overall drawling tone of the movie and you can’t be blamed for getting a wee bit fidgety. And if that wasn’t enough, the songs are absolutely misplaced, and don’t go with the ambiance created by the movie.

Yet, the director cannot be written off, because he tried. Tried something not ventured into easily by Hindi cinema - a story without a closure. There’s after all no conflict that needs resolution. And trying out gets brownie points around here. Along the way, he also commented on the basic nature of humans to indulge themselves in something that doesn’t concern them whatsoever. And though it doesn’t hook the audience, it surely teases them right through to the end.