Blog Posts by Rummana Ahmed

Akshay plays godCast: Paresh Rawal, Akshay Kumar, Mithun Chakraborty

Direction: Umesh Shukla

Rating: ***

Umesh Shukla's film, 'OMG — Oh My God!' is a well-intentioned film but the execution could have been better. Shukla very competently succeeds in conveying the message that God has been reduced to mere symbolism in the modern world.

Inspired by a Gujarati play, the plot is simple. Kanji Bhai (Paresh Rawal) is an atheist who owns an antique shop, he manages to cash in on the gullibility of blind believers to make a few extra bucks on the sale of their favourite deities. All is good till one day; the Gods decide to destroy only Kanji's antique shop after an earthquake. Even his insurance claim is rejected because of the "act of God" clause, which basically means since there was no theft, fire or fraud, there is no coverage for a victim of a quake or tsunami. When Kanji bhai's livelihood is at stake, he decides to sue God and claim compensation either from the various Godmen (who evidently run a

Acid test for Kareena's stardomMadhur Bhandarkar dabbles with blacks and whites in 'Heroine', as usual his protagonists are a study in the extreme and therefore, there is very little scope for anything unpredictable. Bhandarkar's so-called 'realistic' portrayal of the Hindi film industry blatantly stereotypes Bollywood.

Raja Sen says in his review that "Heroine is an unbelievably trashy film":

It's called stereotyping, and Madhur Bhandarkar has parlayed it into a career. Film after film he embraces cliches -- about businessmen, models, journalists -- and exaggerates them, revelling in caricature and tacky dialogue. It's like a recreated dramatisation on a sensationalist television crime show, with marginally better actors and production values.

It's almost like Bhandarkar enjoys sensationalizing his plot and 'labelling' is characters to a point where they start looking like caricatures. Baradwaj Rangan says in his review:

Acknowledging the positive dimensions of fame would leave Bhandarkar with nothing to expend his

Spotted on the sets of HeroineIf you have seen one Madhur Bhandarkar film, then you have seen them all; there is not even a feeble attempt at novelty. It is surprising how such blatant stereotyping of the glamour world is not offensive to the celebrities who the director claims to be 'realistically' portraying. In Bhandarkar's films there is no one place for the grey: celeb town just consists of people who are psychotic, adulterous, do drugs and are homosexual.

There is a passing mention that Bhandarkar's protagonist in 'Heroine' has bipolar disorder; if the central character of the film is psychotic then whether she is a heroine or a housewife, she will be insecure and hysterical. Fame, or the lack of it, has nothing to do with it. Mahi Arora (Kareena Kapoor) is an A-list heroine whose insecure relationship with her co-star drives her to desperation and she puts her stardom at stake. Every attempt at reviving her sinking career fails which further pushes her to the edge.

It is hard to look for a silver lining in a