Blog Posts by Rummana Ahmed

Chashme BaddoorCast: Ali Zafar, Siddharth, Taapsee Pannu, Divyendu Sharma

Direction: David Dhawan

Rating: ***

‘Chashme Baddoor’ is exactly like any other film David Dhawan film, it is a good time pass. There is no clever humour but there is enough comedy to assure a few genuine laughs.

Omi (Divyendu Sharma), Jai (Siddharth) and Siddharth (Ali Zafar) are three close friends who fall for the same girl. While the other two are just looking to have fun, Siddharth is genuinely in love with the new next door neighbor. Omi and Jai decide to play villains when they realize that their best friend has managed to win over the girl that they both had set their eyes on. Confusion and misadventures ensue as we try to figure out a way to get the lovers back together.

‘Chashme Baddooor’ cannot boast of any smart writing, the comedy is mostly situational. The plot seldom digresses from the point except to include the sub-plot about Joseph (Rishi Kapoor) - Josephine (Lillete Dubey) romance. The problem, however is

HimmatwalaCast: Ajay Devgn, Tamannaah, Mahesh Manjrekar, Paresh Rawal

Direction: Sajid Khan

Rating: **

The problem with Sajid Khan’s ‘Himmatwala’ is the director can’t make-up his mind whether he wants to make a spoof or whether he wants to recreate the nostalgia of the 1980s. The film thus hangs in a precarious balance vacillating between the two extremes.

Ravi (Ajay Devgn) is a street fighter who discovers that his widowed mother and sister are in dire straits in his native village. He returns to Ramnagar to avenge the death of his father and seek justice for the people of his village. Sher Singh’s (Mahesh Manjrekar) daughter is equally spoiled and walks around the village in very small dresses, brandishing a whip. The spoilt brat soon falls for Himmatwala Ravi and is then swishing around in salwar-kameez plotting her father’s downfall.

A very typical Bollywood revenge saga like this one in the hands of a better director could have become a laughter riot. Sajid Khan however, hopelessly

Cast: Bipasha Basu, Nawazuddin Siddique, Doyel Dhawan

Direction: Suparn Verma

Rating: **

Suparn Verma makes sure that he has incorporated every horror film cliché in ‘Aatma’. The film’s linear narrative follows a very predictable plot trajectory that hardly delivers on the thrill quotient.

Maya (Bipasha Basu) is a single mother, just divorced from her abusive husband Abhay (Nawazuddin Siddique). Abhay dies in an accident and his ghost is haunting Maya because he wants his daughter Nia (Doyel Dhawan) back. What follows is a very obvious series of events where anyone who offends the daughter meets a gruesome end. Maya has to battle with not only the cruel intentions of her dead husband but she also has to fight for her daughter’s life.

I understand that horror is a difficult genre to get right but we can’t expect special effects to compensate for the lack of a good script. The story progresses with very little thought to character development, actors are introduced so that they can