Shubhra Gupta

in The Indian Express

They’re both big draws in the Middle-East, Salman being the bigger one, but their parts are nothing but glorified cameos.

in The Indian Express

But the writing offers us little depth, and that’s where this film, which had the potential to be a humdinger, falls flat. There’s so little passion between Sensharma and Rannta that you wonder what made them get together in the first place; what little we see is so chaste as to be non-existent. It takes an argument for both to break out; the supporting characters come off even worse, and the background music never quite stops tinkling away. Finally, it all comes down to that thing which is increasingly, and disappointingly, becoming a streaming bugbear: the idea is bravely out-of-the-box ; the underlined writing does it in.

in The Indian Express

The message is loud and clear: no religion is evil, only humans are; nafrat can be conquered through pyaar, siyasat se mazhab ko na milao; and above all, maanvata se bada koi dharam nahin. But they come as a listicle, instead of making you feel.

in The Indian Express

And I’m relieved to report that Border 2 holds on to the soul and spirit of the original, while giving us a much bigger canvas, showing conflict not just on land and air, but also water. It also brings back the biggest star of the original in Sunny Deol, introduced here as the ‘son of Dharmendra’ in the credits: he is far and away the biggest star of this one, towering over the rest of the ensemble, which includes Varun Dhawan, Diljit Dosanjh, Ahan Shetty (whose father Suniel had a major role in the original), and others. In the recreation of their domestic spheres, I’d say this one goes one better in giving us details of their home lives — the villages where the jawaans leave their families, waiting in dread and fear, holding on to hope that their men will return.

in The Indian Express

The execution is — there’s no other way to put itn — a drag. The reason, as always, is in the weak writing, and flat TV sitcom treatment, in which scenes are created with everyone lined up in the frame, waiting their turn to speak, before exiting: case in point, where the younger generation, Zs and Alphas, show their greedy, selfish millennial parents the error of their ways, and claim that Daadi, and her home, under attack by her own offspring, is where their hearts lie. It begins well enough, even if the likeable Kapil Sharma looks much too old to be a potential life-partner of Khateeb’s character: hard to swallow that they were in college together, and are circling back to each other nearly a decade later; easier to believe that she isn’t too happy with the match, having set her eyes on a career and a life abroad.

in The Indian Express

Finally, it is Ranveer Singh who keeps us looking, all through the plodding first half, and in the slightly-more speeded up post-interval section, with his light-eyed gaze turning steely and soft by turns, keeping the flag waving. The pain of Jaskirat — his backstory is tightly told — is transmuted into the fire that keeps Hamza burning, and Ranveer makes a handy meal of both sides of the coin, luxe locks firmly in place. I have to say that torture doesn’t suit him; Vicky Kaushal did a better job of being strung up and savaged in Chhava. But an unexpectedly moving coda makes up the finale, leaving the door open for more adventures.

in The Indian Express

But the rest of it is a drag. Good actors are arrayed across dining tables and ghar ka aangans delivering the usual dialogue about shaadi, ladka, ladki, sambandh: imagine a fine ensemble — which includes Joy Sengupta, Ayesha Raza Mishra, Mona Ambegaonkar and Ila Arun– getting stuck in a rut like this.

in The Indian Express

Directed by Devashish Makhija whose previous 'Cheetpatakadumpa' made solid use of its leads' feminist energy, and written by Kanika Dhillon whose last outing with regular leading lady Taapsee Pannu was the well-done manohar kahani Phir Aayi Haseen Dilruba, Gandhari feels as if it has slipped between the cracks: it is neither impactful nor believable.

in The Indian Express

Ginny Wedss Sunny 2 is exactly the kind of rom-com that Bollywood is constrained to doing these days, in an era swinging wildly between minority drubbing and bhajan clubbing: empty of fresh ideas, trying to please the conservatives and the so-called moderns, going exactly nowhere. High-school dropout Shivansh aka Sunny (Avinash Tiwary) is a kushti-loving fellow who is careful to wear a langot which looks more like a pair of shorts. His big ambition is to wrestle at the national level, but a wrong video going viral puts paid to that plan, leaving him unhappy and unfulfilled in his Rishikesh house, which he shares with his father (Sudhir Pandey), and older brother and bhabhi, and a tenant who doubles up as the ‘hero ka BFF’.

in The Indian Express

Amongst the current line-up of male stars, there’s hardly anyone who can play a feckless youth, recklessly planting his seed here and there, as energetically as Varun Dhawan. Jas is a wedding photographer, wooing two lovely ladies, played by Baani (Mrunal Thakur) and Preet (Pooja Hegde), respectively.

in The Indian Express

When Priyadarshan is on top of his game, all his madly-disparate moving parts somehow come together and give us a rumbustious climax. Sadly, Haiwaan is more miss than hit, more uff uff than ole ole.

in The Indian Express

And while I do think that excellent Vineet Kumar Singh is rightly the star of the show, even as his character keeps protesting against his face being the prime draw on posters, etc., there's nothing he can do to prevent the repetitive tracks of teachers resigning — server going down — funding being withdrawn — dulling everything.

in The Indian Express

in The Indian Express

It says something about the utterly generic Kartavya, a crime thriller set in Haryana, that the good guy, played by Saif Ali Khan is surrounded by a bunch of bad guys — a senior cop (Manish Chaduhuri) who keeps blocking Pawan’s (Saif Ali Khan) path, and a junior cop (Sanjay Mishra) who is a constant companion, basically playing the BFF trope, and not one of them has been given a characteristic that we haven’t seen before. The streaming rule 101 — Let There Be A Body Within A Few Minutes Of The Opening — is faithfully ticked off. The victim is a faceless woman, later identified as a journalist, taking refuge in this town, for no good reason that we are given.

in The Indian Express

Ultimately, the writing overall is neither fresh nor tight enough, with some climactic revelations feeling tacked on without being worked on enough. Which results in the payoff, unlike last time, not being rewarding enough, the engrossing parts coming up only intermittently.

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