Title : The Hangover
Director : Someone with a real keen sense of humour or Todd Phillips
Starring : Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Heather Graham, Ken Jeong, Mike Tyson
Length : about 100 minutes

Describe the movie in one word: ROTFLMAO!

New Feature! Thanks to my good friend William Addison I am introducing a new feature with this review. This feature is called "JRFRS or John's Realistic Film Rating System". Basically I will start giving practical ratings to every movie that I review in terms of its content so that you can get a realistic idea of whether to let your kids watch this movie or not. Of course they will somehow manage to watch it no matter what you do, but hey! at least you will be a bit deluded.

So JRFRS for The Hangover is - 18+. Lots of straight sexual references, some naked scenes and very strong language.

Plot: Four guys go to Las Vegas to organize a bachelor party for one of them who is to be married in a couple of days. They do the typical stuff that any four "bored to death of their lives" guys will do in Las Vegas i.e. all weird shite under the sun. When they wake up the next morning in their villa in the hotel they realize

1. The villa is truly focked up. It is worse than G.W. Bush's reputation in world politics. It is crappier than Tony Blair's public image and stinks just as bad.
2. There is an infant in the cupboard! Yup, no pranks here, there is an actual living infant in the cupboard!
3. There is a live breathing roaring tiger in the bathroom

and

4. The groom is missing!

Uh oh! Problems eh? Well never mind. Nothing that can not be sorted then. But hold on! What is this then! None of them remaining three can remember "anything" at all from the previous night. They are all completely blank. Don't know what happened and who did what. They must now retrace their steps somehow, figure out whose baby it is, just where the fock the tiger came from and where in the world is the groom!


My Psychobabble - Holy focking crap! LOL! The movie is good. A bit slow in its execution where sometimes things just stretch on and on forever but the movie IS brilliant! To my readers who are not into Bollywood movies let me tell you that there was a movie that was released last year titled "Sunday" which was kind of based on the same idea as this one. And that movie was quite brilliant as well! Let me know if you would like to know more about it and I shall do a review of that one too.


Anyways back to The Hangover. I must say that the "baby in the cupboard and the tiger in the bathroom" concept is seriously and I mean seriously interesting. I mean how the hell can you get a tiger in your bathroom in Las Vegas! A baby you can perhaps imagine. You got drunk, snatched a baby from a mother (you bastard!) and brought it to your room. But a tiger!? How the hell!?

Tangent: When I used to work for a hedge fund I had this colleague who was basically Australian but have been in UK for about 10 years now. He told us once of this night when in US him and his few friends got amazingly drunk and decided to bring back some crazy souvenirs back to their appt. They split into teams of twos and threes and decided to meet back at the appt. When his team turned back up, they had with them a freakin' traffic light pole which they ripped off! However they were asked to come into the bathroom by one of the guys from the other team. When they entered the bathroom they saw a focking penguin going splash splash splash in the bath tub! The other team had actually broken into a zoo to steal a freakin' penguin!


OK back to the review now - Right so yes the movie is a bit slow in its execution. Things take a little too long to sort of "happen". But once you know something is about to go crazy, you are perched up at the end of your seat holding your breath back to see just what does the magician will pull out of his hat this time. More often than not instead of rabbits and pigeons it is a whole elephant and a pink one at that and you don't know whether to laugh at it or just be purely amazed on how he managed to do that!



The characters in the movie are perfect. The groom guy is a bit of a waste as he only gets very limited amount of reel real estate (see what I did that with reel and real? I am a genius!) but the other three are perfect in their parts. Phil slides easily into the skin of his character who is a handsome middle aged man, bored of his life and ready to do whatever shite gives him a kick of thrill. Alan is the clichéd weirdo who when needed turns into this blackjack genius and Dr. Stu Price the perfect subdued gentleman whose wild side is just unimaginable!

Verdict: Quite a good movie which will definitely leave you tickling long after it has ended. I would suggest it is definitely worth a watch!

Title: Transformers Revenge of The Fallen

Director: Michael Bay

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan oomph Fox, Josh Duhamel

Length: around 150 minutes

Describe the movie in one word: ErrrrrrrrrrAhemmmmErrrrrrrrrYeahGood

Plot: Starscream returns to Cybertron and assumes the command of Decepticons. They start regrouping and soon return to earth and steal the body of Megatron from US millitary. They manage to bring him back to life (roll eyes here) and attack Autobots and our Earth(once again). Only this time they are stronger and bolder and have an ancient secret up their sleeves. If you are wondering what "The Fallen" refers to in the title then sorry I can not reveal it here as it would mean including spoilers.

My Psychobabble: Errr I really don't know what to say (yes its true, sometimes I can be shut up too!). On one hand I kind of enjoyed the movie. I mean come on now guys how can you dislike any movie that almost begins with a shot of Megan Fox hunched over a very hot bike in denim shorts and a tight top! Just that one scene was worth it! And then add to it the super cool CGI effects of cars and trucks turning into awesome robots who blow shit(e) up wherever they go, high intensity car chases, secret extra terrestrial code languages that are as old as mankind itself...how can I dislike all this stuff?

OK don't you dare point me to my review of ”Knowing”. It got no Megan Fox in it! Megan Fox is good. She is like KFC, finger lickin' good!

Jokes apart as I have already mentioned, I liked the movie. However I must say that the movie and the whole transformers series kind of lost its purpose and general direction of the storyline. Here we suddenly realize that transformers have been visiting earth since men was in stone age and that a "mighty epic battle" was fought back then with a "huge consequences for the mankind". Yawn! If I had a penny every time I heard that tripe.....But anyways to sum up the script - it is rubbish.

Warning spoiler alert in the next paragraph!!!

And just WTF was that bimbo in the college? Just WTF was that!? I mean suddenly we have robots that can have human bones and muscles and tissues? What is this, Terminator 4? Who came up with that stupid idea and what was the entire relevant of that sequence? If you understand it, please do come back and share your wisdom! And what was that stupditiy about that dob bot walking and running all over "extra secure" US millitary facility without focking triggering a single alarm or sensor! That dog bot is not sneaking in, no sir it is not! It is running, hopping, jumping, roaring and yet all the supposedly permiter securing sensors (including human visions) are absent? WTF?

Spoiler alert over!


Megan Fox is good. Yup I know I said it, and I know you read it, but I am saying it again and you just read it again!

I especially liked the looooooooong battle towards the end. The CGI was truly amazing. Again there were some stupid and insane moments there as well but then I think we can cut some slack here for a creative man can sometime go a bit over the top!

Verdict: For the last time Megan Fox is good. LOL! No OK seriously the movie is not brilliant in terms of story line or making sense. But it’s got some hot girls in it, lots of good CGI, no holds barred action scenes and so I would rank it as at least worth a watch once.

Title: 99
Directors: Krishna D.K. , Raj Nidimoru
Starcast: Cyrus, Kunal Khemu, Boman Irani, Mahesh Manjrekar, Soha Ali Khan, Simone Singh, Vinod Khanna
Describe the movie in one word - WhattASurprise!

My Psychobabble: And finally it happens! One Bollywood movie which is seriously funny and surprisingly very well made. To be honest I wasn't aware of the existence of this movie. It so happened that I was chatting online with an old friend who is in India. He suggested that I get my hands on this movie and watch it. It was a lazy sunny Saturday afternoon I didn't have much to do so I thought to myself - what the hell! It surely can't be a bigger torture than Mama Mia or Bhootnath? So I hooked online, searched for this movie, found it, got it and started watching it.

Pretty soon I was rolling all over the floor laughing my humungus arse off! The movie is a gem! Forget crass humor or twisted carricatures bobbing up and down the screen trying to pretend funny. This movie has characters who are dead serious about what they are saying, mean what they are saying but are saying things so out of this world that you can not stop sniggering. Pretty soon you see them actually acting on the rubbish plans they were cooking in the previous scene and the snigger turns into a full grown laugh. Obviously in the scenes that will follow things are going to go wrong all around them which is going to put their sorry behinds in bigger troubles and you will be magically transformed into a big (well in my case "huge") floor cleaner cleaning up the dirt with your body as you roll yourself laughing!

That said, let us dissect the different aspects of this movie. I am going to divide my opinion about actors in two parts

1. Pre watching 99 - I used to think of Cyrus as extremely genius - for a chimpanzee that is who is disguised as a human. Kunal Khemu - ummm,errr is kinda allright. The Khan girl should really go back to doing adverts for that air hostess academy. Don't get me wrong, she was rubbish there as well but at least the torture used to last for only 20 odd seconds or so.

2. Post watching 99 - Cyrus I now think is uttely stupid and ridiculous - no matter what species. Kunal Khemu - ummmm, errr is kinda good. He really needs to work on his expressions and body language though. There is remarkable improvement in the boy but a lot and I mean a LOT of work still needs to be done. To Soha - sorry to have to say this love and I never thought I would ever say to this anyone but because of the extreme and sever lack of talent cosmetic surgery is your only option if you want to stick around in the industry. Just don't go to the same doc used by Rakhi Sawant, Koena Mitra etc. OK?

Of course Boman Irani is a master actor as is Vinod Khanna. Both of them with their unique signature style of acting were rock solid foundations of the movie. Mahesh Manjerakar was a suprise! Post "Kaante" I never really liked him as an actor. But the way he has played this particular character of "AMD" in the movie does deserve applause. A new discovery for the Hindi movie industry is Amit Mistry or Mr Kuber in the movie. Lol! Kya typical character thaa yaar. That scene where he gets slapped around by Kunal Khemu is absolutely brilliant! Amit's expressions were so brilliant that I rewinded the scene twice and watched it! LOL!
Direction is obviously quite good. Again this is not Sanjay Leela Bhansali movie with exemplary directorial skills on display. What this movie is like a "Tadka Daal" in a roadside Dhaaba. Unique in its composition, perfect in its taste and hits just the right spots at just the right time.

Verdict: So to wind up, this is one of those "must watch" movies I would say. If you haven't already done so do try and take out the time to catch this one. It is much better than some of the recent titles from the industry biggies featuring industry's mega stars.

Title: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Director: Gavin Hood
Runtime: 107 minutes (approx)
Starcast: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Will i Am, Lynn Collins, Taylor Kitsch,Daniel Henney, Ryan Reynolds and others

Describe the movie in one word: HOLYFOCK!

My Psychobabble: HOLYFOCK! I dont know where to begin! Personally I aint a huge fan of the X-Men series. Yes I have seen them all and yes I enjoyed each one of them but I never had the urge to artifically glue on weird twisted clothes hangar crap on the back of my palm and make weird faces while baring my teeth in a mirror. But then along comes Wolverine and there I was second time in the cinema hall looking at the back of my palm in disgust and thinking "damn it! nothing ever comes out of here"!

I felt that the movie can be included in the coursebook of wanna be movie makers under the chapter titled "So this is what happens when everything goes right for a change". Every character and the actor who played that character have been simply superb. Be it a sword flinging Wade Wilson aka DeadPool (Ryan Reynolds) or tooth baring Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) or tank smashing bone crunching Fred (Kevin Durand) or metal rod twisting electric field spewing Remy LeBau (Taylor Kitsch) every one of them has actually lived their parts. Probably it is the miracle of something which is now becoming exceedingly rare - good direction. It is so rare to see a very cheesy action scene done in such tasteful way that it makes you want to take the plce of the actor. I am talking about the scene where DeadPool rages on into the room full of machine gun trotting mercenaries who open up fire on him while he rotatess his swords and simply cut the bullets off! My Indian friends would prbably start jumping up and down by now and yell "Rajnikant, Rajnikant" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajinikanth) but trust me guys it wasn't the same.


That scene rocked hard and it rocked so freaking hard that I could feel the reverbations in my nerves long after the guns had been silenced. Man I was wishing for someone to fire at me so that I can do the same. Obviously after about 1 second I was very thankful that the way my life goes I didn't get what I had wished for!



The movie is full of these awesome sequences. Agreed they are far fetched, far from reality and all but to all those who bring up these concerns all I want to say is - WAKE UP YOU DODO! THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT MEN WHO ARE UNREAL! OF COURSE THERE WILL BE UNREAL AND LARGER THAN LIFE SEQUENCES IN IT! WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE, WOLVERINE HELPING LOCAL TAILORS WITH HIS CLAWS STITCHING CLOTHES!?


Verdict: Long story short if you find yourself agreeing with my reviews then go and go now! I don't care what the critics say about this one. I liked it, hell I loved it! This is definitely worth the time and the money! I have been twice and most probably am going again very soon!

Title: 17 Again
Director: Burr Steers
Starring: Zac Efron, Matthew Perry, Thomas Lennon, Allison Miller, Sterling Knight, Brian Doyle Murray etc.
Runtime : about 100 minutes

Describe the movie in one word: WhatWasIThinking!

Plot: See the My Psychobabble section

My Psychobabble: What a load of crap. This is the most ridiculous plot for a movie that I have come across in recent years. So here I am (I = Matthew Perry) a sad loser who hates his life, has been moaning about it for past zillion years and who has just been kicked out of the house by his wife, driving down a real sad bridge in the middle of a sad night when apparently all the inhabitants of hell above decided to get drunk collectively and urinate all over the earth. I see this old man about to jump off from the bridge into the river below. I am stupid so I stop my car and approach him to try and stop him from jumping. As soon as I reach him, he turns his head gives me a flashy grin. Suddenly there is this bolt of lightening which illuminates the scary features of his face and makes his teeth shine like those weirdoes in a very famous chewing gum advert.

He then jumps into the water. I lunge after him (why?), a vortex of mud opens in the river, sucks me in, spews me out and voila! I am 17 again (now I = Zac Efron) while the world around me remains the same!! Later my absolutely crappy weirdo star wars gobbledegook speaking excuse of a human being kind of friend tells me that I just met my "spirit guide" who wants me to walk down my "path of spirit" and basically correct something that I messed up. So here I am, enrolled in the same school where my 17 year old children go to with my daughter now getting a crush on me while I try to save my son from being bullied and at the same time trying to make my ex realize how I love her and how she loves me still.

Oh boy!

As you can see from the plot, it is not a very well thought out movie really. I bet that the creators of the movie just wanted to take Zac Efron and throw him on the big screen. They might as well have made him dance for one and a half hour or just have him stand on the screen telling knock knock jokes rather than spend all this money trying to produce this movie.

That being said, I must admit that the movie does have its interesting points. There are sequences that I am ashamed to say I almost enjoyed and laughed at. I am sure that to a certain target audience group (girls 13-17 years) the movie will seem enjoyable but to anyone outside that particular age group - not worth it. But as I say often if you have the luxury of time and some money that you literally want to throw away without feeling a pang of guilt, this movie might just be what you are looking for.


Verdict: Unless you are a 13-17 year old girl who greets her girl friends in an almost ultra sonic shriek while throwing your hands in violent movements in the air all around you nearly blinding other people I wouldn't recommend you going to this movie. If you are girl who fits this description, I am surprised your attention span was big enough to reach till this part
and this part
and now this part
and wow this part?

Title: Knowing
Director: Alex Proyas
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Chandler Canterbury, Rose Byrne, D.G. Maloney, Danielle Carter
Length: about 2 hours 15 minutes.

Describe the movie in one word: Crap

Plot: In 1959 children of a real sad and lonely school in US of A come up with a brilliant idea. They all imagine how future is going to be and draw pictures of whatever they think the future will look like. These drawings are then put together in a "time capsule" (which is basically a metal case in the shape of either a malformed rocket or very sick condom) and bury that capsule in the school ground. While all students draw stuff like rockets and aliens and a museum dedicated to brains etc, one particular girl scribbles lots of random numbers on her sheet. No one understands why and the girl is portrayed as slightly mentally disturbed.
Fast forward 50 years, we have Nicolas Cage who is a professor at MIT. His son goes to the same school (God knows why) which had this wicked idea of burying that time capsule. Of course 50 years have passed and it is time to dig that capsule out and see what kids had drawn. The capsule is dug out in a ceremony and all the present school kids are handed a drawing each from the capsule. Of course Nicolas Cage's son gets the weird sheet with numbers.

Long story short, Nicolas Cage soon realizes that this seemingly random list is actually a list of dates and places (latitude and longitudes) predicting every major disaster in the world along with the death toll in that disaster. What's more there are three events which haven't happened yet and one of those events will be something major (No it’s nothing to do with G. W. Bush getting brains). He must now do all that he can to "save the world and the mankind".

My Psychobabble: Knowing is about crap. Where crap happens on top of more crap which all together leads to a crap mountain in which Nicolas Cage tries to ski. This triggers an avalanche of crap with Nicolas Cage trying to ride the avalanche like a horse rider but fails miserably and ends up buried in huge pile of crap which stinks so bad that the audience gets a headache.

OK I accept that the premise of the movie is good. Hell I was excited about going and watching this one. It’s got Nicolas Cage and an awesome future predicting list of numbers and cryptic codes and decryption involved. It is like high quality geek weed rolled up in a science fiction joint. What more could someone like me want!

Tangent: Booze, money, Kelly Brooks, freedom, lottery, beating my estate agent, hell beating all the estate agents, Shilpa Shetty, more booze, more money.....


The movie fails miserably. The execution of what was a brilliant idea is pathetic. The CGI (computer generated imagery) is awful, the direction is horrible, the script not worth the paper it was written on and the acting - rubbish. Let us digress for a minute from these normal parameters that usually can summarize a movie and let me ask you this - how many movies can you think of where you actually noticed the background music score? One? Two? Three?

This one has such awful background music that it will scream at you and make you notice it. It is like a whinning child in a supermarket aisle. It will throw itself on the ground, yell at you, jerk its limbs in the air until you are forced to sit up and give it attention. An of course the relevance of the music is only as much as that of a whinning child in the supermarket aisle. It goes completely out of synch with the situation on the screen. You might as well have an F M Radio on and play whatever track comes on it along with the movie. Just make sure that the program on the FM radio channel is about the worst songs in the history of music.

I am not even going to count the mistakes in the movie or the sheer acts of stupidity. But to list a few

1. It is perfectly normal to blow your lawn at 4 am
2. When you want to scare someone off whom you can not see, slam your baseball bat in a tree and yell "You want some of this!"
3. You are a genius and think better when you are drunk.
4. You have to act like a total jerk and a complete jacka$$ if you have above average analytical ability.

I can go on and butcher the movie more but I am afraid I will be including spoilers if I disclose anymore about the movie.

Verdict: Turn on your heels and run. You can do something much more worthwhile with these two hours and 15 minutes of your life (like count the grains of rice in a bag or count your own hair) than watch this movie.