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.

Title: Drona
Vital Stats:
Director: A real lousy one...lol! Actually Goldie Bahel
Starring: Abhishek Bacchan, Priyanka Chopra, Kay Kay Mennon, Jaya Bacchan

Plot: According to Indian mythology there was a time when Demigods (Devtas) and Devil's disciples (Asuras) combined their effort to churn the biggest ocean in the universe for they wanted to reap the myriad treasures and magical that were burried deep within the ocean. Amongst the many such magical things that came out there was one item that was the most coveted. This was "Amrut" or the elixir of immortality. Whosoever took one sip would become immortal and would never perish. Feared that if Asuras laid their hands on this elixir they would wreak havoc, the Devtas resorted to all kinds of trickery to hide this elixir. This movie claims that amongst such measures was appointing a human warrior to protect the elixir which was promptly hidden by Devtas. This warrior was given superhuman powers and physical strenght to be able to carry out his duties. This warrior was called "Drona". Throughout ages and generations this warrior and his offsprings (all of them became "Dronas") have played their part in keeping the location of this elixir secret and hidden from pursuing Asuras. One such Asura by the name of Riz Riazada has been after this elixir ever since it was found and still is lurking on the earth in human form to obtain this elixir. Long story short, Abhishek Bacchan is Drona (though he doesnt know it himself) and Riz Riazada can only reach Amruta if he can get its secret location from Abhishek (who again doesnt know it himself). Priyanka Chopra is basically a waste of movie reel space.



My Psychobabble: I don’t really know where to start. Lately none of the movies that I saw seem interesting. They all almost bored me to death. And so after watching Taken I thought to myself that maybe I ought to bring the bar down. So for Drona I did. I brought the bar down before I went in the cinema. Half hour in the movie, I placed the bar on the ground. Another half hour and I jumped on the bar, buried it in the ground six feet deep. Another 15 minutes, the bar penetrated the core of the earth came out the other side and floated gloriously away into the unknown depths of the universe.

Behold the contribution of Goldie Bahel to Indian cinema. Ladies and gents he has given Bollywood a new standard of “low”!

There are so many serious judgmental errors that I would be writing a complete series of Brittannicca encyclopedias were I to go into details. But to bring home my point that the movie is completely, uttely, absolutely, totally and truly “rubbish”, here are a few

1. The movie is set in a Hindu mythology setting of Devils (Asuras), Demigods (Devtas), holy men (rishi muni) and ancient secrets written in Sanskrit. But here we have an old as time Asura (devil reincarnate) living on this planet who speaks nothing but Urdu!

2. Dialogues make no sense at all. Totally and utterly. For all you care the characters might recite ABCD, 01234, do re….rather than talk to each other.

3. Abhishek Bacchan’s attire was again as old as time and was supposedly given to the first Drona by Devtas themselves. Yet the dress includes stylish leather boots that have zippers on them to put them on.

4. The first fight scene featuring Priyanka Chopra..what the fock was that contraption she used, who the fock designed it and how the fock can that do anything else other than serve as a stupid trinket to compel monkeys to dance.

5. At this point the bar was out into the Universe

The movie is totally horribly wrong. The director himself was confused whether scenes were supposed to introduce thrill or humor so he basically tried to put both in and left it upon the audience to either be amused or get thrilled. The movie steals the best sequences from Hollywood hits like the Mummy, Scorpion King, Harry Potter etc and gives them a distinctively visible “Bollywood movie for the kid” feel thus rendering them horribly wrong for the majority of the audience. Abhishek's supposedly fierce warrior stances look more like positions in Bhangra dance while Priyank Chopra is as graceful with her action sequences as my 70 year old granny doing Thriller dance on top of a moving train.


Verdict: If you do go to watch this movie make sure you are not carrying any such thing that you can use to harm yourself for trust me you would feel like killing yourself during the course of the movie. Kids would love it though and if you are one of them parents whose sorry posterior would be dragged by their kids anyways then basically all I can say is cheer up! at least your kids didnt force you to suffer RGV's Aag!

Please click one of the stars below the post to give your rating to the movie.

Describe the movie in one word : SleazyYetFun

Vital Stats:

Title: MERE BAAP PEHLE AAP
Director: Priyadarshan

Starring: Akshay Khanna, Paresh Rawal, Genelia D’souza, Shobhana, Rajpal Yadav

Length: 165min

My Psychobabble: If you have been reading my reviews for a while (if you did nod your head then you so rock and I am so thankful to you and maybe I will include you in my will) you would know that I am the kind of person who would always find out something or the other to say about anything. I mean I am one of those criticizing jacka$$es whom just won’t shut up.

And I know that.

But this time I just don’t know what to say. This movie is so spot on its name. Cheap, crass, rude, borderline sleazy and yet funny. Some scenes and situations in the movie do pack a few good punches while most of the others are insanely stupid. Of course having seasoned actors like Paresh Rawal and Om Puri help big time but then they are neither the SRKs, Akshay Kumar’s of Bollywood who can pull a complete movie on their own nor are they the Mallika’s and Rakhi’s of our fraternity who can pull crowds. But then bundle them together in a pot, add some good looking garnishing to it, light a moderately sleazy fire underneath, give it a few stirs and you would have a mildly amusing concoction bubbling back and forth in the pot. Give it a ridiculously stupid name and you might be able to pass it around which is what this movie tries to do.

One thing however was not clear to me. Why in the name of God did all the actors just keep shouting!? Trust me the moment the movie begins to the very moment it ends, everyone (and especially Akshay Khanna) just keeps yelling at the bloody top of their voices. It seems the script writer of the movie wanted to get the perfect blockbuster formula and ended up mixing an “angry young man” typed character with a “Akshay Kumar brand” humorous character. The mix my dear readers is not good, not good at all. At times I felt like getting up and giving a tight one across AK’s face and yell myself “for the freaking love of some God, SHUT THE F**K UP YOU IMBICILE!!!”

There are so many obvious flaws in the movie. For instance AK keeps on getting calls from this mysterious girl who is driving him mad. He is desperate to seek her out. He keeps yelling and shouting on the phone and towards the middle of the movie he does get seriously constipated with tension and anger. Yet he makes no attempt to use features like Caller Line Identification of modern day phones. And finally when the girl does send him a letter (and there is a sender’s address on that letter) AK promptly beckons his minion (Rajpal Yadav), learns some real bad swear words from him, writes them down in a letter and gives the letter to Yadav to deliver. Now one would think that after all the weeks of misery and anticipation, AK would have dashed himself to the sender’s address but no sir, not for this young man. I have my doubts that probably as soon as he sends Yadav away maybe he dashes to the lavatory to you know release the pent up tensions of the past days (ahem!).

Om Puri’s character is completely useless and probably the cheapest in the movie. But then Om Puri has played it with such a flourish that you do actually laugh at some ridiculous moments of his character. One advise to the director of the movie though – please for heaven’s sake and the sake of all humans alive, please never ever ever again shoot a sequence where Puri is topless. It was gross! He is a brilliant actor but is a middle aged average Indian male with a perfect pot belly and ultra ugly sagging man boobs. It was a nightmare having to survive that scene that seemingly stretched into infinity!

Paresh Rawal is as always a genius. This is one actor who knows acting. Cast him as an evil villain in a movie or a confused pakka maraathi or a cowering father, he can play the role as if it is his first nature. Kudos Rawal sir, kudos! I am a big fan of your acting and shall always be!

I won’t go into the leading lady of the movie and her character because frankly I think it is not worth it. But for the sake of completeness here is my advise – either learn to act or to strip or get out of Bollywood. It ain’t a place for you lassie.

(Take my advise please!)

Verdict: Besides the obvious flaws like a weak script, poor direction, lose characters, situations and dialogues the movie still is watchable. It is a perfect for one of those lazy summer days when you have absolutely nothing to do, when you feel like a Royal King or Queen in the mood to wave your hand in the air and say “chalta hai yaar”, have just found a rolled up 100 note in your old trouser pocket and are wondering what do I do with it.

Before you read: If you agree with anything at all that I said here, please click one of the stars at the end of the post to give your opinion on this review. I would really appreciate if you could post a comment. If you do leave a comment, I will definitely reply back. To send this to your friends, simply move your mouse over to the "Add this" button that comes at the end of the post along with the stars!

No Preamble. Read on and you will know why. Warning, spoilers in my psychobabble.

Describe the movie in one word: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

Vital stats:

Title: BhootNath

Director: Vivek Sharma

Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Juhi Chawla, Satish Shah, Rajpal Yadav, Aman Siddiqui.

Length: 147min

Plot: Shahrukh Khan is a Chief Engineer (whatever that means) aboard a cruising ship. Wherever the ship goes he goes with it (doing whatever a chief engineer does over a ship). He is married to Juhi Chawla who is an ideal bubbly yet decent, funny yet sensible, sexy yet not sleazy kind of a wife and a very yum mum kind of a mother to their son named Aman or as he is affectionately called – Banku.

Shahrukh’s company rents a house for him in Goa (heaven knows why) where he puts up Juhi and their son before leaving for his ship. This house is supposedly, oh hell it is actually haunted by the ghost of its previous occupier – Amitabh Bacchan. Now Mr. Bacchan’s ghost doesn’t like anyone staying in his villa so he tries to scare the family out. For some reason he starts with not the adult Juhi but the kid Banku. Obviously he fails, falls in love with the kid (the paternal kind you sick pervert!) and allows them to stay. Oh heck he teams up with the boy and they have the usual Bollywood movie style fun in the boy’s school etc. etc. Towards the climax you get to know why Mr Bacchan’s apparition didn’t like anyone staying in the villa and what ultimately happens to his ghost or soul or whatever he/she (do ghosts have gender by the way?) is.

My Psychobabble: GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!! WTF does this B.R. Chopra (BRC from now on) dude has against the Indian children (I am not talking about Banku’s character in here). If you have seen his previous movie Baghbaan you would know what I am talking about. I mean this guy BRC is like male Ekta Kapoor of the big screen. She casts black shadows of evil on mother in laws and daughter in laws whereas this BRC guy aims his evil splattering gun onto the sons in the family. Marry this BRC and Ekta Kapoor and presto! You have the worst possible traditional Indian family living together under the same roof with bahus torturing saas-es, saas-es torturing bahoos and sons hatching and conjuring up evil schemes to torture their parents sneaking up in their dark corners with evil horns sprouting on their head and a forked tail banging the ground behind them!

This BRC guy always portrays boys who have grown up and are married as direct descendants of Satan whom the Satan unleashed on this world to inflict ultimate super cruel misery onto their parents! Ah fock! I mean what is his focking problem! When his last movie Baghban was released, damn I had had a nightmare watching it with my dad (I lost my mom about 7 years ago to a freak medical incident) who was in constant tears throughout the goddamned movie. By the time the movie ended I was wishing for the floor of my third floor flat (in Delhi then) to give away, for me to fall through it and promptly land on the guy who lived on the second floor (mostly because I didn’t like that bloke and I value my life a bit. I just didn’t want to be in the same room as dad.). When the movie ended, my dad gave me such repulsive looks as if I were the single most ghastly evil untouchable creation of God who hasn’t taken a shower for an eternity and who stank so much that my dad would like nothing more to pick up my cricket bat and beat me to a pulp with it.

And now this Bhoothnath that directly, yup my readers directly hits at the relationship between a son and his father and that too a son who leaves his father and his sick dying mother to go abroad and then turns into this evil money minded gold digger! What’s even more he marries a perfect “I speak Hindi with Amrikan accent” Amrikan kudi who in the evil deptt. is the mother load of Satan himself, doesn’t give too hoot for the traditional Indian Bahoo culture and couldn’t care less about her father in law.

Oh man my life is ruined. The moment my dad watches this movie I am so disowned, disavowed, disbarred and generally dissed. Damn I would be the topic of so many conversations between my dad and his brothers and sisters and their families with each conversation starting something like – “hai hai wo to chala gaya sab chodhke, hai hai! Ab aapka kya hoga hai hai! Bhagwaan ko ye din bhi dikhaane the hai hai! Appne kya karam kare the jo aapke saath is umar main aisa hua. Hai hai, hai hai!”

Yes I know I went on a tangent and fock me but I don’t care! I hate this BRC guy, his production house, his mentality, his movies, his basic general approach to life and am thoroughly disgusted with his parents who decided to mate and produce him! Did he forget that he too was a son at some point in his life and was not really grown on a mango tree, that his parents probably had ambitions from him too!

Saala is BRC ki to “£$*%*(£$^*£$(%”)(“)£()”£$)”£$%(£*^$(DFIKGJKT$%^*(*!!!!

The movie was good for the first half. It was almost kiddish really but good fun. Mr. Bacchan’s character and the character Banku do have some innocent fun which is amusing and interesting at times. Juhi Chawla looked superbly ravishing and as usually has completely gelled into her character with utmost ease. She does such an effortless acting really; I mean it is absolutely brilliant on her part. Rajpal Yadav’s character is stupid with no sense whatsoever. His talent has been completely wasted in the movie. Satish Shah gives some much needed humorous moments during the movie which would surely crack you up.

Verdict: Watch the movie if you must but when the movie begins a slow drive to hell by divulging Mr Nath’s past life, make a run for the exit. If you live abroad then don’t, I repeat don’t talk to you parents for at least a weak if you come to know that they have seen this movie. I would have considered this movie good had it not been for that sickening last one hour of the movie which is actually quiet boring never mind my personal grudges.

I am still sticking to my oath of impartial reviews and still advising you to go watch the movie despite personally hating its last one hour. If you ask for my personal opinion then I suggest all the Indian sons should drink hell loads of beer and I seriously mean hell spattering heaven shattering “collectively embarrassing all Germans and British and Americans” kinds freaking loads of beer and make a beeline for this BRC’s house. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to pay my drunken bladder bursting tribute onto the walls of his house.

“Hai hai”