No entry
Director: Anees Bazmee
Cast: Anil Kapoor, Salman Khan, Fardeen Khan, Bipasha Basu, Lara Dutta, Esha Deol, Celina Jaitly, (Sameera Reddy)
5/10
N Entry? Dude, who wants to enter your insular island (Mauritius, actually) of delayed-adolescence male fantasy, anyway? We’d rather? yes exit, thank you.
Anees Bazmee’s film’s a laugh riot of PJs and good comic timing, where cast and audience have a good time at the cost of ‘better halves’. And where double entendre one-liners like ‘Kabhi kabhi kisi doosri gaadi mein baithna paap nahin hai’ ’keep sexist humour thriving.
Of course, you have sexy Salman as subject expert/consultant love guru propagating metaphoric ‘car-swapping’ as extra-marital extra-curricular activity. And as he advises how to lie to, cheat and fool a woman without being caught in compromising position, with ‘Biwi ko ullu banana sab se aasaan kaam hai’, your irk turns to smirk, and you can only cluck at the incessant male chauvinism ? in decidedly boys’ club lingo ? that could automatically categorise this funny flick as an MCP manual of sorts.
But despite being seduced into ‘Ishq di gali vich no entry’ taboo love lane by Bipasha (not Tabu), Anil and Fardeen do no wrong and settle right down with respective wives (Lara and Celina) to respectable lives.
All’s well that ends?well, until Sameera readily slow-motions, Bo Derek style, into dusky male gaze horizon. And re-entry of our heroes, narrowing lustful eyes as they zero in on ‘Ah, man! What a babe!’ After all, boys will be boys. Amen!
Mandira Mitra
Elektra
Director: Rob Bowman
Cast: Jennifer Garner, Goran Visnjic, Kirsten Prout, Will Yun Lee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Terence Stamp, Natassia Malthe, Bob Sapp, Chris Ackerman
3.5/10
God, of course, is American while the devil’s followers are mostly slit-eyed Orientals. In the battle between Good and Evil the balance of power lies with Elektra, who is only half pure at heart. Until she is kissed by a handsome guy in designer stubble and decides that being good isn’t half bad.
Director Rob Bowman mixes Marvel comics with martial arts, adds a dash of Harry Potter, and serves up a wholly incredible concoction.
Jennifer Garner plays Elektra with the grim seriousness of a killing machine, reserving her smile for the final frame. The rest of the cast strives to look villainous or angelic as prescribed. There are fights galore, with astounding acrobatics, and special effects to show Hollywood’s technical wizardry. In the end the good get resurrected while the bad disappear in balls of green fire.
All in all, it is a film for those who need a break from computer games.
Sudip Mallik
