QUICKTAKES

What could?ve been

Bewafaa

Director: Dharmesh Darshan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Sushmita Sen, Manoj Bajpai, Shamita Shetty
4.5/10

What happens when director Dharmesh Darshan tries to do a Sooraj R. Barjatya? He goes Gumraah, in fact, hopelessly astray. Even a high-profile cast fails to live up to the promise of the promos ? the half-baked story, also by Darshan, leaves them little scope.

Kareena Kapoor, with an Indian father and (more-Indian-than-Indian) Canadian mother, loves struggling musician Akshay Kumar. But elder sister Sushmita Sen is the only one who knows of his existence, for ?good Indian girls don't have boyfriends?. And family comes first. Which means, when elder sister dies, they take her place to look after her kids and grieving husband. But what happens when the husband is already wedded to work and the deceased wife?s memory? Re-enter the boyfriend ? dumped without so much as even a goodbye ? to rekindle old passions and stir new problems.

Yes, yes, very much Gumraah. Only, while Darshan borrows the 1963 story, the characters seem to hang somewhere between the two centuries ? doing justice neither to the age they live in, nor to the one whose values they claim to profess. Anil Kapoor has surprisingly little to do in this home production, while Kareena, at the centre of a tug-of-war, is too confused. Sushmita is reduced to a ghostly existence while Manoj Bajpai and Shamita Shetty are in it with ghastly effect.

Sonali Chakraborty

Suffer it if you can

Zameer

Director: Kamal
Cast: Ajay Devgan, Amisha Patel, Mahima Chaudhary, Shakti Kapoor, Alok Nath, Kulbhushan Kharbanda
1.5/10

Mahima has a brain tumour, Amisha pretends to have one, and we suffer the risk of getting one after sitting through Zameer. Mahima miraculously survives the attack, Amisha melodramatically doesn?t, and between them both leave behind a critic who was tough enough to survive, but refuses to tell their miserable tale...

For there is hardly a tale to begin or end with. And if director Kamal insists it is there, it is several decades too old to be retold. Opens with Ajay Devgan on the Kidderpore docks, Kamal alone knows doing what, after he has run away from the two women in his life, Mahima and Amisha.

A Mahima who has little to do and an Amisha who thinks that perhaps putting up a huge poster of Hrithik in her room may inspire him to say pyaar hai to her again. But if he has even a glimpse of her in this film, he would shudder at the thought of ever again being in a film with her. Even as a poster.

Deepali Singh

Sex and scenery

SINS

Director: Vinod Pande
Cast: Shiny Ahuja, Seema Rahman, Nitesh Pande, Uttara Baokar
4/10

A man of power giving in to lust ? truly, there?s nothing controversial about that. His being a Catholic priest absolutely holds no water; it could have done a great deal of service to the film, if it had.

Vinod Pande?s ?amoral communion? could have sustained had the content been more mature. The halting pace of the film ? that jumped months and years every now and then ? and its drab predictability loosens the plot till it falls apart.

Shiny Ahuja?s awkward acting throughout ? from being a charming young priest of a smalltown church to his sudden degeneration into a psychotic rapist ? doesn?t call for any attention ? cleric or otherwise. The story doesn?t have an anchor and the focus shifts blatantly to the portrayal of lust. Seema Rahmani has the body and the language of the West that looks great in the nicely done nude scenes. But her accent vacillates irritatingly between the vernacular to the American.

An excellent portrayal by Nitesh Pande playing husband to Seema makes the second half somewhat watchable. Uttara Baokar is very convincing as Seema?s mother. Cinematographer Jogendra Panda makes the scenes (soft-light and silhouette sex) and the scenery (seaside) both look great, saving the film from becoming just another sleaze flick.

Madhuparna Das

Sleaze again

Fun

Director: Sunjay S. Zaveri
Cast: Aryan Vaid, Sidharth Koirala, Payal Rohatgi, Heena Rehman, Mallishka, Mallika, Rashil Bangia, Garv Dixit, Rajat Bedi, Mustaque Khan, Hemant Pandey, Sheela Sharma
2/10

Kalpana Chawla might have lost her life venturing into space, but that is only veggie stuff of a gutsy act compared to the way the three marriage-bored babes in this Zaveri movie ?dare? to swap their hubbies just for fun. While the two nymphos (Heena, Mallishka) go berserk with an orgy of skin-show, the other (Payal Rohatgi) engineers a murder for the sake of a scheming lover and at the cost of a duffer husband. Women power all the way! And ready-made tips for feminists gone short of ideas.

Simple-hearted Indian hubbies needn?t be scared though because Zaveri?s thrill-frilled soft porn ensures that the errant wives eventually turn penitent pativrata, but not before the fullfledged sleaze carnival (not the fest, mind you) provides enough eye candy for the prurient gaze. Acting? That shouldn?t be the talking point with the males given to keyhole peeping, smooching and licking and the females ? well, you know.

Aryan Vaid and Payal Rohatgi have got a stray scene or two to their credit. And like it or not, Dadra and Nagar Haveli seascape at times distracts the senses preoccupied with other things.

Arnab Bhattacharya