Socha na tha
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Cast: Abhay Deol, Ayesha Takia, Suresh Oberoi, Ayesha Julka, Rati Agnihotri, Sandhya Mridul, Apoorva Jha
5.5/10
Socha Na Tha makes the boy-meet-girl thing fun watching. Abhay?s a cool dude with conventional looks. Quite a dichotomy, but with pleasing results. Mostly in formal shirts that hang out, hair a little out of fashion, body language not the ?yo? type, but he carries it off pretty well. Here, he isn?t game for arranged marriage, he loves a Christian girl (debutante Apoorva Jha), and doesn?t mind a bit of help from the girl he?s rejecting in an arranged marriage. Ayesha agrees to help. It leads to a bizarre misunderstanding between the two families and they begin fighting like ?mafia?.
Everything else falls in place. The tongue-in-cheek tone of Ishan Trivedi?s dialogues; Sandesh Shandilya?s music is both funk and feeling; director Imtiaz Ali seeks inspiration from a good many films, but that doesn?t mar the originality factor.
The story takes another turn when the very strict father, Suresh Oberoi, softens and agrees to his marriage to the Christian while Abhay?s heart moves on to Ayesha. The situation gets hilarious when Abhay gets cocky with Apoorva?s parents hoping they would break the marriage. Ayesha Julka?s refreshing comeback and Rati Agnihotri?s delightful bickering all add to the fun.
Madhuparna Das
Chand Sa Roshan Chehra
Director: Shahab Shamsi
Cast: Samir Aftab, Tamanna, Kiran Kumar
3/10
The song, Yeh chaand sa roshan chehra, may have become the hum of the nation in the 1960s, but a film by that name today just doesn't excite. Though in this age of sex and sleaze and skin, it would have been a welcome change to be taken back to the era of Sharmila and Shammi singing this song on the jheel.
And Samir with his Jugal Hansraj-like chocolaty looks, and Tamanna with her off-chocolate figure (the kind who dare to wear, rather than dare to bare, at least in their first film) might just have carried it off. But the outdated script, heavily laden with ludicrous sequences, keeps them firmly ?grounded? and moondom seems nowhere near reach. It helps that they are grounded in Switzerland and give us at least some locales to feast our eyes on. It also helps that they hum some hummable, though not memorable, songs by Jatin-Lalit.
All this is, however, not enough to help this Shahab Shamsi-directed and Salim Akhtar-produced film, touted as a big launch for his nephew Samir, ?the loverboy? and ?pride of Bengal,? from being eclipsed into darkness.
Deepali Singh
Agnipath
Director: Sujit Guha Cast: Inder Kumar, Urmila, Ranjit Mallick, Santu Mukherjee, Labony Sarkar, Mrinal Mukherjee, Kaushik Banerjee, Rajashree Bhowmik, Biplab Chatterjee, Master Angshu
2/10
Enter, the dragon ? nay, Inder Kumar, the big Bollywood bully who, unlike other erstwhile ?Kumars? of Bengali cinema, is brawny enough to carry the witness-box of a court room in his hands, but not sure enough about his expressions to be able to distinguish between smiling and wailing. Urmila, the girl cast opposite him, looks as stiff as frozen mutton and fares almost like a junior artiste. Santu and to some extent Labony have their acting potentials steamrolled by high-octane melodrama; and Ranjit is his usual belligerent self.
Snehashis Chakraborty?s screenplay (arguably his worst in recent times) is a junk store of rusty themes in a sequence as bizarre as the court trial of a murder preceding the victim?s cremation.
The cast, age-wise, is a loud mismatch for roles, and the other Inder (Indrajit) directing music makes us face the music instead of listening to it.
Stepping out of the theatre after the show is almost like getting down from an overcrowded bus: a sigh of relief follows. But in the present case, there will be one other sigh ? for having wasted the ticket money.
Arnab Bhattacharya
