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Dear Dad
...Arvind Swamy’s pleasing presence and earnest effort notwithstanding. Whatever is there to the plot is too shallow to keep it afloat for even 90 odd minutes.
May 2016
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Azhar
Such is the eagerness to justify him that Tony D’Souza makes it seem as though the whole bad world is out to get him.
May 2016
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Shivaay
...the film turns out almost three hours long despite just a wisp of a story to tell.
Oct 2016
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Sarkar 3
It’s not just the predictability of RGV’s turgid formula that irks but the obviousness of one’s own response and the sheer weariness involved in describing the experience.
May 2017
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Simmba
Be it as brutal violators or patronising saviours of women, Simmba shows that it all boils down to the same toxic masculinity which the men behind Simmba have been perpetuating film after film. There is a saying in Hindi: “Sau choohe khake billi haj ko chali (After eating a hundred rats the cat goes on a pilgrimage)”. Need I say more?
Dec 2018
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Sarbjit
...the director doesn’t seem to know how to calibrate emotions well. He goes overboard with melodrama, is so overtly manipulative that it leaves the various portrayals seem like cardboard cut-outs than throbbing with real life.
May 2016
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Toilet
If there were any doubts that Akshay Kumar is the poster boy of this regime they can be laid to rest with Toilet: Ek Prem Katha.
Aug 2017
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Padmaavat
...may well be Bhansali’s most sterile and insipid outing since Saawariya and Guzaarish. It manages to wear down and exhaust rather than engage.
Jan 2018
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Batti Gul Meter Chalu
The well-intentioned, cause-driven ‘Batti Gul Meter Chalu’ is more boring than engaging.
Sep 2018
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Student Of The Year 2
Despite the fresh, young faces at the centre, a staleness looms large over SOTY2.
May 2019
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Baaghi 2
Nothing matters other than Tiger Shroff in a film that bores as well as amuses with its inanity.
Mar 2018
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Nov 2016
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Shreelancer
All of it gets protracted, hallucinatory and pointless, the viewer’s connect with the growth, change and self-realisation in the character remain distant.
Aug 2017
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Love Aaj Kal
In the faux intensity and pointless philosophising of his newer lot of films the soul goes entirely missing and a turgidity underlines the telling.
Feb 2020
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Rocky Handsome
An adaptation can always be done with one’s own distinct touch. But Rocky Handsome is happy and satisfied in living off borrowed aesthetics even while clinging to its Indian self for all the wrong reasons. It ends up being neither here nor there.
Mar 2016
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Phillauri
Even the ghosts are sporting a tinge of nationalism in Bollywood films these days.
Mar 2017
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Force 2
...Abhinay Deo doesn’t want us to put the thinking cap on. He just wants to please us with long chases and car crashes, bullets and blood, the views of Chain Bridge and Hero’s Square in Budapest.
Nov 2016
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Fanney Khan
Despite the presence of a heavy duty cast, the film is just not able to fly. So bogged down does it get with its predictable arc and overt sense of righteousness that it ends up flat and deadening; silly rather than scintillating.
Aug 2018
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Kabir Singh
Entitled, toxic hero and a heroine without any agency whatsoever. What’s new?
Jun 2019
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Freaky Ali
...is predictable to the core replete with every cliché of a typical sports film that you can possibly think of and, is marked by old fashioned story-telling and over the top, slapstick humour.
Sep 2016
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Haseena Parkar
Don’t go looking for a Shabana Azmi-like assured turn (in Godmother) from Kapoor. She is unable to rise above her age, despite trying to emote way too earnestly in some scenes.
Sep 2017
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Nanu Ki Jaanu
To be fair, silliness, if done with aplomb, can be sublime fun at times. Nanu Ki Jaanu is none of it, only laughable.
Apr 2018
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Chatur Singh Two Star
...Bollywood's indescribably banal take on the comic Inspector Clouseau played by Peter Sellers in Blake Edwards' Pink Panther series.
Aug 2011
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Tum Bin 2
From the beginning to the sudden twist towards the end and then on to a protracted climax, the film has a "seen that many a times" feel.
Nov 2016
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Aladin
Sandwiched in between is a boring love story of the shy Aladin (Ritesh), and Jasmine (Jacqueline, who fills in well as the smiling wallpaper). Aladin, like Drona and Love Story 2039, is ambition gone awry.
Nov 2009
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Chaalis Chauraasi
An exasperatingly extended introduction to utterly inane and colourless characters.
Jan 2012
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Sanam Teri Kasam
Radhika Rao and Vinay Sapru spin a modern, urban fairytale, albeit a gloomy, miserable one, which, in the name of being a woman-centric film, has one of the most feeble, helpless heroines seen in recent Hindi cinema...
Feb 2016
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The Legend of Michael Mishra
Clearly there’s a lot that slips between the ambition and intent and the absolutely amateurish execution of it on screen.
Aug 2016
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I Hate Luv Storys
It is full of endless chatter but the dialogue is inane and boring. So things get too stretched out and long-drawn.
Jul 2010
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Bhoomi
Sanjay Dutt hasn’t lost his acting chops yet, rather seems to be maturing well. But why did he have to pick up a film this regressive for a return?
Sep 2017