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Shikara
A more nuanced sense of history would have made this film much more complete, even if you were to put aside the enormous irony of watching a film about a place which has been in lock-down for the past six months: when will the people in the valley be able to watch Shikara, and tell us what they think?
Feb 2020
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Baaghi 2
The trouble with a full-on masala film going in search of a plot is evident in the way the film unspools.
Mar 2018
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Chennai Express
The laughs came intermittently through the first half, and I was still sitting in my seat at the interval. And then it turned into the same old story: the plot, which was thinner than a self-respecting wafer to start with, just gives up and dies, and the lead pair, Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone stop talking to each other and begin posturing.
Aug 2013
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Soorma
In choosing to show the personal side, the professional aspects get short shrift, and that’s where the film doesn’t score as well.
Jul 2018
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Soorma
...starts like a dewy-fresh spring morning, where everything is familiar yet new. It then wilts, autumnal overtones taking over. And then never quite recovers, falling into a dreary never-ending winter.
Sep 2011
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Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu
...is a half and half : it gets where it needs to with flair, but not enough surprises.
Feb 2012
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Raanjhanaa
Post interval, it comes unstuck, and squanders its gains. If Raanjhanaa had kept its tone intact, it would have been a great love story.
Jun 2013
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Ram-leela
I enjoyed the lovers, and their ram-leela: if only the film had been more ras, not goli-leela, more roses than guns.
Nov 2013
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Welcome 2 Karachi
...it is all good-natured and appropriately silly, so ‘Welcome 2 Karachi’ stays watchable.
May 2015
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Shubh Mangal Saavdhan
...overall this comedy of middle-class-Dilli-manners-and-mores suffers from a sit-com flatness. And when everything is meant to make us laugh, you can quite easily deflect attention from the main premise.
Sep 2017
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Shubh Mangal Saavdhan
...did the director have to rip off Mississipi Burning quite so completely? Replace FBI officers Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman with CBI officers Akshaye Khanna and Ajay Devgn, darkest Mississippi with darkest Bihar, and racism with caste-ism, steal scenes in their entirety, and you have Aakrosh.
Oct 2010
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Half Girlfriend
The book, despite its shortcomings, feels more an organic whole: the film, which was what the book was always going to be, tries too hard.
May 2017
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Stree
Stree’s premise is a cracker, leaving you grinning in the dark. But the execution comes off a tad clunky: subversion in a film willing to embrace its silliness can be very effective, but it can get diluted if your messaging is mixed.
Aug 2018
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Drishyam
The film, which stays mostly faithful to the original but has a few inserts, could have been better if it had been tighter. And if Ajay Devgn had someone other than Shriya Saran (the two don’t quite fit) opposite him.
Jul 2015
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Chalo Dilli
A sentimental climactic twist ends up being surprisingly not schmaltzy, and gives an interesting touch to 'Chalo Dilli'. It could have been, though, shorter and crisper.
Apr 2011
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Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana
It's nice, all this 'pinni' and 'parandi' and 'pind', and these 'hum log', and just that.
Nov 2012
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Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana
The film would have been funnier if the second act hadn't gone into a slide. And also if Khan hadn't played Boris so straight.
May 2013
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Question Mark
...as an attempt which stays true to its purpose, of providing uneasy chills, '?' pretty much does its job.
Feb 2012
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Dil Dhadakne Do
...in keeping with Zoya’s insistence on keeping it bubbly and bright, the characters do not cut and bleed, just burble and weep, and some crucial sharpness goes missing.
Jun 2015
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Daddy
It’s also the thickly-populated circuitous plot, which goes back and forth in time, which comes in the way of a solid crime thriller cum study of the making of a gangster.
Sep 2017
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Halkaa
Nila Madhab Panda gives us a film about urban wretchedness in easily digestible drawing-room gollops.
Sep 2018
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Halkaa
...proves that it is entirely possible to make a smart children's film, with good production values, with kids seen to be having a blast.
Jul 2011
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Dedh Ishqiya
There is much to be liked in the film, and I wish all of it had been as good as the scintillating bits.
Jan 2014
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May 2014
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Badlapur
...a mixed bag of a movie: it has a cracking set-up, a middle with the occasional unsettling prod, and an end which fizzles.
Feb 2015
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Wazir
There’s enough to watch in ‘Wazir’ despite its flaws. It reaffirms something we’ve always known: that there’s nothing to beat a plot-driven film.
Jan 2016
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Daas Dev
The trouble with all these people (a fine ensemble cast), whose questionable actions underline the common belief that all politics is for personal gain and not for the greater good, is that they get shoehorned into an overwrought plot. And its all much too jerky and staccato, never really letting its good parts breathe.
Apr 2018
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Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar
This is a director who doesn’t hang about. But the films’s hold upon us starts slipping when it starts casting about for good reasons for its leads to be the way they are, coming back into focus sporadically.
Mar 2021
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Don 2
...needed an energized, crackling plot. What it has, in almost too much abundance, is SRK dripping dimpled coolth. But cool can only take you so far.
Dec 2011