Patiala House

Rumored to be inspired by the trials of Monty Panesar, the first Sikh to make it to the English cricket team, Patiala House finally gives you an Akshay Kumar film where you won’t be waiting for it to get over.

Parghat Singh Kahlon or Gattu (Akshay Kumar) is a promising fast bowler who gets a call to play for his country and what could be more prestigious for an Indian than to don white fennels? But his father Gurtej Kahlon (Rishi Kapoor) denies him the chance for Gattu’s country happens to be England. Gurtej becomes a different man the day his family members are killed in a racial attack and vehemently fights the whites one every instance. Gurtej might be living in England but for all practical purposes he still considers himself an Indian and won’t let his British citizen of a son play for the ‘enemy. From the moment Gattu gives in everyone in Gurtej’s extended family, is expected to do what the patriarch deems fit. Seventeen years later Gattu gets a second shot when a desperate English cricket board looks up to him to transform England’s sagging fortunes on the field. Once again Gattu refuses but thanks to lady love Simran (Anushka Sharma) and the inmates of Patiala House, who see this as an opportunity to break away from disciplinarian Gurtej, Gattu for the first time decides to live his life.

Patiala House is one of the best things that could have happened to Akshay Kumar in years. With this film he manages to remind you that there is a little more to him than the inanity he had been indulging in for sometime now. Kumar has the ability to play the smooth operator and the poker faced loser with equal ease and this is a film where he seems to be having great fun as an actor. There are many things in Patiala House that seem far fetched- Simran and the bunch managing to keep the identity of Kaali, the pseudonym for Gattu as his dons the English colors but still the film ends up working on some level. One of the things conspicuously missing from the drama is the simple fact that no one questions Gurtej’s apparent hypocrisy. He has no qualms availing all facilities in England but when it comes to his English citizen son playing for England than he changes ‘his’ country in the blink of an eye. Nikhil Advani and Anvita Dutt Guptan’s screenplay had a few places where such a conflict could have made it more interesting than the basic fare it happily chooses to be.

Patiala House has a host of characters that can’t be differentiated from each other and they all end up looking the same. Advani and Guptan make no effort to add something new to the supporting cast and after a while you really don’t care who’s who or doing what. Akshay Kumar underplays Gattu almost to the level of boredom and that’s something which makes him look better than his recent films. Anushka Sharma yet again plays the Punjabi kudi and Dimple Kapadia gets rewarded for her endearing presence with a big rona-dhona talkie scene in the end.

The thing that really shines in Patiala House is Rish Kapoor’s Gurtej Singh Kahlon. One of the most successful leading men of Hindi cinema, Kapoor is perhaps the only one who managed to hold his own for two decades alongside a juggernaut called Amitabh Bachchan. Much like Bachchan, Kapoor found it extremely difficult to make the transition from a leading man to a supporting actor but while Bachchan took embarrassingly long with abysmal efforts like Laal Badshah, Kapoor’s transition has been better. With Hum Tum, Namastey London, Love Aaj Kal and now Patiala House we finally have an option for Amitabh Bachchan!

Rating: 3/5

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Rishi Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Dimple Kapadia and Tinnu Anand

Written by: Nikhil Advani and Anvita Dutt Guptan

Directed by: Nikhil Advani

Image: www.wikipedia.com

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Tees Maark Khan

Forget plagiarizing the entire plot or an iconic scene every now and then, Farah Khan’s Tees Maar Khan has five minutes of screen time dedicated to a character first seen in the Happydent ‘Tere dil roshan, tere mann roshan’ chewing gum commercial. Really? The Czarina of non-sense cinema has left no stone unturned to show that she ‘Khan’ do it even with a fictitious Khan when it comes to full-full entertaining films.

Whacking the wristwatch of the doctor who delivers him Tabres Mirza Khan or TMK- Tees Maar Khan (Akshay Kumar) has been conning people right from his birth. After fooling the police for years he is finally nabbed in Paris but escapes midair thanks to the bumbling duo of M/s Mukherjee & Chatterjee (Aman Verma and Murli, don’t recall who’s who). Just like the police’s intel, the conjoined evil Johari Brothers seek TMK’s help to retrieve their booty from the police train that would be transporting it to Delhi. In between romancing Anya (Katrina Kaif), an item girl who is also the love of his life and stays in his house and strangely enough calls his mother ‘mummy’, prancing with Salman ‘Bhai’ Khan (Salman Khan) celebrating Eid at the drop of a rumaal just because he feels like it Tees Maar Khan puts his daring plan in place- he will engage an entire village along the railway track from where the train will pass to act in a film and ‘direct’ them to rob the train. Along with the help of his three sidekicks called Burger, Soda and something like that TMK becomes an NRI filmmaker called Manoj ‘Day’ Ramalan and gets Atish Kapoor (a hilarious Akshaye Khanna) to play the lead in his film. Kapoor, ruing the day his secretary Baweja (Sudhir Pandey) refused Danny Doyle’s offer to play the lead in Glumdog Millionaire, grabs the NRI filmmaker’s offer with both hands. With the con set in place TMK and his team live up to their infamous name!

Much like Om Shanti Om, Tees Maar Khan too welcomes you to the same over-the-top-logic-can-go-to-hell style of Farah Khan School of Filmmaking with open arms and even though a large part of the film is nothing more than cacophony, you don’t really mind it. Khan and her partner in crime Shirish Kunder, who could have might as well directed this film for there is nothing that he hasn’t contributed to ranging from story, screenplay, dialogues, lyrics, background score, editing and producing, officially pick up the plot from Vittorio De Sica After the Fox that featured Peter Sellers but pepper it mostly unsophisticated and rather crude jokes that will compel you to crack up unexpectedly every now and then. Filled with asinine one-liners which seem to be the real reason why most of the sequences were constructed, the writing in Tees Maar Khan tries too hard but would have failed completely had it not been for the effort on the part of actors especially Khanna, Kumar and supporting members like Pandey.

There’s a lot riding on Tees Maar Khan for Farah Khan for she needs to prove her world can exist beyond Shah Rukh Khan and even though Akshay Kumar is as big a name these are tough times for Khiladi Kumar. The titular role can be described as Kumar’s version of SRK’s madcap Badshah and for what it’s worth he lives up to his brand of comedy that had taken a beating. But surprisingly it’s Akshaye Khanna as the Oscar obsessed actor who proves to be the mainstay of the film. Long considered to be a fine actor who always had it in him and yet chose not to really dazzle, Khanna’s very interestingly cast and is fun to watch particularly when he peps himself up by chanting his version of ‘Jai Ho’- aptly called ‘Day Ho’! Katrina Kaif overdoes her doe eyed damsel in imaginary distress thing and truth be told she seems like the only one besides Farah Khan, of course, who’s enjoying shaking a leg to Sheila ki Jawaani.

Even with all the madness that she could think of Khan limits Tess Maar Khan with a sloppy screenplay that seems to be as badly put together as the Johari Brothers. At places she doesn’t even bother to work out the detailing of characters- the mother seems to be a victim of a mega Om Shanti Om Kirron Kher hangover. Many scenes seem forced and even the songs, chartbusters if you please, seem out of place. Much like Ek Do Teen from Tezaab, the mother of all item numbers Sheila ki Jawaani comes very early in the film but unlike the iconic Saroj Khan-Madhuri Dixit number Sheila is almost forced upon the viewer.

There is a sense of disdain from most quarters that greets Farah Khan’s unapologetic fashion of not only getting inspired by the classics but not giving a damn when it comes to ‘recreating’ the magic of the cinema of yesteryears and yet her previous films like Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om have been wildly successful. As a follow-up Tees Maar Khan might not be as liked all around, it has its moments and let’s be honest Farah Khan films are a celebration of the senseless so why even bother with the absence of logic or lack of anything remotely reasonable!

Rating: 2/5

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Akshaye Khanna, Katrina Kaif, Sudhir Pandey

Screenplay by: Ashmith Kunder and Shirish Kunder

Directed by: Farah Khan

Image: www.bollycurry.com

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