Student of the Year

The first thing that comes to your mind when you hear Karan Johar is a Yash Chopra mark movie, with heroin standing on a icy mountain, with wind blowing at full speed making her hair dance like a bunch of cobras.

However the movie that KJo wanted to make this time was partly different, I am saying partly because you still get to see the icy mountain, but instead of heroine you see a girl who looks like someone who has bunked the school, granted the movie is based in and around school, but only the heroine i.e. Miss Bhatt looks like a school student, rest of people are seriously from post graduation I believe, however what makes the movie interesting for me is the other part, where actually you see a director who can make a movie beyond a love story.

Don’t get me wrong, this movie has all that Mr. Johar is famous for, love, dysfunctional family, lots of money, two new comer heroes and an underage heroine. But the movie has also competition in its core, the passion to succeed and fear of failure and the changing interrelationship between friends. To be honest I myself became curious in the second half of the movie that who is going to win the award for Student of the Year. This is his side that the director had not shown to public before.

Let me be very clear on a few point here, the director is the man who makes the movie work, because he has become such a good story teller that minor flaws in his movie are overshadowed. Like in this movie the part where both the heroes are not comfortable with their respective families is more of a cliché than anything else. To be honest the track between Varun and his father looks forced on the story as it is not well conceived.

Performance wise Siddharth impresses and Varun shows sign for decent performances, but as far as leading lady is concerned a little less talented director and reality will strike like lightning. However the actor who impressed me the most was Kayoze Irani, he is a talent to look out for, I will appreciate the director for having his focus not only on the lead 3 characters but giving substantial roles to supporting characters as well, not only that but their charters also have a few shades.

Story is decent so is music, the narrative is definitely very fresh and stylish, on the whole the movie makes a onetime watch, but bear in mind the overacting you are going to encounter at various moments during the movie.

Rating **1/2

Talaash (2012)

It’s really hard for me to watch a movie in the town I currently live, not because movies don’t release here but due to pathetic condition of theaters, I even don’t mind the poor infrastructure or broken seats, but the constant ‘maava’ chewing and nonstop spitting by people makes it a nightmarish experience, however I try to make an exception for suspense movies, as they have a very short shelf life, and it’s not possible for me to go to a nearby city every time for a better theatre.

Talaash was obviously a must watch for me since the day it was announced, however I was afraid that someone may leak the suspense of the movie so I wanted to watch the movie on Friday night itself, but my program got delayed by one day, as luck would have it my cable connection has not been working for the last one week and even my newspaper man in not delivering the paper for the last four days, so in a way I thought it was kind of lucky for me, as someone from a TV channel or any random article from the newspaper could have revealed the suspense of this movie, but I couldn’t smile for a long time as that one day delay cost me the suspense of the movie as someone posted the climax of movie on facebook on Saturday morning, but I went to the movie anyhow.

Anyway leaving aside my grief and coming to the point, dose Talaash carries off the burden of immense expectations levied upon it, yes, would be my answer. One needs to understand that a suspense movie loses its charm as soon as the story is reveled, unlike in case of comedy or romantic movies, audiences don’t come to watch suspense movie for the second time. So keeping in mind the fact that I already knew the suspense watching the movie was more or less pointless, but that didn’t happened here, the movie keeps you glued to your seat throughout the 2 and a half hours, so even though I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if I didn’t knew the suspense, still the director kept my interest in the movie alive.

For obvious reasons I won’t talk about the story of the movie, but will point out that the screenplay is flawless, minute details have been taken care of efficiently. About the suspense, its good but may not be acceptable to all alike, if I hadn’t known it already my views over the movie could have been entirely different from what they are right now.  However the director does not give away everything on a plate to the audience, a viewer needs to be attentive during the movie to understand the plot.

Performance wise everyone enacts his or her part well, but you don’t feel like you are watching an Aamir Khan film rather the movie belongs to the director, Nawazuddin Sidhiqui has come full circle, from playing an extra in Aamir starrer ‘Sarfarosh’ to a lead in ‘Talaash’.

Music wise my favorite track is ‘muskane jhooti hain’, dialogues are good (Farhan Akhtar and Anurag Kashyap), technically the movie is well made.

On the whole the movie is a fine balance of emotion and suspense which deserves a watch, however I won’t rate the movie as I was not in a position to determine the effectiveness of the suspense of the movie.

P.S. My cable is still not working and i dont know wether i will have access to tomorrows news paper.