Mimi

Introducing a topic like surrogacy to an Indian audience that is generally obsessed with marriage and childbearing is a risky undertaking. How do you do it without nudging cultural norms, hurting sentiments, dismissing opinions, not mocking ignorance and yet finding a way to tell a story that leads to a digestible ending? The story writer and director of Mimi had their task cut out and it feels like they settled into a heartwarming story despite some obvious WTFs.

The first half of the movie feels like a forced crash course on surrogacy. The why, how and who are introduced – sometimes with cringeworthy dialogues and over the top acting. The biggest WTF, you ask? Why is Mimi (Kriti Sanon) talking in a thick Haryanvi accent throughout the movie when she is from Bikaner, Rajasthan?? It made the kadi and mishri mawa in my blood boil! Still bubblin’…

The second half gets better with Mimi developing a spine and attachment to the baby she is carrying for a foreign couple. Mimi enlisting Bhanupratap Pandey (Pankaj Tripathi) as her “husband” was the most masterstroke move of story writing in this film. Pankaj Tripathi is a natural! He is astonishingly good in both comic and serious scenes. Figuratively he carries as much weight in this movie as Kriti carries literally. Speaking of weight – I am ready to be stoned – but I feel Kriti looked so much prettier in the second half of the movie where she has gained some weight. Her slightly more rounded face made her look gorgeous compared to her otherwise boney structure. Your mileage may vary…

The internet is ablaze with a feminism laden debate about Mimi’s choice to keep the baby and with that signaling an anti-abortion message but people forget that just because Mimi made a choice for her own personal situation it doesn’t mean others may not choose to have an abortion. What may be right for one person’s circumstances may be wrong for another’s. What matters is having a choice in the first place.

While Evelyn Edwards and Aidan Whytock acted well as the foreign ‘parents’ their characters were such a yoyo! I lost count how many times they wanted the baby and then didn’t want it and then wanted it again. Those flip flops were a bit too jarring to handle. Also, using the news of down syndrome as a mechanism to make the parents run away was more than tasteless! Turns out the kid is not born with down syndrome so everyone’s back with heir happy faces. This mockery of a genetic disease and many families’ reality was far worse than Mimi’s choice to abort or keep.

My eyes have forgotten how to cry these days but towards the end of this movie I found myself pulling the sleeve of my T-shirt more than once. Call me a weakling if you want… (7/10)

Toofan

Is the story novel? No.

Are the characters novel? No.

Does this boxing saga knock you off your feet? No.

Is the movie feel good? Yes.

Toofan is entirely carried by the excellent acting skills of Farhan Akhtar, Mrunal Thakur & Paresh Rawal. Farhan Akhtar fails to convince me in his thug avatar for the first 10 minutes of the film but once he is transformed into his “Aziz Ali – the Boxer” role he shines! Mrunal Thakur, who I remember liking in Super 30, surprised me with her very natural and endearing performance. She isn’t the classic Indian model. She is the cute girl next door with life under her skin. Paresh Rawal ka kya kehna? You put him in any role and he’ll be just that – single dad, a friend, a boring coach, a grandfather.

This story of a street fighter turned boxer who later has to redeem himself has been told time and again. The characters aren’t fully developed, there’s a lot of song and dance and yet it’s a good one-time entertainer.

My favorite dialogue? “Bhai mufti mein chinggum (chewing gum) nahi fulane ka. Sala fat gaya to apne hi muh pe aake lafa padega!” <– Filed away under life lessons. 😉

6/10

Haseen Dillruba

What started as a genre-busting melange of a crime thriller, murder mystery and romantic drama rapidly – as in slippery slope rapidly – deteriorates in a WTF climax in the last 15 minutes. Though slowly, the tension was building and I did want to solve the whodunnit…until the leads started to bring a cheap mystery novel’s plot to life.

I have always enjoyed watching Taapsee Pannu’s performances and lately Vikrant Massey’s too. However, both their characters so frequently slipped out-of-character throughout the plot that I kept scratching my head thinking who the writer really wanted me to sympathize with.

Not only the main leads, the mother-in-law, the father-in-law all just came and went as it suited the writer. The only consistently negative character was Harshvardhan Rane’s.

I like the storytelling format of Taapsee’s narration of her life story to the police officer in flashback, interspersed with a real-time investigation.

I am facing a classic attribution modeling problem rating this movie. If I go with the first impression method I’d say this is a 8/10. If I go with the classic – but very flawed – last click model I’d be at a 1/10. A weighted average or a data-driven attribution seems hard to calculate due to the volatility of the plot. Call me generous but I enjoyed it enough to give it a 6/10.

Sherni

The story arc of this movie resembles the slightly-elevated-due-to occasional-high-blood-pressure but otherwise dying patient’s heartbeat. It goes something like this: forest officer in forest – tigress sighting – political rally – death of a villager – forest officer in forest – tigress sighting – political rally – death of a villager…you get it, this loop repeats about three times and then the story dies.

After the flat intro of about 20+ minutes you expect the story to develop but the pace of the movie carries on like a poorly made wildlife documentary. There is a sprinkle of illegal animal hunting, a dash of feminism, a whole splash of political agendas but the “so what” is elusive til the very abrupt end.

It’s hard to assemble a star cast as illustrious as Vidya Balan, Vijay Raaz and Neeraj Kabri and criminal to then let such great talent go to waste. Each of them got under the skin of their characters, as they always do, but none of them had any oomph written into their roles.

At times Sherni feels like a political satire. At times it feels like it’s trying to carry a pro-wildlife agenda. At times Vidya Balan is supposed to be the Sherni but her character is merely that of a house cat with slightly rough nails. (3/10)

Skater Girl

A story about women empowerment, told by a woman with the help of four female characters. Skater Girl may sound like the title of a movie shot in Brooklyn showcasing the grit of a Western teenage girl finding her place on the skate slopes. However, the setting of this movie couldn’t be more different – a small village outside of Udaipur, Rajasthan. Dust-filled air, small huts with leaking roofs, water fountains segregated by class system.

A half-Indian woman comes to this village in search of her ancestry and stays behind to uplift the life of the village children by giving them a reason to believe. Along with a set of friends she sets out to build a skatepark for these children that have fallen in love with skateboarding but are not allowed to use it around the village. God forbid you are a girl spotted on a board.

While this is not the first movie, especially in recent times, that shows the change opportunities can bring to women’s lives it’s interesting to see how four different women relate to the struggle of emancipation in their own ways:

Prerna, a teenager, has every life decision made for her by her father. She is not allowed to go to school. She has to marry the man of her father’s choice so he can get rid of her. She isn’t given the freedom to think, be, or want.

Prerna’s mother, a dutiful housewife, struggles between the obedience towards her husband, her own desire to change “the system” and supporting her daughter to live her dream.

Jessica, the half-Indian visitor from London, is successful in her career, searching for meaning in life and unmarried. No doubt, the last descriptor is shoved in her face more than once.

Maharani sa belongs to the Royal family of Rajasthan but has had her own nondescript struggles with rules for women which motivates her to support the idea of a skatepark in her village.

Prerna’s little brother, Ankush, deserves a special mention: Untainted by gender bias, eternally optimistic, mischievous and always ready to support his sister (even by giving her the pants he is wearing so she can skate on her wedding day :)) is the kind of character you cannot help but fall in love with.

Another noteworthy, yet underdeveloped character, is that of Subodh’s – Prerna’s school friend and silent admirer. He is a beacon of support but somehow gets forgotten as the story develops.

Skating may seem like an unusual sport to introduce village kids to but it can be seen as a metaphor for ‘opportunity’ of any kind. Just the other day, I was discussing with a few friends how learning anything as a child is so much easier, more effective and joyful than learning as an adult. When you see the sparkle in Prerna’s eyes as she stands on a skateboard for the first time, arms spread, “flying” down a dust road you know what freedom looks like.

For those of you who only know me as an adult here’s a little know secret: As an 11-year-old, I too was a little skater girl giving wings to my heart navigating the hilly roads of my hometown on my green, yellow and pink light-up skateboard!

A great watch even if it has some flaws and unfinished threads. (8/10)

Sandeep aur Pinky Faraar

What you see is not what is…and what is is not what you see. Starting with the “got you!” title all the way through to the end this movie is a playground for gender role bending in more than one way. Men and women are depicted with predictable characteristics in Hindi cinema since eons. Sometimes a director will take a stab at undoing that conditioning with a bad attempt like Ki and Ka and then there are directors like Dibakar Banerjee who bring a unique playfulness to it. Don’t ask me why it’s always Arjun Kapoor who begs the lead roles for ‘gender twists’.

Two people from completely different walks of life have one goal: escape the country and head to Nepal. One is running away from a crime of creating a Ponzi scheme at a bank. The other’s crime is unknown (I wish there was a more context on it) but the enemy is the same.

Together, they end up in a mountain village near the Nepal border where they meet a very Indian couple acted by Neena Gupta and Raghubir Yadav. The scenes of these four people living together are some of my favorite. The gender differences come to light quite starkly and despite each of the characters being so different the hint of bonding doesn’t go unnoticed.

Despite many delightful role reversal moments there are some slightly unrealistic ones but they serve the plot so I’ll take them with a grain of salt.

Not one actress/actor has left any stone unturned. I was particularly surprised by Arjun Kapoor who I don’t normally remember as a great character actor.

At times I felt the story needed more time to be told but I’ll take a good short story over a long drab one. (7/10)