Moviewatch

So I watched Cheeni Kam and Metro over the past week.

Can I just say what a pleasure it is to watch good actors doing their thing with other good actors.

Konkona Sen Sharma, who I refused to be impressed by in the awful Page 3 and the slow-motion nonwonder that was Omkara, is a comic miracle in Metro. She plays a 30 year old virgin opposite Irfan Khan's loony romantic. Right. Shilpa Shetty and Nafisa Ali are on hand to do that seeming impossible, 'Acting While Beautiful.' Dharmendra is terrible. Kay Kay is suitably foul. And was there ever a potential star with a more cursed name than Shiney Ahuja?

Think Love...Actually except sadder [and happier]. The music is good, too.

Then there's Cheeni Kam. Tabu is probably the greatest actress working in Bombay today, and here she's breezy, sharp, weepy, all by effortless turns. Paresh Rawal is her hapless father careening over the hill. They're both brilliant, and Bachchan, unloved by me, is good too. She is an Indian touristing London. He is the high priest of 'London's finest Indian restaurant'. She sends back what she ordered. He lectures her on taste. You know the drill. Watch it, for no other reason than to observe the agile footwork of not one, not two, but three great and [rightly] respected performers. True, The last twenty minutes made me want to shoot the screenwriter, but the first hundred were an awful lot of fun.