Moviewatch: Jhoom-Gloom-Doom

As accessories go, high production values can assist movies; they've been known to work for this studio before. I was one of the six people impressed by the money pouring out of Ta Ra Rum Pum, and last year one of the three people who actually enjoyed Salaam Namaste. The new Yash-Raj, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, certainly has one of the most serviceable soundtracks in recent movie history. But flash can also annoy; it can serve to bring into focus the strident anti-matter unreeling before your very eyes. For Jhoom, director Shaad Ali brings expensive ideas into the machinery of mainstream product, but fails entirely to support those ideas with meaning. Therefore, Zinta and Bachchan sit around waiting for their high-voltage starpower to somehow manifest itself; it doesnt. Eventually, those less fortunate Deols and Duttas pull more than their share of the load to vastly compensate for the wretched first hour.

Curiously, the movie had on me the effect of a part-time Moulin Rouge, except without the genius that inspired it, and at other times the effect of a retread of, well, various pieces from the house of candy-coated NRIness. An Average Kind of Jhoom.

Moviewatch: Too Many Drops Spoil the Ocean

Julia Roberts is not in Ocean's Thirteen. Could there be a more powerful testament to star power than the total mediocrity inspired by its absence?

The third installment in Steven Soderbergh's hugely popular franchise is one long, lame joke. Smugness is not something I like in a film, and you will not watch a movie more infatuated with itself this summer. The revenge ploy in itself is a puzzle to watch, but its execution is so unbelievable I yawned. Nothing works in this film: not one witty line, not the Valentino suits, not the Vegas cool, not the many many moving parts to the heist. I should have just watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. At least Alba knows she's in a dump.

The biggest con-job this movie pulls is on your wallet. Stay Away.

Video Throwback: Bray, Muse

To honour the depressing spirit of the French Open, I went back 40 years to watch a depressing Robert Bresson film about a donkey. Au Hasard Balthazar is in the Criterion Collection, so you know it's going to be one of those movies people yawn through and then gush about, but I was still charmed by this epic-in-miniature about the fortunes of one ass, baptised Balthazar at the start of his life and led in and out of bondage the rest of it. There is cruelty in this film, but there is also love; death, but also life. There is a circus as well. And a glorious ending.

Our favourite donkeys talk too much. Balthazar brays every now and then. Stick with him one afternoon. Recommended.

Moviewatch: Shootout at Zzzz...

Rakhi Sawant has a great cameo in Shootout at Lokhandwala. That she is the lead-in to my bit on the movie should be revealing: this is a sprawling film that needed refinement, not as many B-grade stars as possible. While the trailer led me to expect a sort of Panic Room-with-terrorists, this two-hour excursion is more interested in a history of the Anti-Terror Squad, as headed ironically by Sanjay Dutt. Vivek Oberoi is Maya-aa, an underworld star on the ascendant in a competent Company-hackjob script. Shootout is at its best when it does the old kill-and-spill numbers; it is unwieldy when it tries to give its characters quirks; it is unbearable when Amitabh Bachchan is on the screen, and falls apart completely whenever a song is launched into. Diya Mirza's role needed more writing, Neha Dhupia's needed less, and Amrita Singh returns from her washed-out existence to give the ensemble appreciated street-cred.

Booked.Out: At Least It's Double-Spaced

I went through Mohsin Hamid's new thriller in three hours flat. Since I'm also incredibly slow, it may take you ten minutes.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist arrived last month with fanfare. The prose is clear and solid in this slim volume, and Hamid keeps things moving with breezy assurance. In that ancient 'Ancient Mariner' fashion, a man accosts a lone American in a Lahore cafe. So begins the monologue of Changez, led from Pakistan to New York in search of the Big Dream, and led back home after 9/11.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist seems to have crawled unwillingly late into the loop of news-tickers and op-ed pages. I wasn't refreshed by a new idea or argument. Changez's tone is ambiguously parodic at points, though the unveiling of the American is handled with Hitchcockian patience. Kiran Desai found the book 'relevant' [of course]. She seems to have forgotten her own assertion from a few months back, a dozen words more provocative than all of Hamid's novel. Memo to Mohsin: 'I think the date 9/11 has been given artificial emphasis in the West'. Read, reluctantly.

Aargh...

Is there such a thing as too much value for your money? At World's End, the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, felt just like that to me. It's three hours long, takes you all over the world, and features enough plot to make Iran-Contra look like simple math. Davy Jones? Calypso? The Flying Dutchman? The Chest? the Brethren Court? the Locker? the Green Flash? Does this thing come with a manual? I liked the ol'-reliable monkey, I liked Naomie Harris' mysterious sorceress [her only notes for the performance were probably 'talk weird'], but I remain one of the last few unconverted when it comes to LOVING the series. The humour has always been a little off for me [Keira Knightley especially has a hard time with the funnies], and this, the last in the trilogy [until it becomes the third in a quadrology], seems always to be jerking off to its own comic cool - i.e. Johnny Depp - and visual punch. I may not know how they did it, but not for one second did I believe that I was watching two ships blasting each other to bits while in a maelstrom.

It's Spiderman 1, Pirates 0.

Video Throwback: Weepy Willy

Never was there a voiceover more extraneous to a movie's emotional infrastructure than the one I was subjected to in The Pursuit of Happyness. Will Smith can act, Thandie Newton can act, and the movie would have remained articulate enough with some editing and without the superfluous commentary track ['This part of my life is called "Running"/"Happiness"/"Being Stupid"']. It's annoying to see a reasonably good movie undone by overkill [Cast Away, anybody?]. That said, there's a star on the rise in Jaden Christopher Syre Smith. And though long is the pursuit, the payoff made it worth the while. Recommended.

Moviewatch

This weekend brings us to the moment of truth. The Pieces are in Place. Hmmm...