Mere Brother Ki Dulhan Movie Review

Mere Brother Ki Dulhan is full on masti. Rocking-shocking, gaane-shaane, full time pass and paisa wasool. Like a roller coaster It starts very high on fun and the ride after that just keeps on getting better and better till the end. The comedy is very cool and not at all cheap (so obviously those audience who love Salman Khan comedy will be very disappointed). The locations are very dynamic and varies from Agra’s Taj Mahal to Delhi’s Chawari Bazaar including valleys of Dehradun and a bird’s eye view of London. Very hard work has been done by both the cast as well as the crew.

I would like to pinpoint the following highlights:
1. Sound Department - An awesome job has been done by this department. If the movie is a cake then they are the cherry. Their work is noticeable in all the fields, be it Sound Mixing, Background Score or Original Songs. All the songs of the movie, be it Rock (Dhunki), Pop (Mere Brother Ki Dulhan) or Qawali (Isq Risk), are very catchy. I have been watching movies in this theater since it was built two years ago and only today I found out that it has got speakers on ceiling too, as in one scene a single voice comes directly from above your head. Such was the precision of sound in this movie. All heads turned up at once, amazing.
2. Cinematography - Sudeep Chatterjee has done a great job in capturing as much as his camera can hold. He has made the scenes look so vibrant that they speak for themselves. Shooting the moving objects is the most difficult task and he has done that on numerous occasions (Mere Brother Ki Dulhan song on moving train, Dhunki song on moving lorry and jeeps etc.) in this movie, that too with outstanding results.
3. Performances - Imran Khan’s performance is as usual, which is to say damn good. Katrina Kaif has also done a good job, although I personally think that Priyanka Chopra must have done a better job here. I am saying nothing against Katrina here. I myself like Katrina’s performances a lot and she did everything she could have done. It was just a requirement mismatch on side of the casting director. More like fitting a square for a circle. The rest of the cast have also done a good job. No one is out of line under the direction of Ali Abbas Zafar.

The lowlights (although there are not many):
1. Story - The story line is no doubt an obvious low. It is a traditional Yash Raj wedding special story line used in many movies (Band Baaja Baraat, Neal ‘n’ Nikki, Dilwaale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge etc.). Hero meets heroine in the first half, spends time with her, does not realize that he is in love until it is too late and she is getting married to someone else. In second half he confronts her, accepts his love for her, tries to marry her and succeeds in the end. Very typical.
2. Choreography - Although it is not bad at all, but Bosco and Ceaser have not nearly lived up to the standards set by Vaibhavi Merchant in Band Baaja Baraat.

Overall it is a very cool movie which can be viewed age independently. If you enjoy light hearted romance-comedy, then you are bound to enjoy more than you spent. A one time watch for sure, but if someone will ask me to watch it again, I will be more than happy to oblige. Hence, I rate it as follows:

Entertainment rating: 3.5
Critic’s rating: 2.5

That Girl In Yellow Boots Movie Review

That Girl In Yellow Boots is an unimpressive drama movie about the struggles of a British-Indian teenage girl, "Ruth" (Kalki Koechlin), searching for her Indian father in Mumbai who left her when she was 5. She does not have any pictures of him and does not even know how he looks. The movie starts with Ruth reading a letter by her father, expressing her love and desire for her, signed as "Arjun Patel". The story immediately moves to her struggle in a government office, to renew her visa. This struggle includes long queues, bribery and occasional flirting by officers (nothing new, everybody know this). Another struggle is her struggle for money. For this she did little sexual favors to her clients at her job at a massage parlor (nothing surprising here either, a very typical and widely used concept). Her third struggle was her boyfriend, who was a drug addict, a criminal and very demanding and non-understaning kinda guy (no innovation here either. In fact, if you remeber Abhay Deol of "Dev D", then you feel like it's just copy + paste done by Anurag Kashyap).

Anyways, then there were a few other people put in the movie just to enhace her struggles, like:
1. British consulate guy: He asked her to get her a contract by doing sexual favors to some of his business partners, in return of information about her father.
2. A gangster: He asked her to do sexual favors to him, in return of her boyfriend's debt to him.
3. Some government officer: He continuously increased the amount of money he used to charge her, finally asking for a sexual favor, in return of keeping his mouth shut to the visa office, concealing that she is working on a tourist visa (without a work permit).
4. Post Master: Who took money, in return of information about her father.

The movie after moving at a very steady pace reaches a climax at the very end, when Ruth finds out who her father is. Why her mother kicked him out of her life. Why he wrote the letter to call her to India etc., but by this time this seems like some secondary part of the story and not the primary objective of the story. Although, I would like to give credit for picking up a father who is an active member of the story and the revelation does come as a liitle bit of a surprise. Now, the ending again is a copy of "Dhobi Ghat" movie's ending. Disappointing.

Things to keep your eyes open for:
1. Kalki Koechlin's performance: The movie starts with her and ends with her, with hardly 2 or 3 scenes without her presence, as described by the line "Kalki Koechlin in and as The Girl In The Yellow Boots". This is her biggest part till date and she has done it justifiably well.
2. Cinematography: A good job has been done in this department, even if we are always in a tight space, be it Kalki's home or workplace. There is this one scene which is repeated 2 or 3 times, in which Kalki is smoking in the balcony of her workplace and just looking at the Mumbai traffic and people moving on the road below.
3. Sound Mixing: This has been quite noticable at a few places, e.g. there is a scene in which two telephonic conversations are merged and the effect has been quite good.

Things to ignore:
1. Background Score: The score was was missing at most of the places where it was needed and could have made a nice effect.
2.Editing: The editing was missing. The only noticable editing was between the very first and second scenes of the movie. With all these stories and characters, a hard work in this department could have given a very nice touch to the movie.
3. Direction: It could have been a great movie, but direction certainly let it down, or I should rather say "the lack of direction". It seemed like everyone was given free reign, well, in case of Kalki that was an advantage, but a director has to do a lot more than just managing the performances. There was no crafting done in the story, it was very crude, despite a few jokes forcefully added in the beginning to bind the audience. Monitoring was not done regarding the pace of the movie, it was flat and dropping till the climax.

Overall not an appreciable effort by anyone except Kalki and Rajeev Ravi (cinematographer). Hence, I rate it as follows:
Entertainment rating: 2.5
Critic's rating: 3