My lunch talks and Shaurya!

Hold on guys...before you'll get an idea that this is a review of the movie, let me clear my stand here. I don't think that movie so much as deserves a mention...forget a review. When the epilogue was playing in the soothing, celebrity voice of SRK and he was asking the audience..”Shaurya Kya hain….?” we couldn’t help but ignore his well rehearsed answer and repeat each time “yeh movie dekhna!”. If anyone was proved Brave, Valiant etc. etc. after watching this one, it was the 3 of us at home in front of our TV set.

Its just a conversation I had with a friend that made me think after the movie was over (Finally!!! we breathed). You would ask who forced or referred me to see the film at the first place. No one. I like to see all good mainstream and offbeat movies that come along. That brings me to this conversation I was having with my Lunch buddy on the way back from a very satisfying Mexican meal yesterday, ending with my favorite dessert 'Flan'. Brrrr! drifting towards food talk isn't advisable. She is a very sweet, smart and intelligent mallu buddy and wasn't in touch with our bollywood world closely off late. When it comes to movies she is not the types who demarcates between South and North India. In fact she is from M.P. But I guess after coming to US a lot of people loose touch with Indian cinema. Some are just not as crazy like me and some start dividing time between good international films and prefer to keep away from the dozens of unfiltered movies gushing out of the spout of bollywood like there was no tomorrow. My heart goes out for the less adventurous viewers, as for me I want to watch everything. I am by nature a people's person in that I don't like to criticize much. Shaurya changed me...That’s one compliment.. see!

So she started asking me what was hot on the movie front these days and I told her what was most fresh in my head. "Shaurya"...I blurted..."I am going to watch it tonight. Should be 3 hours well spent". Just a while back at the lunch table at Acapulocos, with spicy salsa verde and nacho chips, we had got into a healthy argument about copying in bollywood, whether it be stories or music. Talking about copying scripts, the quickest movie I thought of in bollywood's defence was Sarkar, what with Sarkar Raaj so close to release. After RGV ke Sholay I can never find the courage to speak of RGV and good movies in the same breath, but he is human after all. So I told them that although a few people think Sarkar was based on some so called Orange flag fluttering local party leader, I beg to differ. It is very much an adaptaion of GodFather, Puzo's novel as well as the movie. And that’s the skill. To pick up a foreign work and be able to jell it in the Indian canvas as well as that. To give it the much needed Indian appeal. And I quite succeded in making a point. With that example you can't loose. My Mexican friend Zuselle was so pacified after that, she went on to tell us her experience watching "Munnabhai MBBS". It was real heart warming to hear it from her. And now, when I am supposed to head down in less than an hour to the cafeteria and my buddies are gonna ask me how Shaurya was, all I want to do is keep myself from breaking something at hands reach. You pick up a story as sensitive and well made as "A Few Good Men" and then do such a bad job on it...cummon...

We are tired of having to stand by our cinema with such irresposible work to justify. Starting from the script to the dialogues to the performances to direction...everything was bad. The music wasn't even the USP so I won’t go there. But how much they bragged about Minisha and Rahul! They are the two who killed the movie with their bad acting. And left me with a bunch of sincere cinema lovers and their questioning eyes. So to all film makers, “Do you even proof-see before releasing the movies to the world???” I had the same reaction after krazzy4 and now this one back to back in one week. I have started distrusting Atlee due to his forgiving nature about all movies and plays, especially when he praised Mithya and many other recent duds. But I feel somewhere, we are all giving up on expecting good films because of such releases and why should he be any different. I had my favourite Thai soup for dinner and I am reading Shantaram these days...the only reason it wasn't too difficult to sleep with a pleasant feeling...:)