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Reviews
Gol Maal (1979)
Good, clean fun
This is one of my favorite Hindi comedies of all time, as it is completely family friendly, has some genuinely hilarious moments and adheres to a subtlety in comedy which seems lost in the gyrating Govinda era of Hindi comedies.
This is one of the few movies one can watch with the entire family and everyone, from the oldest to the youngest member, will enjoy it.
A comedy of errors, our story begins with young CA grad Ram Prakash Sharma who is looking for modest employment. Enter his uncle, who advises him on how to behave to gain a position at the uncle's childhood friend, Bhawani Shankar's, company. Unfortunately, Bhawani Shankar is a man of strict tastes and fancies all young men of the time to be lazy and far too preoccupied with time-wasting activities such as sports, music and parties. Ram Prakash presents himself (according to the tutelage of his uncle) as the quintessential, too-good-to-be-true young man with no time for leisure and frivolities and all the time in the world for work and the serious things in life. Unfortunately, Ram Prakash's true self cannot be suppressed and he schemes to get out of work to watch a hockey match. Unluckiloy for him, Bhawani Shankar happens to see him at said match and confronts him, because of which Ram Prasad is forced to invent a twin, Laxman aka Lucky who is the very epitome of the sort of young man Bhawani Shankar detests. Things get further complicated when Ram Prasad is forced to invent a mother, having told Bhawani Shankar that she is still alive and ill as an excuse to go to the hockey match. What ensues due to the confusion is a tangled web of good old fashioned mix-ups and lies to keep the whole thing from falling in around Ram Prasad's ears.
I would definitely recommend the movie to anyone who enjoys an interesting, non Givinda-esquire comedy, and of course, anyone who enjoys music as this movie has the very well known and loved Kishore Kumar number, "Aane Wala Pal".
Serenity (2005)
Thumbs Up from a Firefly Virgin
Being a complete Firefly virgin, as they tend to say, I wasn't sure if I would be able to follow the movie, nor get what the significance of certain bits was, as a Firefly fan would. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I found that the story is fairly simple, the characters are interesting enough to get you to pay attention to them enough to be able to tell what they are about and yet still be pleasantly surprised in the end. Being a fan of Joss Whedon's work, I was not at all disappointed since his trademark banter is interwoven throughout the movie. A fan of Sci-Fi? I would definitely recommend you watch this movie. A fan of good movies in general? Another definite recommend.
Ek Hasina Thi (2004)
Not as original as most think
I heard a lot of good things about this movie, so unlike most Indian movies, I went out to rent it to see for myself. I was disappointed. Not in the performance of Saif Ali Khan, nor Urmila, but Varma, for once again proving that any good Bollywood movie must be 'inspired' from somewhere or another. Original storylines are somewhat of an urban legend in Bollywood. Everyone swears they exits, but in reality, they just don't.
The entire sequence with the double crossing lawyer, supposedly 'in our pocket' judge, betrayal from the man the protagonist thinks she loves, right down to the antagonistic dyke and the protective opponent of the evil dyke with connections of her own outside the prison as well, it's all taken from a book called Tomorrow Never Comes by Sidney Sheldon.
Of ocurse, the book doesn't end on the revenge plot, it goes on to show the female lead makes use of the cunning she never thought she had to entrap all the men who used her and threw her into jail, and then realise she can never fit into normal society and a regular nine to five job again, mostly because of her police record. She then goes on to become the mastermind behind some brilliant schemes to con the undeserving rich out of some of their wealth and meets a fellow con artist along the way.
The only reason I write this now is because one of the other people who gave their comments on this movie said something about how this movie seemed to be a lift from other movies but due to a lack of concrete evidence, he/she would give it the benefit of doubt.