Tag Archives: Kajal Agarwal

Saroja

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Saroja is a fairly standard thriller with a decent dose of dramatic tension thanks to some very good performances and loads of visual flair. I ordered the Tamil DVD but was sent the Telugu dub, which apart from the obvious difference also cast Srihari instead of Jayaram in a pivotal role. I quite like Srihari as an actor, and as I speak neither language subtitles are subtitles, so I was happy enough. I’ll be referring to characters by their names in the Telugu version.

Prakash Raj is Viswanatham, a successful Hyderabadi businessman. He is a self centred man, in an uneasy marriage and not giving his teenage daughter Saroja as much attention as he gives his breakfast.

That is until Saroja (Vega), is kidnapped. It’s one of my favourite Prakash Raj performances as he conveys fear, despair and regrets with only a scant amount of dialogue. His reactions and expressions are just perfect. There is a scene where he and his wife are watching home movies of Saroja. They can’t look at each other as they have an intimate conversation that is realistically awkward and painful.

The depth of characterisation established so simply helped me care about what happened to Saroja since it meant so much to her father.

Saroja gets an intro song about girl power and the evils of alcohol, which she delivers after sneaking out of her window to get to the gig. She is largely absent until late in the film as the drama is centred on the police operation to find her, but her character is established as resourceful and independent.

Srihari is Viswa’s friend Ravi, a charismatic policeman who takes on this very personal case. Srihari running isn’t exactly a greyhound so the chase scenes had me worried, but he is an authority figure and pillar of strength. Ravi orchestrates the police activity to recover Saroja and is on hand to witness the devastating effect the kidnapping has on his friend. There is a bit more complexity to his role than just a standard crusading cop though and Srihari and Prakash Raj share some excellent eye to eye moments. I don’t really buy his excuse for something he does, but it wasn’t a big deal overall.

There is a second storyline that will collide with the straightforward police procedural. It centres on a group of friends, totally unrelated to Viswanatham and his concerns.

Vaibhav is Rama Swamy.  The girl he loves (Kajal Aggarwal in a brief appearance) gets engaged to his friend Ajay. He is trying to make the best of his lot and comes across as a moody but not unpleasant guy. Ajay (Shiva) is a soap actor who thinks he is a little more special than he is, and tries to get by on what he considers to be charm. He gets some of the better intentionally funny lines as he cites his TV serial commitments as a reason for avoiding anything he doesn’t want to do. Rama’s older brother Renga Swamy (SP Charan) is the average guy – happy, married with a daughter, middle class, comfortably podgy. Premji Amaren (brother of the director) is the comic relief, Ganesh, and almost every time he opened his mouth I wanted to kill him. To be fair, his straight dramatic scenes were good and a few of the jokes were funny.  Every time he saw a pretty girl, badly dressed angels would cavort around her, and the angels got grumpier as they had to keep reappearing for different girls.

But the comedy track mostly involved Ganesh acting stupid and grimacing wildly. If you find a man screaming his lungs out at the sight of a rat, or telling everyone loudly why he has to be quiet, funny maybe you’ll like him more than I do.

The boys set out on a roadtrip from Chennai to Hyderabad to go to a one day match. After driving for a few hours, including about 257 snack and pee breaks as well as a run in with Brahmi, they are delayed by a major road accident and decide to take an alternate route.

The storylines intersect when the guys take a wrong turn in the dark and end up in a spooky factory complex occupied by the imposing Sampath (Sampath Raj) and his gang, who have Saroja captive. The adrenalin rises from this point until the film’s conclusion as the boys try and extricate themselves from their perilous situation and accidentally seem to be rescuing the girl. There is always time for a dance break though! Kalyani (Nikitha) and Sampath entertain the troops and I have to say seeing all the bad guys in a dance number was a lot of fun.

The ‘heroes’ and the baddies are ordinary guys and the fights and chases are consistent with that. There are no amazing flying leaps and stunts, but there is a strong feeling of the fear and effort in those scenes which is amplified by the lighting and composition of the shots and Saravanan’s cinematography is impressive. Even when things got less believable, the characters remained true to themselves and didn’t develop superpowers. There is some question in my mind as to how well these guys could navigate an unfamiliar place in the dead of night, but whatever. I thought Vega was convincing and in most scenes looked like a school girl. There were signs of a romantic attraction between her and Ram that I thought was a bit not right in view of their character ages. It’s just a fleeting thing but was it necessary for it to be there at all?

The Yuvan Shankar Raja (Venkat Prabhu’s cousin – what a family) soundtrack is good and the range of musical styles supports the full span of the drama. While the songs are well placed in the story, I’m not sure all the picturisations were necessary. The montages sometimes caused a break from the overall mood as they were even more stylised than the rest of the film. The direction relies on gimmicks but that visual interest and excitement helped to give a standard plot a bit of freshness. The story doesn’t completely rely on the visuals so I didn’t feel it was too glossy for its own good. The performances, especially Prakash Raj’s, are compelling on their own.

It’s a film where the outcomes probably won’t surprise anyone, but the way those things happen might. If you want a modern looking comedy/drama/thriller that’s not too heavy on gore and showcases some good character actors, give this a go.  4 stars!

Heather says: Saroja has all the right ingredients to make a good film with an interesting story, excellent cast lineup and snappy dialogue. But it suffers a little from a very long set up with perhaps too much detail in some scenes and not enough in others. There are also a few scenes where the action takes place in poorly lit sets and I found it very hard to tell what was going on. However, once past the slow beginning, it’s a very enjoyable watch as it blends comedy with action and drama in a way that is rare in Tamil cinema. I do like the way the action is preceded with a date and time stamp in the opening sequences as it gives the feel of an American cop show and plants the idea that time is important. Although perhaps this isn’t followed up quite as well in later scenes. The introductions to the various characters are generally good, but I would have preferred director Venkat Prabhu to spend a little more time with Saroja’s family. It is clear that Viswanathan is caught up in his work and doesn’t have time for his daughter, but I think a little more information about the family dynamic would have made their characters more sympathetic. It took more time to get a feel for Saroja and her father as a result, although this may very well have been intentional, as we learn about the family as the film goes on, just as the four friends do.

The interaction between the friends is well done, and feels very realistic. Perhaps it’s not quite as realistic though that they remain undiscovered sneaking around the bad guys’ lair with all of their arguing and long conversations. But the comedy in these was good and the story was well played out in these scenes. The action sequences, at least those that are visible, are also well choreographed and there are some really good ideas in the execution of the various fight sequences.

I liked the twist at the end which I did not see coming at all, although I thought the justification by the villain was rather weak. In it for the money alone might have worked better, but it was still a good ending. I also enjoyed the comedy with Ganesh seeing angels appearing around pretty girls. All of the four characters worked well for me as they each had some endearing character traits and some really off-putting ones – just like in real life. They seemed like much more normal guys than typical filmi heroes which makes the film more interesting to watch.

This is the first of Venkat Prabhu’s films I’ve seen and it’s inspired me to find his others. I’d say skip over a lot of the set-up and then sit back to enjoy a really good action comedy. 3 ½  stars.

Dhada

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It seems to have been a very long time since the last Telugu film release here in Melbourne, so we were quite delighted to hear that Dhada was showing this weekend. Despite the negative reports, we headed in to the city for another ‘adventure without subtitles’.

The film opens with a parkour chase sequence across, over, around, through and between various buildings, bridges and major highways. It’s very well done with great cinematography and editing, and is an excellent introduction to Vishwa (Naga Chaitanya). He’s just graduating from college in some unspecified city which we think might be supposed to be in the USA, or possibly Russia. It’s hard to tell from the accents of the English speaking cast who seem to be mainly of Eastern European origin but since the cops are wearing US style cardboard badges and US flags we’re going to go with the States.

Vishwa lives with his elder brother Rajiv and Rajiv’s wife Preethi.  He fancies himself as a modern day hero, and cannot help rescuing a tearful girl running from a pack of thugs. In the course of the rescue he manages to set free another 99 girls who were rather conveniently loaded in trucks in the same car park. This doesn’t endear him to local mafia don RD (a wonderfully over the top Rahul Dev), who was just about to close a deal selling the girls (all 100 medically certified virgins) on to white slaver Kelly Dorjee (almost his equal in the over the top evil stakes).

Around the same time Vishwa has spotted, and instantly fallen in love with, Ria the daughter of a millionaire (Mukesh Rishi) who doesn’t have any time for her. She spends her days on a chaise longue in the wine cellar surrounded by bad polystyrene replicas of classical sculpture, either watching old 8mm film of herself and her mother or developing pictures she has taken of parents and their children, and generally feeling sorry for herself. The mother was played by the excellent Satya Krishnan and it was such a shame she only had a tiny role.

Vishwa has a classy idea of a date which involves taking Ria out on the back of a motorbike, stealing a bottle of wine along the way (drinking and driving and no helmets– tsk tsk!), to a a bare knuckle fight (which judging by the spectators’ apparel seems to occur some time in the early part of last century) and finally to a club based in a ship. Strangely they seem to travel back in time again when a bunch of 1930’s styled shoe shine boys arrive aboard the Titanic styled set to join in the song and dance number, the seriously catchy ‘Telugu Bengali English Marathi’. It was an odd blend, especially with the random and bored looking audience including one beaming Sikh guy. Vishwa and Ria do lots of flirting before he drops her back to her dull party, and her fiancé, two minutes before her stated deadline. Ah yes – the fly in the ointment is that Ria’s father has promised her to Amit, a local businessman with a commitment to shimmery suits, who isn’t impressed at all with Vishwa.

There are more chases and excellent fight scenes as RD’s younger brother closes in on Vishwa seeking revenge for their lost millions in the white slave trade. There is the obligatory twist in the tale as Rajiv reveals his entanglement in the mafia web. There is an excellent flashback scene to the two boys growing up, and we learn that Vishwa has always protected his big brother, sometimes in spectacular fashion.  Ria becomes a hostage and Kajal was good at being unconscious. It’s all up to Vishwa to save the day – can you ever doubt that he will? Would a man lacking self confidence wear so much pink?

The film looks fantastic and the direction is confident and visually accomplished. The styling is good and both Chaitanya and Kajal look the part. Except one of the hairdressers seems to have a grudge against Kajal and gave her an absolutely terrible fringe. In fact, we suspect we have seen that wig before, when it appeared as The Wig in Shakti. She looks much better in her emo rock-chick look, or Aishwarya Rai wannabe avatar, although losing the blue contacts would have been even better. Vishwa’s fantasy versions of Ria in one song also included Foreman Ria (in hard hat and high-vis overalls), Police Ria and Skanky Carwash Ria so her wardrobe team were kept busy. Chaitanya has a wonderful collection of slightly sparkling superhero and James Bond T-shirts which we were delighted to see he felt were entirely appropriate for day wear.

Chaitanya has developed as an actor, and it’s obvious he has worked hard and really improved his dancing. He handled the demanding action sequences well, and the multiple camera angles and slo-mo replays meant he had to deliver in those scenes or they wouldn’t have worked at all. He does look rather embarrassed by a few of his outfits, but by the time we get to the lilac satin band-leader costume he seems to have become resigned to his fate. The lurid checked lunghi in the final song doesn’t faze him at all but he seems to suffer from Thrust Reluctance.

He’s also committed to the wet look throughout the film, indulging in a number of activities guaranteed to keep him slightly soggy.

Rahul Dev is excellent as the evil RD and his execution of a rival involving a prosthetic leg was rather special. Although Kelly Dorjee doesn’t turn up quite as often he makes up for it by some inspired sneering behind his ever present sunglasses.

But that’s all the good stuff.  The story is weak and the white slave trade link pathetic. The comedy with Brahmi, Ali and various others all falls very flat and mainly involves racist and sexist jokes. It’s all unnecessary and not even remotely funny. Venu Madhav is mildly amusing but totally unnecessary as is MS Narayana. The pace of the first half is too slow as time is spent on laborious set-ups and establishing characters who lacked substance or who disappeared. There were silly errors; in the Super 8 film of baby Ria and her mother, there is someone in shot using a digital video camera. And don’t get us started on Hair Continuity – it was all over the place (literally).

Chaitanya is more amusing in some lighter moments than any of the ‘comedians’ and those scenes suited the masala action style of the film much better. Dhada is style over substance. But it’s worth a watch for the well executed fight scenes and nicely picturised songs from a reasonably appealing soundtrack. Not a great film, but not a terrible one. And if you take nothing else away from Dhada, the phrase ‘Smoking is injurious to health’ became even more ominous.

Mr Perfect

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There really is only word to describe Mr Perfect, and that is boring. That’s not just because we couldn’t understand much of the dialogue either, there was just nothing at all to keep our interest in this very predictable and slow-moving romance.

Mr Perfect starts in Sydney with Prabhas as Vicky, a computer game developer who has dreams of running his own company with his friends. Straight away there is a rather inexplicable fight in a pool with some Europeans – French? Or possibly Belgian? They certainly sounded more like Inspector Clouseau than any Australians we know. After some rather impressive ‘Man from Atlantis’ impressions by Prabhas and his jet-propelled feet the action moves on to various parts of Sydney. He and his friends spend a lot of time hanging around various landmarks but never really doing any of the work that is supposedly their dream. He goes back to India for his sister’s wedding, and meets Priya  (Kajal Aggarwal), a childhood companion. A flashback introduces the idea that Vicky needs to learn the art of compromise and explains to some extent the animosity between the two.

Over time Priya’s likeable personality wins Vicky over but he decides that he can’t possibly remove Priya from her family or her obviously happy life in India, and he won’t leave his life of aimless wandering around Sydney. Vicky keeps insisting that he will not compromise, but we don’t know what sparks these speeches as really people are only asking him to have some manners and be considerate which is hardly the end of the world. He’s such a grumpy, argumentative man who falls into fights for no reason whatsoever.  There is some attempt at comedy involving Brahmi as an uncle who is trying to get rid of Vicky, and also some funnier moments involving Master Bharath but none of it works very well. There are some good points though.  This part of the film in India was beautifully shot and there were some lovely moments with Priya and her family. The teasing and banter between Priya and Vicky is also amusing, even without understanding the dialogue, and Prabhas and Kajal have excellent chemistry.

Vicky heads back to Sydney and through the wonders of product placement meets Maggie who is his ideal partner – or so he thinks. Her family disapprove of Vicky, mainly due to his brattish and immature habit of arguing with everyone senior to him. It really made us wonder how he would ever manage to run a business successfully! There were more Europeans in Sydney – this time Dutch we think – and a stylist who really didn’t like Taapsee. This is one of the better outfits as sadly we can’t find any of the really terrible ones.

After more confrontations and more inexplicable, although very nicely choreographed fights (thanks to Peter Hein) Maggie’s father challenges Vicky in order to win his support for their marriage. At a wedding somewhere that wasn’t Sydney or India, but may possibly have been Malaysia both Maggie and Priya are present and Vicky has to decide between the two. And really that was it – most of which could have been condensed into an hour and saved us from the never-ending drama of the second half.

A word on Prabhas’ styling in the film – which was really quite terrible. But not terrible enough to be interesting. Dressed in far too many designer T’s, which looked to have come straight from the street markets of Bangkok, worn over the top of plaid shirts, this really was not the best look for him at all. He looked awkward and overdressed in the various layers especially when seen next to Kajal who looked beautiful in some lovely saris.

Overall, the whole story was predictable with far too many contrived ‘chance’ meetings and co-incidences. Prabhas character was essentially unlikable and had no convincing relationship with his family. In fact the scenes with his father (Nassar) and mother in Australia were much more reminiscent of a live-in boarder rather than an only son. At least in ‘Orange’ the hero’s decision never to compromise and to live life on his own terms blah blah blah was given a context so while you might not empathise with him, there was at least a reason. Here there was nothing – just a lot of attitude. The interactions with his friends were a little more convincing but only just. There was never any sense that he was ever going to achieve his dream of owning a company and none of them seemed to actually do anything like work.  It’s such a pity as we both like Prabhas and were so disappointed in this lacklustre venture.

Kajal was lovely as Priya but seemed to fall for Vicky just a little too quickly. Initially she seemed to be a strong character with plenty of determination and confidence but lost her backbone when she fell in love. However her character was reasonably well developed and she delivered a good performance in her role. Taapsee’s character was less interesting and suffered from some very unfortunate choices in the wardrobe department. Prakash Raj and K. Vishwanath play their usual type of role as do many of the other uncles, aunts and family members and it’s nothing we haven’t seen many times before. And that really is the problem here – there is nothing new and the story isn’t interesting enough by itself. The comedy didn’t fit and in general just wasn’t funny. The fights were technically impressive but added nothing to the drama and didn’t serve to progress the story. It felt as though they were just added because they are more or less obligatory and people would want to see Prabhas in action.The songs were much better and mainly were well picturised although the placement was rather clumsy. We tried to look for good points but even the pictures on the walls and the furniture failed to inspire!  Less a Mr Perfect and more a Mr Ordinary.