It’s (not) all in the name
If you think you’ve figured out the content of the movie “Kumva Karan” by its name or its trailer, you might want to leave your assumptions at home, for you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Directed by Dipak Oli, Kumva Karan is not an all-out comedy. It sure is based in the comedy genre but the thrilling, suspenseful twists and the shocking ending will keep you entertained throughout, despite all its glitches and flaws. It’s a Nepali movie—for Satya Harishchandra’s sake! We can sure be a little forgiving. The name Kumva Karan does not allude to the mythical sleepyhead demon from Ramayana, unlike what we’d assume. Instead, the name is a tell-tale of the movie’s plot, cleverly revealed in the second half. The whole film is done smartly, actually. Sans expensively shot item numbers and massive production cost, Kumva Karan relies on its plot, screenplay and star cast to keep the audience hooked to their seats for the 1.47-hour runtime.
The film centers around three Karans—Karandeep Ghimire (Bhola Raj Sapkota), Karan Prasad Upadhyaya (Gaurav Pahari), and Karan Bahadur Chhetri (Abhay Baral)—respectively the head master, Nepali teacher and a peon of a community school in Pyuthan. Their otherwise passive nature is given a masculine jolt by the entry of Sapana madam (Nisha Adhikari), the English teacher who they all fall for heads over heels.
They compete for her attention, healthily and unhealthily, and the first half is all about their antics to win her affection. Then, what follows changes the narrative entirely. (As we don’t know any other reviewer who’s spilled all the beans on a review and lived to work another day, we’ll leave it at that.)
Coming to the performances, the troika of Karans fit right into their characters and are pleasant to watch. Well, it’s always good to see a Nepali comedy where the actors don’t scream their lungs out to make you laugh. Comedy can be subtle, like it is in Kumva Karan. Bhola Raj, who shot to fame with his significant appearance in the Bollywood hit ‘Barfi’ (2012), puts in a par performance as a wannabe strict headmaster, who actually ends up looking comical and cute. Gaurav as the shy, spectacled Nepali teacher also justifies his character.
Only if the dialogues were better! Forgiving as much as we want to be, we do need to address the elephant in the room
The one person whose name has cruelly been left out from the trailer and promotions wins the man-of-the-match though. While Bhola Raj and Gaurav manage to score what they’re expected to, Abhay Baral as the obnoxious yet lovable peon is like the tail-ender who scores a blazing 17-ball half century to take his team home. His comic timings are impeccable and he manages to grab all the attention onscreen with both his physical performance and dialogue delivery.
If only the dialogues were better! Forgiving as much as we want to be, we do need to address the elephant in the room. The dialogues undercut the possibility of this being a brilliant movie. All the emotions in the film are basically visible, thanks to the actors, and had the dialogues given to them been any better, the characters would certainly appear stronger. Imagine a Gabbar Singh without Salim-Javed’s prolific prose-work. Jason Kunwar’s background score manages to save some grace during the pivotal scenes though and the aural needs of emoting are somewhat fulfilled.
Who should watch it?
If you can excuse some typical glitches of our Kollywood productions, you might actually like the film. It’s definitely worth the time and movie tickets. A little humor and a rather simplistic thriller is also good when the weather is bad and you have nothing else to do.
Movie: Kumva Karan
Genre: Comedy/Thriller
Cast: Nisha Adhikari, Pramod Agrahari, Gaurav Pahari, Bholaraj Sapkota, Abhay Baral, Kuldip Adhikari
Direction: Dipak Oli
Rating: 2.5/5
Dark and delicious
Every once in a while you come across a book that just blows your mind away. ‘Revenge’, a collection of 11 short stories, by Yoko Ogawa is one such volume. Ogawa has you trapped in her web of dark tales and you wish to relive the experience over and over again. You enter Ogawa’s dark and delicious world with a woman going into a local bakery to buy strawberry shortcake for her son. In the course of the conversation, she tells another woman she has only just met at the otherwise empty bakery that “today is his birthday.” When asked how old he is, the woman replies, “Six. He’ll always be six. He’s dead,” before going on to explain the bizarre events following his death.
All the stories in this collection begin innocuously enough. Two girls work in the laundry at a hospital washing lab coats. A man on the way to his stepmother’s funeral is waylaid when his train gets stuck in the snow. Each premise is ordinary but as the stories progress they take horrifying turns. They are all about death, abruptly ending relationships, and, of course, about revenge. Individually, the stories don’t add up to much. If you choose a random story and read that, you are likely to be disappointed. But it’s a powerful, albeit at times jarring, anthology when you read the stories consecutively from beginning to end. There are some stories like “Old Mrs. J” and “Lab Coats” that can be read as self-contained pieces but most stories have a link to the next in the anthology.
The charm of the stories, however, lies in how unpredictable they are. It’s spooky and fun at the same time. You get goose bumps when you suddenly realize what has just happened. And the blows are always sucker punch—you never see them coming. Translator Stephen Snyder compared Ogawa’s work to Murakami’s, going as far as to call her “the next Haruki Murakami” and some reviewers have even cited the influence of Edgar Allan Poe and Jorge Luis Borges. Deftly constructed and skillfully written, Ogawa’s stories will leave you feeling a bit unsettled but also wanting to read everything else she has ever written.
Book: Revenge
Genre: Fiction
Author: Yoko Ogawa
Published: January 29, 2013
Publisher: Picador
Language: Translated in English by Stephen Snyder
Pages: 176, Paperback
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About the author
Yoko Ogawa has published over 20 books, short story collections, novels, and works of non-fiction. She has won five prestigious literary awards in Japan. In 2008, she was awarded the Shirley Jackson Award for “The Diving Pool”. Four of her books have been translated into English. |
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Light-hearted family fantasy
‘Aladdin’ is a live-action musical fantasy adaptation of the popular 1992 Disney production of the same name. The film follows Aladdin (Mena Massoud), a street urchin, as he falls in love with Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott), befriends a wish-granting Genie (Will Smith), and must save the kingdom from the conspiring Jafar (Marwan Kenzari).
When the first pictures of the movie were released back in December, it received a mountain of criticism for the film’s portrayal of Genie, as the character was labelled “too humanoid”, resulting in upset fans. Then they released the trailer in March. The trailer got the fans a little less upset than they were back in December. And now, in May, with the movie out, many fans, including this reviewer, have found themselves wronged for judging the movie so quick.
Aladdin, as much as it was a fantastic cinematic experience, was also a major reminiscence of my childhood. From jumping through roofs on Agrabah in the 1993 video game ‘Aladdin’ in its compact 2D gameplay to rubbing puja lamps hoping to find a genie as a child, the movie brought back many elements of my childhood.
The opening ‘Arabian Nights’ sequence gave me massive goosebumps for two straight minutes. It was dealt beautifully, conserving the mystery, horror and scale from the original.
You know what was better than the opening sequence? The acting. Don’t get me started on that. Will Smith is funny, and will keep the tone light-hearted right through with his wit and humor. While his portrayal doesn’t compare to Robin Williams’ in the original, it is unfair to criticize Smith for trying things a little differently.
Fans were skeptical about Mena Massoud as Aladdin but he’s proved everyone wrong with his phenomenal performance. Starting with his perfect chemistry with the beautiful Naomi Scott, everything feels smooth. Scott looks gorgeous as a middle-eastern princess and delivers a strong performance as the strong-minded patriarchy-breaking Princess Jasmine. They couldn’t have put together a better Aladdin-Jasmine duo. Marwan Kenzari as the antagonist Jafar is also fantastic, radiating a cunning dark persona with every dialogue.
The problems with the movie are few but important. First, the set feels superbly small. The characters revolve around the same places and the audience is treated with the monotony of the same building over and over again. Disney should have had no problem shelling out enough budget to accommodate more exploration within the city of Agrabah. Second, the CGI does not do justice for a Disney movie. At times, visual effects feel bland—a major flaw for a fantasy movie like Aladdin.
Third, the ‘musical’ part of the movie fails where the original delivered big-time. Most of the musicals feel ill-timed and forgettable. ‘Speechless’ will probably be the only song from the movie I’ll remember.
Even with its downsides, Aladdin is still an amazing movie you will enjoy watching. The only way it will disappoint you is if you’re a purist and want everything recreated exactly like the original. Take your kids, or/and your kid-self and sit back for 2h 8m of pure Arabian magic.
Who should watch it?
The kids will absolutely love it. So will the fans of Will Smith. Visual effects and some songs are disappointing. But, overall, a fun film for the whole family.
Movie: Aladdin
Genre: Fantasy
Csst: Will Smith, Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott, Marwan Kenzari, Navid Negahban
Direction: Guy Ritchie
Trying a little too hard
Bipin Karki is a good actor, no doubt. The roles he picks remind this reviewer of Nawazuddin Siddique, that versatile Bollywood actor who nails nearly everything he does. Yet there is also a definite difference between the two. Siddique is so good because everything he does feels effortless, as if there is no difference between the actor and the persona he portrays. But rather than relying on his natural talent to impress the audience, Karki sometimes pushes it too far. This is amply manifest in ‘Jatrai Jatra’, the sequel to the highly-successful 2016 heist comedy ‘Jatra’. For some reason, in the second edition, Director Pradeep Bhattarai saw it fit to make Karki’s character of Phadindra Timilsina repeatedly cry. Not just cry. He cries and drools and spits and speaks, all at the same time. The spittle-flecked scenes are obnoxious, made worse because you can barely make out what Timilsina, with his weird accent, is saying. It is sad that when you come out of the theater this is what you remember, rather than Timilsina’s otherwise great acting, amply supported by his two partners-in-crime —Jayas (Rabindra Singh Baniya) and Munna (Rabindra Jha)—in what is a twisted gold heist.
The movie starts with the release of these three ‘criminals’ jailed for stealing Rs 3 million. They have no intent of going back to a life of crime after their release. But as luck would have it, Timilsina, a taxi driver, in another freak incidence, finds himself in possession of 10kg of gold. The plot revolves around how the three try to safeguard their chance wealth and how the real owners of the gold, a gang of hardened criminals, is intent on getting it back. Oh, and in this gang is Don (Dayahang Rai), who belts out another low-key but masterful performance.
Barsha Raut in her role as Timilsina’s estranged wife is effective too, even if she can be a little hard to understand: at one point she is a moralizing wife trying to convince her husband not to take the ‘wrong path’ again, in the other she is an active partner in the gold heist.
Packed with such good actors, some situational comedy scenes are hilarious. But overall, the film disappoints: it is too loud, and trite, and emotional in all the wrong places. Someone who has recently watched Hari Bansha Acharya-starrer ‘Dal Bhat Tarkari’ and was put off by Acharya’s puerile acting and Niruta Singh’s constant shouting will find similar jarring echoes in ‘Jatrai Jatra’. And there is far too much grime and shit and dirty toilets on display, which, again, are a big put-off for the audiences savoring their popcorn and nachos.
Not that it is a bad movie. There is suspense, drama, comedy, some nice dance numbers too. Yet given the anticipation it had generated, Jatrai Jatra disappoints. If you have nothing better to do in the weekend, you may still want to watch it. But keep your expectations low.
Who should watch it?
Die-hard Bipin Adhikari and Dayahang Rai fans should have enough to keep them hooked for 2h17m of runtime. If you have the stomach to ignore all the (literal) filth on display, the other bits of the package are—how do we put it?—digestible.
Movie: Jatrai jatra
Genre: Heist Comedy
Cast: Bipin Karki, Dayahang Rai, Rabindra Singh Baniya, Rabindra Jha, Barsha Rau, Rajaram Poudel
Direction: Pradeep Bhattarai
Rating: 3.5/5
