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Ever watched a movie and felt like you’ve figured out the whole story from the very first scene? That’s ‘Student of the Year 2’. A repetitive formula of the ‘rich vs poor’, ‘good vs evil’ drama that has been frequently used in Bollywood for almost a century now. So SOTY2 is a teenage drama with an attempted coming of age story, puppyish love angles, little comic relief, and a few so-so action sequences. A typical Bollywood masala, but without the main ingredients of a moving story: captivating screenplay and convincing acting.

Tiger does all the things a Bollywood director would want him to: flex 8-pack abs, dance, fight, play kabaddi and even parkour

The movie revolves around the ‘prestigious’ Dignity Cup and the Student of the Year title which is hosted by St Teresa’s College, one of the biggest and poshest colleges in Dehradun. Now our lower-middle class hero Rohan (Tiger Shroff) dreams of leaving his lower-middle class Pishorilal Chamandas College, Mussoorie to… not win the cup actually, but be together with his sweetheart Mridula aka Mia (Tara Sutaria). He does manage to get into the college on a sports scholarship for his kabaddi prowess, but all is not well for our poor hero. He has to face two formidable foes in the form of spoilt, rich brats Shreya (Ananya Pandey) and Manav (Aditya Seal) who’re basically the most powerful siblings in the college because their dad is a trustee there. Sigh!

The original Student of the Year (2012) launched the careers of Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan and Siddartha Malhotra. All the starlets from the highly successful movie managed to impress both the audience and the critics, and get more work as a result. Alas, the same cannot be said for this time’s debutants Tara and starlet Ananya (Chunky Pandey’s daughter). They falter in dialogue delivery and expressing emotions. Their dancing is just heavily choreographed mechanical movements. Not their fault. They’re made to dance next to the hunky Tiger, who shines, for the sheer lack of competition. The girls have a very forgettable debut in SOTY2 and they should definitely work on honing their skills while they’re young if they do not want to end up playing second (or third or fourth) fiddle in B-grade rom-com ensembles.

Tiger, on the other hand, does all the things a Bollywood director, Punit Malhotra in this case, would want him to do. He flexes his 8-pack abs, dances, fights, plays kabaddi like a kung fu master and even parkours. But the one thing he, despite of his talents, fails in is romance. Not entirely his fault again. Looks like Bollywood has forgotten to make young people romantic since Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Low-key actor Aditya Seal, playing the stereotypical college jock Manav, almost outshines Tiger at some points. He does justice to his character of a wealthy and arrogant but skilled college idol with his stony countenance and resolute acting.

Rohan’s friends from Pishorilal also manage to add humor and the best thing about the movie is that it maintains a healthy pace throughout, not slowing down to boring sequences.

Who should watch it?

It may lack originality but the movie is not altogether boring for a Bollywood masala fan. You can at least watch it for the overgenerous production. Even poor people cut three-layer cakes in Dharma movies, so you can definitely watch SOTY2 for the larger-than-life characterizations and enjoy it as one big fashion show.

Movie: Student of the Year 2

Genre:  Drama

Cast: Tiger Shroff, Tara Sutaria, Ananya Pandey, Aditya Seal

Direction: Punit Malhotra

Rating: 2/5

Dal bhat tarkari is the staple food for Nepalis. A Nepali home, wherever it is, can and will serve you a meal of dal bhat tarkari and whoever prepares it, will seldom get it wrong. Naming their movie “Dal Bhat Tarkari”, the filmmakers of this supposed comedy do appeal to the ‘Nepalipan’ of the audience. But like a lone highway eatery in the middle of nowhere, their dal bhat tarkari is stale. Imagine being invited to a dinner with the promise of the best tasting meal ever and then being served hastily prepared, under­cooked, unhygienic and tasteless food. That’s what the makers of this movie do: invite you to the cinema halls for a hilarious Nepali comedy movie and then fail to make you laugh, at all.

The plot (if we can call it that) revolves around the family of Ram Hari (Hari Bamsha Acharya), Urmila (Niruta Singh), Rahul (Pushpa Khad­ka), and Rahul’s love interest, Pinky (Aanchal Sharma)—all of whom des­perately want to go to the US, like many other Nepalis who think set­tling abroad is an end to all of their problems. They are then duped by the stereotypical anti-hero in Swami Gaayak (Shishir Bangdel), a singer turned saint who now is in the busi­ness of sending people abroad as ‘performing artists’. Clichéd right? Just expect to see a hundred more in the 125 minutes of this ‘dark com­edy’ disaster.

The relation between Ram Hari and Urmila is too tricky to compre­hend. One moment they’re fighting like cats and dogs (they mention that in the movie too), and the next they’re a perfect happy couple, as soon as they see a slight possibility of getting a US visa. Their “love-hate” relation and banters are repetitive and tacky and soon wears you out. Singh’s over-the-top dramatization of every scene and overpitched dia­logue delivery is especially pathetic. At times, it feels like she is literally trying to scream to the audience that she is making a comeback to the Nepali film industry. (But she’s not the lone culprit. The whole cast is extremely loud—like really, real­ly, painfully loud.) Shocking how the graceful beauty that impressed everyone as Smriti in the blockbust­er Darpan Chaya (2001) is not even 10 percent of her former self.

Director Sudan KC (son of veteran actor Kiran KC who also stars in the film and is a producer too) fails to mold the storyline into a believable plot and miserably fails to estab­lish any kind of credible relation between any of the characters. A star cast of some of the most sig­nificant names in Kollywood, along with rising newcomers, are all run­ning around the loose screenplay in a chaotic frenzy. What adds to the woes is the under-average cinema­tography, severe jerks in editing and a nonchalant approach to moving the film forward.

Who should watch it?

If you’re a big MaHa fan and can bear loud slapstick comedy sequences, you can definitely risk your eardrums. Also go if you’re inspired by the preachy Nepali filmmakers who urge you to watch and support Nepali films, even though what they produce is absolute crap.

Movie: Dal Bhaat Tarkari 

Genre: Comedy

Cast: Hari Bamsha Acharya, Niruta Singh, Aanchal Sharma

Direction: Sudan KC

Rating: 1/5

 Adèle is a wonderful book. But calling it wonderful feels a little worrisome because the prem­ise is as disturbing as it gets. Adèle Robinson, the titular character, is addicted to sex—loveless sex with just about any man who isn’t her husband. Her husband, on the other hand, is a devoted family man who doesn’t care much about sex. When Adèle conceives on their first try, “he was relieved that he didn’t have to wear out the body of the woman he loved by ‘trying’ over and over again.” So she picks up men in bars and bistros and hospital elevators and uses her best friend as alibi for the escapades.

On surface, 35-year-old Adèle seems to have it all. She is married to a handsome surgeon, is a suc­cessful journalist, and has a son she adores. And it’s not that Adèle enjoys cheating on her husband. She just can’t help it. Violent sexual release is what Adèle seeks for reasons even she doesn’t fully understand—perhaps to escape the monotony that comes from comfort because of her family’s money that “smells of work, of sweat and long nights spent at the hospital”.

Adèle is a difficult character to like. She is lazy and shallow, and seems to have little to no passion for anything in life except, of course, sex

Translated into English following the success of Lullaby, a story about a nanny who kills her young charges, Adèle was actually French-Moroccan author Leila Slimani’s first published novel. In various interviews, Slimani has said she writes about topics that fascinate her and by doing so she also wants to explore characters she doesn’t understand. Adèle is a story about women, what’s expected of them, and how their desires are often suppressed by it.

But Adèle is a difficult character to like. She is lazy and shallow, and seems to have little to no passion for anything in life except, of course, sex. It’s the crisp narration that keeps you hooked to this slim novel. The writing is sparse and Slimani only tells you what you absolutely need to know. She gives you a bit of a backstory, about teenage Adèle see­ing prostitutes that made her curious about sex, but there are no elaborate descriptions and details. Also, there is no moralizing from the author either. She doesn’t tell you how to feel or what to think about her nym­phomaniac character. Some readers will applaud Adèle while some will be appalled by her. But, either way, we will all think about her for a long time to come.

Book: ADÈLE

Genre: Fiction

Author: Leila Slimani

Translated into Englishby Sam Taylor

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published: January 15, 2019

Pages: 240, Paperback

‘Avengers: Endgame’ is not a movie so it cannot and should not be treated like one. It is, rather, a carnival, a conclusion to 10 years of character and plot develop­ment. It’s like an episode of the final fight of the Mahabharata; you can’t evaluate the battle without under­standing the weight of events like humiliation of Duryodhan, marriage of Draupadi and the game of dice that led up to it. Directed by two brothers, Antho­ny and Joe Russo, Endgame is a direct sequel to ‘Infinity War’ and it picks up where the last movie ends. The Avengers, now less in number, are faced with a task of bringing back their ‘reality’ which they lost in their battle with Thanos (Josh Brolin). The movie starts with Iron Man (Rob­ert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruf­falo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) all getting back together, reassem­bling the Avengers team in good old Nick Fury style. Thanos, our super powerful alien antagonist, has a very noble philosophy of balancing the economics of finite resources and seemingly infinite population growth. However, neither is Thanos an esteemed economist nor a poli­cy researcher; just another weirdo trying to find a quick solution to a complicated problem.

 Every second was an experience in itself, the constant hooting and whoops of the audience indicative of how good a movie this was

And in a very no spoiler fashion, that’s the endgame this ‘Endgame’ deals with: The reality of Thanos’ quick solution to this problem.

I might have made the prem­ise boring with those parallels but I swear the movie’s not. It’s a superhero movie that packs all the punches, literally. It’s electrifying. It’s marvelous. It’s … Okay, enough with the puns.

First off, the movie has an invest­ment of $300-400 million, double of what a typical blockbuster movie costs. So I expected it to be colossal, from its VFX to battle sequences, and it did not disappoint.

Every second was an experience in itself, the constant hooting and whoops of the audience indicative of how good a movie this was. In the typical MCU style, the movie can go from being insanely funny to insanely serious, while excelling in both. And it strikes that cord again. Following the suit of Infinity War, the movie also has its share of emo­tional moments. Also, be it a super­hero showdown or an emotional scene, the background score was perfect and just what you’d expect from Marvel.

I won’t go into details, but as you’d expect, there’s a very big battle sequence and it was at least three times as thrilling as I imagined it to be. Hands down, the best battle sequence in entertainment history. It tells a story of perseverance, of resilience, duty and unity, in the grandest possible way.

There’s also this scene in the bat­tle where all the superhero ladies of Marvel get together and get their hands dirty with the aliens. And no, these women don’t just play a sup­porting role, or semi-important side chicks; they’re in the frontline of the story, because a superhero doesn’t have a gender.

If you’re ready to leave out some plot loopholes and enjoy the movie as it narrates itself, it’s a 3 hour 1 minute movie that feels too short. It’s entertaining while it’s emotion­al. It’s funny while it’s serious. This movie will be remembered for gen­erations to come and will go down in history books as a display of both the cultural and financial prowess of cinema,

 Who should watch it?

Everyone. If you are unfamiliar with Marvel characters and have not watched Infinity War, you may struggle to follow the plot a bit. The movie, as good as it is, may also be a little too long for some. Whatever. Just go and watch

Movie: Avengers Endgame

Genre:  Sci-fi/Action

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo

Direction: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Rating: 4.5/5