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 Following the success of ‘Dhamaal’ (2007) and ‘Double Dhamaal’ (2011) comes ‘Total Dhamaal’. With a stellar cast and previous success of the franchise, this film however fails to meet expec­tations: for a comedy film, there are hardly any moments where you feel like laughing out loud. The plot is simple enough. Rs 500 million has been stashed away in a zoo in a town called Janakpur (no, not the one in Nepal). This leads to a mad chase for the booty among a bunch of eccentric and greedy characters. Among them are bad­ly-matched siblings, a bickering couple on the verge of a divorce, a conman, local goons, and a police commissioner. Their slapstick ride to get to the money first, complete with flying cars, falling bridges and crashing helicopters, is what the film is all about. Previous movies of the franchise were also about treasure hunts.

Who should watch it?

Fans of slapstick comedy could like, nay, even enjoy, Total Dhamaal. So might the old fans of Madhuri Dixit. Her pairing with Anil Kapoor is a nostalgia-filled walk down the memory lane.

This film packs in many inter­twined sequences within 2h10m of runtime with ease. The rath­er simple plot also makes the story easy to follow, even though there are a welter of characters. The lavish songs and dance-num­bers are also pleasing on the eye. Fans of comedy movies will get to see known faces in Bollywood like Arshad Warsi, Riteish Deshmukh, Javed Jaffrey, Sanjay Mishra and Johnny Lever, not to mention the famous Madhuri Dixit-Anil Kapoor combo who have made a comeback in this film.

But the movie could have been so much better given its great cast­ing and a famous franchise name. Excess use of badly-executed com­puter graphics and predictability of punch lines are downers too. Dialogue delivery is sloppy, leading to poor comic timing, a problem compounded by equally bad editing.

Devgn, who has appeared in many hit comedies like the ‘Golmaal’ fran­chise, is a letdown. We have also seen better camaraderie between Javed Jaffrey and Arshad Warsi. The film does not do justice to their collective talent and performances they have delivered in earlier install­ments of the film. But Deshmukh does justice to his character of a conman. Though Johnny Lever gets far less screen-time, Deshmukh’s scene with him is hilarious.

Rest of the talent like Boman Irani and Esha Gupta are lost in half-heartedly written characters and poor dialogues. We are see­ing Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit together on-screen after a long time and this is the first mainstream com­edy where they have acted togeth­er. As a quarrelsome couple, they make for a potent combo. But given their filmography of hits like ‘Ram Lakhan’, ‘Beta’ and ‘Tezaab’, these two deserved a better comeback.

The director of the film Indra Kumar has said in an interview that another film will be released under ‘Dhamaal’ franchise, to be called ‘Full-on Dhamaal’ or ‘Triple Dhamaal’. If only movies lived up to their names!.

Movie: Total Dhamaal

Director: Indra Kumar

Genre: Comedy/Action

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor, Arshad Warsi

Rating: 2.5/5

You don’t always see exotic wild animals at Chitwan. Even if you are lucky to, when you’re on a holiday, you probably don’t want to wind up in bed at 7 pm for lack of night activities. Well, such was the case a few years ago, until the restaurateurs started taking tourism and partying seriously.

The Snooks Café and Pub is one such venue at Bharat­pur, Chitwan (you might have to pull out your Google maps for this one) that has taken the nightlife in Chitwan to the next level with a dedicated stage performance and live music from different bands EVERY DAY. Yes, you read that right.

The owners of Snooks like to call it the “only rock bar” in Chitwan, and rightly so with their loud and rocking music. Locals in the area, tourists from Kathmandu, Pokhara and other cities as well as foreigners throng Snooks for its live music, multi-cuisine food and a variety of domestic and imported liquor.

 THE MENU

Chef’s Special:

- Grilled Wild Boar

- Spaghetti Bolognese

- Coin Chicken

Opening hours: 12 noon to 11 pm

Location: Bharatpur-10, Chitwan

Cards: Accepted

Meal for 2: Rs 2,500

Reservations: 9855050700

Not every seven-year-old has a grandmother for a best friend but clever and curious Elsa does. And her grandmother isn’t like yours or mine. She breaks into zoos in the mid­dle of the night, gets chased by the police, throws turds at them and, to Elsa’s delight and dismay, has horrible spelling. She is also Elsa’s key to the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the kingdom of Miamas where she gets to be a knight and ride cloud animals.

This is where Elsa goes to escape reality—being bullied in her class for using long words or the fact that her mom is pregnant with her half sib­ling, whom she calls Halfie, and who will, she believes, make her mom love her less.

Granny might be crazy for some but for Elsa she is a super-hero. Then Elsa overhears that Granny has can­cer and the world that Granny has so carefully constructed for Elsa falls apart and Elsa struggles to forgive her. And, to make things worse, Granny dies. But before that she sends Elsa on a mission whereby she has to deliver some letters to people. What follows is a merging of reality and the Land-of-Almost-Awake.

 Backman is a skilled storyteller and his greatest strength is his ability to seamlessly merge humor and seriousness

Every story that her grandmother has ever told her (that happened in Miamas or other fairytale land) seems to be unfurling right before her eyes, and every character she met or hid from at the Land-of-Al­most-Awake has a real life coun­terpart. It’s through discovering these characters that Elsa ulti­mately forgives her grandmother for dying.

Heartbreaking yet hilarious, ‘My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises’ will charm you and make you see the world from an almost-eight-year-olds’ perspective, which really isn’t a bad thing if you think about it.

Backman is a skilled storytell­er and his greatest strength is his ability to seamlessly merge humor and seriousness in his writing. The only downside for those of us who have read Backman’s other work, namely ‘Britt-Marie Was Here’, is that you get to meet Britt-Marie in My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises as Elsa’s nosy and annoying neighbor.

For those who have already taken to her eccentric ways in Britt-Marie Was Here, that’s a little disheart­ening. However, Elsa teaches you a thing or two about loss, grief, anger, and ultimately forgiveness that makes My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises a sto­ry you are not likely to forget any time soon.

Book: MY GRANDMOTHER SENDS HER REGARDS AND APOLOGISES

Author: Fredrik Backman

Genre: Fiction

Translated from the Swedish by Henning Koch

Publisher: Sceptre

Pages: 353, Paperback

The makers of “Ek Ladki ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga” did not want to miss out on the opportunity of being the first mainstream Bollywood film to deal with same-sex (lesbian) love. Hence the haste. It’s true that the story is progressive but it is far from daring as well.

The film is about Sweety (Sonam Kapoor), an introverted Punjabi girl whose rich family is looking for a suitable Punjabi guy to marry her off. They are under the false impression that she is in love with Sahil Mirza (Rajkummar Rao), a theater writer who is a Muslim. Just a brief encounter with Sweety makes Sahil fall in love with her, and the confusions that follow make for a hilarious first half. Right before the interval we find out that Sweety is actually in love with Kuhu (Regina Cassandra) and the second half of the movie is about how Sweety, with the help of Sahil, tries to make her traditional Punjabi family accept her truth.

Who should watch it?

Old fans of Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla, and young and old Rajkummar Rao fans may enjoy the film. Also those looking for some light-hearted weekend comedy. But if you want a tug at your heartstrings, you may be better served checking new releases this weekend.

The film fails to do justice to this story. It wastes too much time revealing Sweety is actually a lesbian and in the next half the plot progresses so hastily it leaves no time for the audience to understand Sweety and Kuhu’s love to root for them. Yes, a small section of the film shows how Sweety started feeling like an alien in her childhood and how her preference for the same sex led her to being bullied at school. When she met Kuhu she felt like finally there was someone she could be herself with. But something does not feel right. For one there is no development of Sweety’s character to make us genuinely feel for the lead actor.

For a film that is celebrating same-sex love, it is ironic that the filmmakers seem scared of making their audience even a bit uncomfortable. Thus we only get scenes of some hand-holding, smiles and hugs from the two female lovers. It treads on safe waters. Yes, this is the first mainstream Bollywood movie showing same-sex relationships and they might be trying to make this movie family-friendly. But there is little of the kind of soulful dancing or heartfelt romance that usually highlight a Bollywood movie.

In the central character, Sonam Kapoor’s acting is mechanical and dialogue-delivery stilted. For instance, in a moment of despair, Sweety says to Sahil that she would choose to die if she cannot be with Kuhu but we do not really feel it. Other actors like Anil Kapoor (Balbir Choudhary, a garment manufacturer who plays Sweety’s father), Juhi Chawla (the impatient Chatro who is eager to be an actor) and Rajkummar Rao shine. They provide some much-needed comic relief. Abhishek Duhan (who plays Sweety’s controlling brother Babloo) and Regina Cassandra, in her Bollywood debut, are convincing too.

Pegged as ‘the most unexpected romance of the year’, events in this movie are mostly predictable. Its central message is that homosexuality is normal and has nothing to do with ‘westernization’, and that parents should live their life and let their kids theirs. Brilliant. It’s a tragedy that such an important message is so poorly delivered, even with a strong star-cast.

Ek Ladki ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga

Director: Shelly Chopra Dhar

Genre: Comedy

Cast: Sonam Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, Rajkummar Rao