Friday 5 April 2013

Movie review of "HIMMATWALA".


            It was a different experience to see AJAY DEVGAN, an actor of high calibre not only munching Seetti waale dialogues but also dancing in 80's style..And the man behind this is SAJID KHAN who made us all roar with laughter with his witty take on ham scenes of Bollywood movies on satellite channels earlier. And now the same man has made a movie which starts & ends with a ham scene but is entertaining in between.  He has stated time & again that his movies are to entertain audience and not to please critics, & in fact he was doing a okay job with it but this time beginning & ending scene of his present movie disappointed me. Overall the movie is not that bad but a couple of scenes spoil the party. The biggest asset of this movie is performances by its cast who thoroughly entertain with their antics.



SCRIPT & SCREENPLAY                                                                                     : The credit for the story of Himmatwala goes to SAJID KHAN where as the screenplay as well as dialogues have been put together with the joint effort of SAJID FARHAD & SAJID KHAN. Sans any captivating component and innovative thought process behind its script "Himmatwala" is too monotonous.. The story takes off when Ravi (AJAY) returns to his native village Ramnagar, with an idea of avenging the injustice done to his family by village landlord, Sher Singh (MAHESH MANJREKAR), who years back accused his father of robbery and post which Ravi's entire family straggles and slips in to the marshes of hardships. On reaching his village Ravi finds that his mother and sister whom he assumed to be dead are still alive and are leading a very wretched life on the village outskirts.On knowing this, Ravi meet them and bring them back to their house in village, where he has a rendezvous with Sher Singh's harlequin loyalist, Narayandass (PRESH RAWAL) who forewarn Ravi about the dire consequences, but ends up being at the receiving end of Ravi's blows. As the frames roll ahead steps in finicky daughter of Sher Singh, Rekha (TAMANNA ), who too didn't have a very pleasing first meeting with Ravi. Soon after this, oblivious about Ravi's background, Sher Singh himself steps into the arena and comes across a shocking revelation. And from there a bland punch of Action, humor and masala takes over. May be while drafting the screenplay of "Himmatwala", Sajid and his team of experts might have repeatedly referred the previous "Himmatwala", in order to keep line between resemblance and unlikeliness quite clear. Some of the dialogues have been smartly penned where-in characters of (1980's ) speak with reference to today's times like Paresh Rawal says " Main Swine hoon, mujhe swine flu ho jaaye", in reply his son says there is no disease like this & he says " Ho sakta hai Bees saal baad ye beemari aa jaaye". When Paresh is washing utensils Manjrekar says to him that wash them with the help of Youtube.


STARCAST                                                                                             :    Although there is a widely prevailing notion that intense and up till an extent humorous performances are AJAY DEVGAN'S patent styles of acting, but in "Himmatwala", Ajay looks quite comfortable and confident in his retro avatar. Infact it won't be wrong to say that, Ajay thoroughly succeeds in performing what he is expected to. It is only he who is able to infuse some watchable moments in the movie and entertains audience to the core. As far as performance of newbie TAMANNA BHATIA is concerned then inspite of being the leading lady of the movie, she don't get much chance to put forth her acting prowess and end up being a mere glamour frill.  ZARINA WAHAB is just OK as Ajay's onscreen mother. MAHESH MANJREKAR well succeeds in doing a thorough justice to his character and quite comfortably reaches the benchmark set by late AMJAD KHAN in the original. I will rate this as one of Mahesh's best performances as he keeps on fiddling between villainy & buffoonery very often with complete ease. With complete absence of expressions, ADHYAYAN SUMAN is as good as mannequin. But the man who completely steals the show with his brilliance is, PARESH RAWAL. With some best dialogues in his kitty and a marvellous acting dexterity Paresh surpasses all his co-stars and emerges as true entertainer. All six item girls including SONAKSHI have looked gorgeous and have somewhat succeeded in grabbing some gazes. SAJID KHAN has done an excellent job in extracting the best of performances from his cast ( except ADHYAYAN ) which has turned out to be the biggest highlight of the movie.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS                                                                           :     Music for this movie has been composed by SAJID WAJID who have done a very very ordinary job of it and the only hummable songs are the ones that have been lifted from the score of original Himmatwala. Background music has been given by SANDEEP SHIRODKAR who has given a pure melodramatic score keeping 80's sound effects in mind. Cinematography of this movie has been executed by MANOJ SONI who has done an average job with respect to the shoot locales. JAI SINGH NIJJAR's name also deserves a mention for brilliant execution of action scenes ( excluding the entry n climax fight which are too hammy ). The editor of this flick is NITIN ROKADE who has done an average job again taking the final run-time to 150 minutes. Now coming to the Chief Commdr. i.e. SAJID KHAN who has written the story, screenplay, dialogues, directed this flick and who has been claiming on top of his voice that he makes movies only for the sole reason of entertaining his audience. He has somehow managed to pull it off albeit with lot of hiccups & i personally found it disappointing when compared to the entertainment quotient his earlier flicks provided. In this movie his actors have been his biggest saviors who have given best out of them and delight you with their sheer presence on screen. Agreed, its not a brilliant or a classic movie but it has its own charming moments in-between.


OVER THE HEAD                                                                                            :   Unfortunately the first scene of Ajay's entry into movie falls in this category where he bends a steel rod and bashes a WWF kind of fighter in fight arena while CHUNKY PANDE dressed as Michael Jackson lookalike places bets. Similar kind of ham scene brings the movie to an end where Ajay fights several devilish grin supporting fighters who come packed in a truck to challenge his Himmat. My question to Sajid is that presence of frustrating ham scene in the beginning as well as the ending was done deliberately or is it just a co-incidence.


WOW MOMENTS                                                                                                    :  The marriage scene where Ajay ridicules Tamanna when she is spoiling a marriage function for d reason that she hates Gareebs is really hilarious and invokes laughter. Crab dance of Paresh n Mahesh also adds up the fun quotient.


CONCLUSION                                                                                                    :  Before i conclude i'll just like to mention that when i started this blog, in my first post i stated that i am not a professional critique and just a cinebuff plus avid movie watcher. So my reviews will be from the perspective of audience and hence might differ with other critic reviews & that is the only reason that i never give any star ratings to movies. Thankfully till now for almost all the movies, my views were very similar to the views of other professionals but i've failed to understand that how-come have they blasted this movie as well as Sajid left,right and center. I dont say that it is an excellent flick or extraordinary cinema but it has some entertainment quotient in between and when movies like Rowdy Rathore, Wanted, Ready, Bodyguard have been hailed than why are the critics giving a step motherly treatment to this movie.
I conclude by saying that if you are a hard core movie buff than you might enjoy this movie. Above all it is the screen presence and acting prowess of Ajay Devgan, Paresh Rawal, Sanjay Manjrekar which has made this movie rise from below average to average rating hence making it one time watch.



ROHIT SHARMA.
Follow me on twitter at  https://twitter.com/smgr105
rohitreview@gmail.com



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