odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Dec 6, 2013 22:46:14 GMT
At this point it's looking at an opening day of around 10 crore and positive-ish word of mouth in audience reaction videos, etc, but the reviews are extremely harsh. Anupama Chopra: thefrontrowwithanupamachopra.tumblr.com/post/69167616098/the-front-row-review-of-r-rajkumarDaily Bhaskar: daily.bhaskar.com/article/ENT-rrajkumar-movie-review-predictable-and-boring-action-thriller-4454900-NOR.htmlI can't get the website Rajeev Masand writes for to load for me, but he apparently called the film out for a dark comedy scene where a corrupt cop pauses in what is implied to be a rape in order to take a "very important phone call." I'm glad I'm not going to see it at the theater-I like a lot of the people involved, and if this was something the producers imposed on the project, I could even feel a bit sorry for Prabhudheva and co. But there's no way in heck that kind of thing could be anything but thoroughly distasteful. I'd excuse a lot if this were meant as a hard-edged, dark satire of social corruption, but I mean, geez louise, it's Rowdy Rathore's metaphorical kid brother; there's no way a film like this has the gravitas to deal with that kind of material responsibly.
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Post by corbie on Dec 8, 2013 16:11:43 GMT
Off to see this one today. Not reading the reviews first.
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Post by jabimetbollywood on Dec 8, 2013 18:18:33 GMT
I can't get the website Rajeev Masand writes for to load for me, but he apparently called the film out for a dark comedy scene where a corrupt cop pauses in what is implied to be a rape in order to take a "very important phone call." That's awful! The reviews have indeed been extremely harsh, but this bothers me far, far more. That just makes me sad.
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Post by jabimetbollywood on Dec 8, 2013 18:19:04 GMT
Off to see this one today. Not reading the reviews first. Can't wait to hear what you think!
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Post by corbie on Dec 9, 2013 0:31:27 GMT
If you like good dance numbers, LOTS of over the top disgusting violence, and some seriously stupid inappropriate comedy go for it. The Indian audience was laughing insanely to a scene I thought wasn't funny at all involving a beating and a belt. PS: Sister thinks Shahid Kapoor is cute.
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Post by corbie on Dec 9, 2013 0:39:16 GMT
ps. since it was mentioned, the rape scene was supposed to be funny.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Dec 9, 2013 14:17:11 GMT
If you like good dance numbers, LOTS of over the top disgusting violence, and some seriously stupid inappropriate comedy go for it. The Indian audience was laughing insanely to a scene I thought wasn't funny at all involving a beating and a belt. PS: Sister thinks Shahid Kapoor is cute. Thanks for jumping on that particular grenade, corbie, and coming back to tell us about it. Glad the dances worked for you at least.
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Post by jabimetbollywood on Dec 10, 2013 6:41:32 GMT
If you like good dance numbers, LOTS of over the top disgusting violence, and some seriously stupid inappropriate comedy go for it. The Indian audience was laughing insanely to a scene I thought wasn't funny at all involving a beating and a belt. PS: Sister thinks Shahid Kapoor is cute. That sounds like... something I wouldn't like at all, actually. Except for the dance numbers, of course-- I already knew I like most of them! Well, boo. On the upside, it seems to be doing well financially so far, despite the critics hating it: www.movietalkies.com/news/21007/'r-rajkumar'-is-shahid's-biggest-opener Shahid tweeted a thanks to his fans: "Wanna thank each and everyone who went to see @rrthefilm for all your pyaar pyaar pyaar .. This one has done well only cause of u all !!" So hopefully this will only do good things for Shahid's career. Meanwhile, I will shift my enthusiasm to Haider, which should be AWESOME.
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Post by rose on Dec 10, 2013 7:18:33 GMT
Booo to the sound of this. I was hoping it wouldn't be terribly regressive.
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Post by jabimetbollywood on Dec 13, 2013 6:49:25 GMT
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bella
Dancing in the chorus
Posts: 8
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Post by bella on Dec 14, 2013 14:08:16 GMT
Even though this is not at all my kind of movie but was going to see it for Sinakshi. Reviews were bad but that's not stopped me before. RAPE! FUNNY! APPALLING SHAMEFUL . I'm incensed right now.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Jan 28, 2014 2:49:38 GMT
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mainhoonemily
Dancing in the chorus
Posts: 1
Favorite actor: Shah Rukh Khan
Favorite actress: Kajol
Upcoming release you're most excited about: Happy New Year
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Post by mainhoonemily on Jan 28, 2015 5:21:36 GMT
I don't think it's quite accurate to say the rape scene was meant to be funny, since that gives the wrong idea. The "joke" is that this guy is so corrupt and evil that he'll take a call in the middle of raping a girl - and even then I wouldn't necessarily call it a joke. More just another unpleasantly violent scene to show how bad the bad guys are.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Apr 15, 2015 14:05:47 GMT
Having seen it, mainhoonemily, I agree with you-it's supposed to be jarring and incongruous (and an indicator of how nasty the cop is) rather than funny. I kind of have mixed feelings about the violence against women in films like this. On the one hand, films like this are a form of catharsis that tries to show what's wrong with society, and then show the hero doing what people wish they could do to the scumbags out there; on the other hand, the violence against women is painful for alot of viewers without actually doing that much to change society; on the third hand, there are a lot of sleazoids who find this kind of thing titillating. Although R...Rajkumar works hard at dodging the titillation-through-violence angle: for instance the scene that was my personal breaking point, where Sona's evil uncle beats her with a belt, was horrible to watch but was shot in much the same way that a similar scene with a male victim would have been.
(On a related note, I am ashamed to say that I laughed at the followup scene with Shahid beating the evil uncle with a belt. It wasn't worth sitting through the event that triggered this retaliation-see above-but it was kind of funny.)
Most of the more problematic stuff between Sona/Shahid I could handwave to some extent: she probably does like him but doesn't want to admit it because he works for her uncle's enemy, he doesn't have anything genuinely inappropriate in mind when he comes to her room, just wants to talk and flirt, etc. The fact that Shahid is a fairly cuddly and nonthreatening guy made it easier to handwave. I did not care for the bit where he threatens to shout to everyone that he saw her "en deshabille." All this is concentrated in the first third or not-quite-half of the film; if you want to appreciate the good and skip the bad in this film's romance track, basically fastforward every interaction the two have until Saree ka Fall, and you'll be good.
I'm spending alot of time on the romance track because it takes up relatively a lot of screentime for a Tollywood-style masala film: the second half is basically Sonu Sood's character wooing Sona while she and Shahid troll him (and Shahid beats up any goons sent after him) and her uncle interferes. Aside from the attacks on Sona, I actually liked this part better than the first half. The main plot is a very loose riff on Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dollars, particularly the alternate version shown on tv in some countries, with a prologue scene where an authority figure orders Clint Eastwood to go mess with the two warring factions in this one town somewhere. The main "maguffin" or plot lever of Fistful/Yojimbo (where the unwilling mistress of one of the factions' leaders is actually married to a common man and has a child, and Clint Eastwood/Toshiro Mifune ultimately takes pity on the family and rescues them, at great personal risk) had already been sort-of used in Vikramarkudu/Rowdy Rathore, so Prabhudheva and the scriptwriters dispense with it in Rajkumar. Although the complications from the Shahid/Sona romance fill the same purpose to some extent, it leaves Rajkumar kind of short on the dealmaking and manipulation that its source material runs on, and makes a very shallow, plotless movie feel even more so.
It's a stylish looking movie (which is more than I can say for at least half of Action Jackson), with everyone handling their roles well, and both the fight scenes and the dance scenes are handled with great panache. There is a fair amount of crude humor; I was amused by some of it and didn't find any of it all that shocking but that may just be a side effect of having seen Action Jackson and Kambakkht Ishq (which are both way more vulgar) recently. The editing is probably its worst artistic failing: very jumpy and random and music video-like, but at the same time spinning out some sequences, usually the fight scenes, for far too long.
The problematic content makes it difficult for me to recommend this to other people; however, if you like Shahid, Sona, or Sonu, and have seen enough other films with similarly problematic content to where you know what your own comfort zone is, it might be worth a look.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on May 5, 2015 1:50:36 GMT
Copied over from the "latest films viewed" thread: R...Rajkumar - This didn't really work for me; it felt like the ingredients were there but they didn't gel together and I think that part of the problem was Shahid; as much as I like him, he just didn't convince me that he's a goonda and, on a completely superficial level, I found his shaggy, reddish-brown haircut to be distracting not to mention that it did him absolutely no favours. After the way that Sona's character was introduced, I thought that she would be dynamic but she ended up being the typical "look beautiful and not do too much" heroine which is a pity. Also I thought that Sona and Shahid didn't particularly have any chemistry. Now onto the things that I liked; I loved Sonu Sood! Sure he was overacting a bit but these kinds of movies need larger than life villains. I really liked the scene where he first sees Sona - I thought it was very well done. It's so funny to think that the first time I had seen Sonu Sood (Jodha Akbar) he was such a sweetheart as the overprotective brother but "sweetheart" is the last word you'd use to describe him in this . It's always nice to see Ashish Vidyarthi and I also liked Mukul Dev. There were also some really nice dance numbers and the fight scenes were well-done and I aways love it when they blow cars up . It was sad to see Sri Hari in his last role.
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