Post by odadune on Apr 9, 2015 1:50:05 GMT
From the "recently seen movies" thread:
It's good so far...I'm getting a "The Hangover" type vibe from it, maybe it's because Hrithik looks like Bradley Cooper? Hehe.
EDIT: Finished! Wow, it was great. See, I'm a lousy movie critic, since I tend to like almost everything I watch... But this seemed different from other BW movies I've watched, more...Western. And by that I don't mean modern, I mean Chennai Express was modern but it still had an "Indian" feel to it. This felt like a Western movie, just in a different language, but it was really enjoyable and touching. I enjoyed Katrina Kaif's acting in this better than anything else I've seen her in. She seemed more natural...like her performance felt less forced. It was good.
My opinion: This is one of my favorite Indian movies of this current decade (the '10's) and certainly one of the few that is liked by both me and lots of other people. It's the story of how a guy (Abhay Deol), after becoming engaged to an old female friend (Kalki Koelkin), rounds up his two best school buddies (Farhan Akhtar and Hrithik Roshan) who are not really speaking to each other due to Farhan taking up with Hrithik's ex-girlfriend either on the rebound or before they had quite entirely broken up, and they go on the epic trip to Spain they had always planned: with each of them picking an extreme sport that all three of them *must* take part in, confronting their deepest fears along the way. Along the way, Hrithik's stuffy stockbroker discovers this "whole work/life balance" thing and overcomes his fear of swimming, both with the help of a free-spirited, biracial diving instructor (Katrina Kaif), Farhan comes to terms with his artistic impulses and the father he never knew (Naseeruddin Shah) after facing his fear of heights during a skydiving expedition, and Abhay, having been stampeded into the engagement by his girlfriend, grows enough of a spine to tell her that he's not ready for marriage and would be doing both of them a disservice if they go through with it. He, naturally makes this resolution just before they enter the running of the bulls at Pamplona....
This is not a flawless movie; it's overly long in places, the tomatina festival is just plain gross, the songs and their presentation are mostly pretty bland, and if you're in the wrong mood, it's easy to become annoyed with the low-key, comparatively naturalistic story of two yuppies and their bohemian friend (who may not have a ton of money to spend but has also clearly never been really poor), talking about the need to stop and smell the roses and not overwork oneself. I personally felt a bit uncomfortable showing the more risque scenes to my Baby Boomer aged friends, the non-Bollyviewers-it's not that they haven't seen worse or are easily shocked, it's just not their idea of a good time and it is definitely not what they signed up for when they let me talk them into showing them Indian films. (Starting many years ago with Kandukondain). Also, a few things jar the semi-realistic tone: the occasionally cartoony foreigners (like the skydiving instructor), the way the main characters insert themselves into a classical flamenco dance performance without anyone saying boo about it, and the fact that director Zoya Akhtar (Farhan's sister) seems to have no clue about how men and women really interact in romantic relationships and resorts to (mostly badly) deploying standard cliches or trying (mostly successfully) to find fresh spins on the usual fantasies.
But if it's easy to nitpick what it does wrong, it's more difficult to talk about ZNMD does right. It's fun, it's easy-going, it keeps the angst to a very low simmer. I would not call this Katrina's only good performance-I personally believe she's been good or at least acceptable in most things I've seen her in, and that usually when she's annoying in a role most other actresses would have been just as bad-but it's the only one I've seen where she plays a responsible adult. Over the course of a handful of scenes, she convinces me that her character is simultaneously no-nonsense and joyful, someone who works hard and plays hard. (I suspect it may be closer to her real personality than the stereotypical bubbly ditz she often plays). Abhay plays a nice guy and a peacemaker who never talks smack about his fiancee no matter the provocation. Hrithik is earnest and likable as a character who just as easily have been presented as a philistine bore or an arrogant overachiever. It's a trivial thing, but I enjoy the loving, laborious way he chops vegetables for a dinner he's making for the group (in between chatting up Katrina). It's not the machine-gun speed of someone who's had to do this alot, nor the awkward, "ew, I have servants for this" thing you sometimes see Bollywood actresses doing when trying to play a domestic goddess. It's the behavior of a man who likes to cook but rarely has the time or energy to do it, and that's exactly what the character is supposed to be. Farhan straddles the funny-annoying line gracefully, and the episode with his father brings into focus the fact that yes, the hipster younger Akhtars understand that people like themselves and their immensely talented, immensely pretentious father Javed Akhtar, can be annoying to us peons. Kalki Koelkin does a good job of humanizing a character that the script presents as a shallow, irrational shrew.
The Spanish scenery is lovingly rendered; I've seen some of these sights through a car window on a vacation when I was much younger, and I'm pretty sure I saw at least one of the rocky open vistas in a spaghetti western, but Zoya and her friends at the Spanish tourism department make them all fresh and new again. Skydiving-I've seen dozens of skydiving sequences in the movies, but the one in this movie is one of the best. The vintage convertible that the friends drive around Spain is just the frosting on the cake; both the More Casual Fan and the non-Bollyviewers drooled over it when I showed the movie to them.
But the highest praise I can give this movie is this: I normally have no patience for semi-realistic or idealized stories about youngish men coming of age. I watched half of Dil Chahta Hai and then the disc seized up; I shrugged and returned it to the rental store with a note about this dvd from their Big Fancy Foreign Film Selection being scratched. The plot synopses of Kai Po Che and 3 Idiots make me run the other way, the promos for Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and 2 States give me hives. If you're playing an overgrown manchild in a movie, your best bet for holding my attention is to either to make me laugh or make me realize that you're about to lose the loveliest, dancing-est woman in your fictitious world to Ajay Devgn. Not to be a moderately realistic, improbably pretty portrayal of either a young rich guy or an "intellec-tool". And yet, I happily make space for this movie in my collection. Make of that what you will.
I don't recall a lot of the conversation on the old forums about this movie. There was some controversy about Zoya's decision to cast Kalki, a woman of Caucasian French ancestry who identifies as Indian and has the passport to prove it, and Katrina, whose ancestry is...debated and whose Hindi is limited, as the female leads, and about the glibly amusing scene where Farhan's character, who can't speak Spanish, initiates a brief fling with Katrina's roommate, who speaks nothing but Spanish. A lot of people enjoyed it, IIRC, and some people called the characters out for their privileged lifestyles (see above). Anyway, here's a few blog reviews:
Beth Loves Bollywood: bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.com/2011/07/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara.html
FilmiGirl: filmigirl.blogspot.com/2011/07/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara-spanish.html
So They Dance (audio review): sotheydance.blogspot.com/2011/09/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara-audio-review.html
Post Punk Cinema Club: p-pcc.blogspot.com/2011/08/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara-2011.html
Ally Kumari: bollywood-ish.blogspot.com/2011/12/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara.html
I'm halfway through Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara right now. Will update when I finish!
It's good so far...I'm getting a "The Hangover" type vibe from it, maybe it's because Hrithik looks like Bradley Cooper? Hehe.
EDIT: Finished! Wow, it was great. See, I'm a lousy movie critic, since I tend to like almost everything I watch... But this seemed different from other BW movies I've watched, more...Western. And by that I don't mean modern, I mean Chennai Express was modern but it still had an "Indian" feel to it. This felt like a Western movie, just in a different language, but it was really enjoyable and touching. I enjoyed Katrina Kaif's acting in this better than anything else I've seen her in. She seemed more natural...like her performance felt less forced. It was good.
My opinion: This is one of my favorite Indian movies of this current decade (the '10's) and certainly one of the few that is liked by both me and lots of other people. It's the story of how a guy (Abhay Deol), after becoming engaged to an old female friend (Kalki Koelkin), rounds up his two best school buddies (Farhan Akhtar and Hrithik Roshan) who are not really speaking to each other due to Farhan taking up with Hrithik's ex-girlfriend either on the rebound or before they had quite entirely broken up, and they go on the epic trip to Spain they had always planned: with each of them picking an extreme sport that all three of them *must* take part in, confronting their deepest fears along the way. Along the way, Hrithik's stuffy stockbroker discovers this "whole work/life balance" thing and overcomes his fear of swimming, both with the help of a free-spirited, biracial diving instructor (Katrina Kaif), Farhan comes to terms with his artistic impulses and the father he never knew (Naseeruddin Shah) after facing his fear of heights during a skydiving expedition, and Abhay, having been stampeded into the engagement by his girlfriend, grows enough of a spine to tell her that he's not ready for marriage and would be doing both of them a disservice if they go through with it. He, naturally makes this resolution just before they enter the running of the bulls at Pamplona....
This is not a flawless movie; it's overly long in places, the tomatina festival is just plain gross, the songs and their presentation are mostly pretty bland, and if you're in the wrong mood, it's easy to become annoyed with the low-key, comparatively naturalistic story of two yuppies and their bohemian friend (who may not have a ton of money to spend but has also clearly never been really poor), talking about the need to stop and smell the roses and not overwork oneself. I personally felt a bit uncomfortable showing the more risque scenes to my Baby Boomer aged friends, the non-Bollyviewers-it's not that they haven't seen worse or are easily shocked, it's just not their idea of a good time and it is definitely not what they signed up for when they let me talk them into showing them Indian films. (Starting many years ago with Kandukondain). Also, a few things jar the semi-realistic tone: the occasionally cartoony foreigners (like the skydiving instructor), the way the main characters insert themselves into a classical flamenco dance performance without anyone saying boo about it, and the fact that director Zoya Akhtar (Farhan's sister) seems to have no clue about how men and women really interact in romantic relationships and resorts to (mostly badly) deploying standard cliches or trying (mostly successfully) to find fresh spins on the usual fantasies.
But if it's easy to nitpick what it does wrong, it's more difficult to talk about ZNMD does right. It's fun, it's easy-going, it keeps the angst to a very low simmer. I would not call this Katrina's only good performance-I personally believe she's been good or at least acceptable in most things I've seen her in, and that usually when she's annoying in a role most other actresses would have been just as bad-but it's the only one I've seen where she plays a responsible adult. Over the course of a handful of scenes, she convinces me that her character is simultaneously no-nonsense and joyful, someone who works hard and plays hard. (I suspect it may be closer to her real personality than the stereotypical bubbly ditz she often plays). Abhay plays a nice guy and a peacemaker who never talks smack about his fiancee no matter the provocation. Hrithik is earnest and likable as a character who just as easily have been presented as a philistine bore or an arrogant overachiever. It's a trivial thing, but I enjoy the loving, laborious way he chops vegetables for a dinner he's making for the group (in between chatting up Katrina). It's not the machine-gun speed of someone who's had to do this alot, nor the awkward, "ew, I have servants for this" thing you sometimes see Bollywood actresses doing when trying to play a domestic goddess. It's the behavior of a man who likes to cook but rarely has the time or energy to do it, and that's exactly what the character is supposed to be. Farhan straddles the funny-annoying line gracefully, and the episode with his father brings into focus the fact that yes, the hipster younger Akhtars understand that people like themselves and their immensely talented, immensely pretentious father Javed Akhtar, can be annoying to us peons. Kalki Koelkin does a good job of humanizing a character that the script presents as a shallow, irrational shrew.
The Spanish scenery is lovingly rendered; I've seen some of these sights through a car window on a vacation when I was much younger, and I'm pretty sure I saw at least one of the rocky open vistas in a spaghetti western, but Zoya and her friends at the Spanish tourism department make them all fresh and new again. Skydiving-I've seen dozens of skydiving sequences in the movies, but the one in this movie is one of the best. The vintage convertible that the friends drive around Spain is just the frosting on the cake; both the More Casual Fan and the non-Bollyviewers drooled over it when I showed the movie to them.
But the highest praise I can give this movie is this: I normally have no patience for semi-realistic or idealized stories about youngish men coming of age. I watched half of Dil Chahta Hai and then the disc seized up; I shrugged and returned it to the rental store with a note about this dvd from their Big Fancy Foreign Film Selection being scratched. The plot synopses of Kai Po Che and 3 Idiots make me run the other way, the promos for Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and 2 States give me hives. If you're playing an overgrown manchild in a movie, your best bet for holding my attention is to either to make me laugh or make me realize that you're about to lose the loveliest, dancing-est woman in your fictitious world to Ajay Devgn. Not to be a moderately realistic, improbably pretty portrayal of either a young rich guy or an "intellec-tool". And yet, I happily make space for this movie in my collection. Make of that what you will.
I don't recall a lot of the conversation on the old forums about this movie. There was some controversy about Zoya's decision to cast Kalki, a woman of Caucasian French ancestry who identifies as Indian and has the passport to prove it, and Katrina, whose ancestry is...debated and whose Hindi is limited, as the female leads, and about the glibly amusing scene where Farhan's character, who can't speak Spanish, initiates a brief fling with Katrina's roommate, who speaks nothing but Spanish. A lot of people enjoyed it, IIRC, and some people called the characters out for their privileged lifestyles (see above). Anyway, here's a few blog reviews:
Beth Loves Bollywood: bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.com/2011/07/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara.html
FilmiGirl: filmigirl.blogspot.com/2011/07/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara-spanish.html
So They Dance (audio review): sotheydance.blogspot.com/2011/09/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara-audio-review.html
Post Punk Cinema Club: p-pcc.blogspot.com/2011/08/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara-2011.html
Ally Kumari: bollywood-ish.blogspot.com/2011/12/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara.html