Member Reviews

Even as an Ayushmann Khurrana-coded small-town comedy that’s a decade too late, Jhansi Ka Rajkumar feels dated. The film stars Gulshan Devaiah as Rajkumar, a stay-at-home dad struggling to adjust to a move from Delhi to Jhansi — or, more accurately, struggling to function in a judgmental society. His wife, Devayani (Namita Dubey), is the breadwinner with a government job. You know the drill. Gender role reversal. Ridicule. Stigma. Pressure to conform. Marital conflict. Speech. Resolution. This is basically a middle-class Ki & Ka (2016), just not as gimmicky and self-satisfied. But it’s also not as self-contained as Barun Sobti’s track in Raat Jawaan Hai, a show where the guy’s “progressive househusband” tag silently gnaws away at him.

At best, documentaries on celebrities tend to be an ode to their stardom; at worst, these end up as an exercise in image makeover for those who have fallen from grace. Rare is a documentary, especially of a living person, that dares to look truth in the eye and provides a balanced, insightful account. Is Sikhya entertainment’s Netflix film that endeavour? Maybe yes, maybe no, but while documenting the story of Punjabi singer Yo Yo Honey Singh, who has seen both dizzying heights of fame and the lows of infamy, director Mozez Singh does address the elephant in Honey’s life from the word go.

Mufasa is the prequel to the Disney’s iconic film The Lion King. However, the film takes a different route than a typical prequel, we also get to see a follow-up plotline for Simba, Nala and their kids along with what’s going on at Pride Rock aka Milele. The Hindi Dub remains as close to the original names and essence of the characters while also adding a bit of a twist. While Simba and his family remain the prideful ruling family of Pride’s land, Timon, Pumbaa and some supporting characters get a twist with the Hindi Dub adding more comedy to the screenplay.

Appuram/The Other Side unfolds like flashcards, like shards of memory that Janaki (Anagha Ravi) collects and rearranges in her mind. A series of Polaroids, seemingly disconnected in time, each capturing a fleeting moment of joy or grief, burned into the teen’s psyche. At the core of the film is her mother, Chithra (Mini IG), who was pulled towards self-harm and death by acute depression, even as the daughter and her father, Venu (Jagadish), did everything in their power to keep her alive.

Cinema as a medium commands and deserves respect, both from its audience and those who work in it, especially directors and actors. So, how does one review a film where the hero and director are the same person, and when both work in tandem to leave you with a confused set of images that lead nowhere. What if they rest on past glories, justified or not, and leave you with problematic imagery and dialogues that leave your head spinning, and make you so want to say, ‘Boss, idhu 2024. 1980s alla’.

In times of chest-thumping heroism when films are relentlessly packed with a series of highs, it is heartening that filmmaker Subbu Mangadevi has chosen to tell the story of a loser rather unapologetically. His Bachchala Malli is about a good-for-nothing youngster Malli (Allari Naresh) who treads a self-destructive path while never recovering from his setbacks. Malli is, by no means, your average male protagonist. He barely acknowledges his mother’s presence at the house, stitches gunny bags for a living, steals donation boxes from children for a drink at a local bar, engaging in petty fights with fellow customers. As he falls off his bike, lying unconscious on the road, not a soul cares for him, after which you are gradually introduced to his not-so-rosy past.

Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous follows, fusses over and indulges Indian rapper Honey Singh on his comeback trail in 2023. He declares that he has returned from the dead for his fans. He looks rejuvenated. On cue, two young ragpickers at a traffic signal recognise and laud him for losing weight. The brief is simple: new body, new mind, new music videos after years of substance abuse, mental health issues and rehabilitation. Drugs are never mentioned, but the camera focuses on his physical tics and foot tapping enough to hint at it. This part is interspersed with his up-and-down journey up till this point: bits of his childhood, his early talent, his fame and fandom, and his widely chronicled collapse. The treatment is all too familiar. The lens becomes his mouthpiece. At some point, he stops being a person. He morphs into a neatly segregated storyline, an impenetrable idea that’s at once marketed and sold.

In Aashiq Abu’s Rifle Club, manliness is next to godliness. It’s set in a hyper-violent world with no room for peaceful resolutions or around-the-table diplomacy. An eye for an eye is the only diktat, and it’s the meanest, most frenetic Western you’re likely to see from one of our Southern-most states. It takes place in 1991 and this gives the film a pre-woke recklessness that’s rare in a film set in today’s time. Instead, the film’s allegiance to machismo is so on-the-nose that it doesn’t even try to hide the many phallic symbols that “rise” from subtext to text. In a chilling scene, when an outsider asks Itty (a killer Vani Vishwanath) if he can speak to the man of the house, she forces him to look down, pointing at her loaded pistol. This is not your average household in which women are valued based on their looks or their ability to cook. For members of the Rifle Club, what matters most is the ability to shoot, gender notwithstanding.

From the times of black-and-white, we have often seen a wife act coyly around her husband when sharing the news of their impending pregnancy. There is the bashful eyes, shy demeanour, and lines like the veiled “Now, I have to eat for two people” or the direct “There is a new entrant coming to the family” before breaking into a smile and a hug. In Aashiq Abu’s insanely entertaining Rifle Club, the sassy Sicily tells her husband Avaran, “Bring me the liver of the wild boar you are going to hunt. I heard it is good for pregnant women.” These are the kind of characters that inhabit the world created by Syam Pushkaran, Dileesh Karunakaran and Suhas. Characters who might seem like a weapon-wielding Addams Family to the rest of the world, but within their self-sufficient existence, this is the normal.

If the 2019 reboot of The Lion King, that came out 25 years after the original, also called The Lion King, taught us anything, it is that one should never tamper with anything that has made a place for itself not only in the hearts of the audience but also in cinema history. Mufasa: The Lion King, though not a reboot or remake, can be added to that list. Serving as a prequel to the 2019 film, it takes us back in time to when Mufasa and Taka — as Scar was once known — were young cubs roaming the plains together.