Member Reviews

It’s a miracle, John Abraham is still acting in films 22 years after his debut in Jism (2003). This isn’t a snarky comment on his limited chops as an actor, as much as his risk appetite in an industry that is too busy holding on to fleeting good times and too happy to repeat its successes. Few actors have visibly lived the ‘one for them, one for me’ maxim (working with as varied a list like Anurag Kashyap, Deepa Mehta, Shoojit Sircar to Rohit Dhawan, Anees Bazmee and Milap Zaveri) with as much gusto as the 53-year-old star. Abraham has seen a few successes, but he’s endured gargantuan failures. In Abraham, there is an insecure star constantly probing the market for his commercial viability (he’s produced most recent films through his production house, JA Entertainment), but there’s also a curious actor constantly trying to prove his mettle. This dichotomy in Abraham also finds itself in his latest film, The Diplomat.

Hindi cinema’s pathological obsession with Pakistan is so consistent that I just take it as a given now. Sometimes a film so virulent and stupid comes along—Gadar 2 (2023), Fighter (2024)—that it breaks the surface, but mostly it’s a lot of forgettable posturing and flag-waving. On some rare occasions, a film will introduce notes of doubt, or grace. I’ve come to expect it from Yash Raj’s action films, which treat cross-border matters with a strange mixture of cartoon villainy, human feeling and grudging respect. Sometimes it happens unexpectedly, like the recent war film Sky Force, which starts off strident but deescalates as it goes along.

धारा नाम की एक बच्ची ऊटी में अपने पापा और नाना के साथ रहती है। कमाल का डांस करती है सो ‘इंडियाज़ सुपरस्टार डांसर’ नामक शो में भाग लेने के लिए मुंबई जाना चाहती है। पापा मना करते हैं तो डांस-टीचर उन्हें समझाती है कि पेरेंट्स दो तरह के होते हैं-एक वो जिनके बच्चे उनके ड्रीम्स जीते हैं और दूसरे वो जो अपने बच्चों के ड्रीम्स जीते हैं। बात पापा को लग जाती है और ये लोग पहुंच जाते हैं मुंबई। लेकिन यहां कुछ ऐसा होता है कि सारे ड्रीम्स एक तरफ हो जाते हैं। तब पापा कहता है कि मैंने धारा को कभी गिरने नहीं दिया है, आज भी गिरने नहीं दूंगा। कहानी बढ़िया है। एक बच्ची, उसका ड्रीम, कभी आड़े आया पिता जो आज उसके साथ है। यह धुकधुकी कि अब उसका सपना सच होगा या नहीं…! लेकिन यह कहानी एक पैराग्राफ में ही बढ़िया लगती है क्योंकि फिल्म कहानी पर नहीं, उस पर फैलाई गई स्क्रिप्ट पर बनती है और इस फिल्म की स्क्रिप्ट न सिर्फ ढीली व कमज़ोर है बल्कि इसमें से वह भावनाओं और संवेदनाओं की खुशबू भी लापता है जो इस किस्म की फिल्मों की जान होती है। वह खुशबू, जो दर्शकों के नथुनों से भीतर जाकर उसके ज़ेहन में जगह बनाती है, उसे उद्वेलित करती है और अंत में भावुक करते हुए उसे भिगो जाती है। इस फिल्म में यह खुशबू बस कहने भर को है जो एक-आध दफा महसूस होती है और फिर हवा हो जाती है।

After playing the chronically ill father of a young girl in I Want to Talk, Abhishek Bachchan plays a different kind of dad in Be Happy. In this dance-drama, streaming on Amazon Prime, the actor plays a widower raising a daughter who has an unshakable passion and talent for dance. Helmed by choreographer-director Remo D’Souza, Be Happy, written by D’Souza, Kanishka Singh Deo, Chirag Garg and Tushar Hirandanani, is built on the foundations of a father-daughter relationship and dance.

Remo D’Souza’s latest dance film Be Happy revolves around the relationship between a straitlaced single father and his imaginative daughter. Together, through the medium of dance, they learn to live life to its fullest. While much of the Hindi film is focused on young Dhara wanting to achieve her dream of appearing on the dance reality show India’s Superstar Dancer, Be Happy is much stronger when it rests on the father-daughter bond. The dance portions of the film are unnecessarily stretched. Dhara (Inayat Varma) lives with her father Shiv Rastogi (Abhishek Bachchan) and grandfather Mr Nandar (Nasser) in Ooty. But her real dream is to join Maggie Teacher’s (Nora Fatehi) top dance academy in Mumbai and appear on India’s Superstar Dancer. The musical drama follows how she manages to fulfill her wishes against all odds. Along the way, Shiv also learns to be a little less rigid and protective as a single father after the death of his wife Rohin (Harleen Sethi).

Dilruba, the romance-action drama starring Kiran Abbavaram, Rukshar Dhillon and Kathryn Davison, has a fairly intriguing premise. To make amends for a misstep from the past, an ex returns to her former boyfriend’s turf and helps him reconcile with a current lover. Yet, debut director Viswa Karun’s film struggles to develop this idea into a cohesive narrative and stuffs it with subplots that feel unnecessary, across genres. The film opens with a pompous quote that valourises the protagonist Siddu’s (Kiran Abbavaram) character — ‘strong men have a character, never an attitude’. Siddu is an archetypal good-for-nothing hero one would find in a Telugu film. Having been dumped by his childhood sweetheart Meghana (Kathryn Davison) over a misunderstanding, he gives up on his graduation midway. Upon his mother’s insistence, he resumes the course, only to be chased by another girl, Anjali (Rukshar Dhillon).

Ooty-based schoolgirl Dhara (Inayat Verma) is happiest when dancing. Single parent Shiv (Abhishek Bachchan) loves her to bits, but is not mad about her wanting to go off to Mumbai to focus on her moves, even when well-known dancer-teacher (Nora Fatehi) dangles an inducement to attend her sought-after academy. Things start falling into place, and then one day, trouble strikes. Can sheer will and determination win the day? Can dreams really come true?

Filmmaker Shivam Nair’s The Diplomat tells the real story of an Indian lady Uzma Ahmed (Sadia Khateeb), a single mother. She falls in love with a Pakistani national Tahir (Jagjeet Sandhu) while working in Malaysia in 2017. He promises to marry her and help treat her daughter, who suffers from Thalassemia. However, after she lands in Pakistan, she sees the real face of Tahir. He takes Uzma to the deserted land of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where she realizes that he is already married and also has a few kids. But that’s not all. Tahir repeatedly physically and sexually abuses Uzma before forcing her to marry him. Once by chance, Uzma gets to know that the only way to escape from there is by somehow reaching the Indian embassy in Islamabad and ask for help. She makes Tahir take her to the Indian embassy through some pretext and, when he and his friends are away, barges inside the embassy and begs for help. But JP (John Abraham), the Deputy High Commissioner at the embassy, doubts her intentions.