Sunday, May 13, 2012

Ishaqzaade Movie Review: Counter Strike meets Bollywood!


An intellectually bankrupt director who, in all probabilities, masturbates to the likes of Vishal Bhardwaj and Tigmanshu Dhulia.

A script that promises to go places in bits but never actually does.

A male lead forced down the throats of the audience - no pun intended - with changes of heart faster than you can bat an eyelid. Imagine a pathetic Irrfan Khan in a Sonu Sood avatar. Langda Tyagi meets Ricky Bahl meets Shaktiman. Someone who can pronounce the 'z' in Parvez flawlessly but can't differentiate Zoya from Joya. 

A wannabe female lead who isn't sure what she's all about and ends up being a cross between Anushka Sharma, Farida Jalal and Mamta Kulkarni. 

A Gauhar Khan trying her best to do a Sushmita Sen and failing miserably.

Pseudo real-life characters.

Extraordinarily fake desi dialogues. ('Ye generator ki behen ke saath kaun bhaag gaya.'  followed by another reference to the same sibling in the very next line.) 

Third grade supporting characters. Cost-cutting, YRF?

Typical YRF costumes on the lady with bosom closeups galore in trademark 0.8x reel speed.

More bullets fired than Border and Saving Private Ryan combined. Quite strangely though, the only corpse that falls is the protagonist's weirdly self-righteous mother!

Superlative background score and the title track.

An anti-climax just for the heck of it that does nothing but evokes a 'Acha chutiya banaya beta!'

Summing up, go watch Ishaqzaade if you want to watch idiots talking about Copper Sulphate when their asses should ideally be on fire.

Main pareshan, pareshan, pareshan, pareshan!

23 comments:

  1. Counter strike meets hate story meets QSQT. Why did YRF even try to go rustic. But gauhar was gud i thot...:P

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    1. Gauhar was good? Nayan Sukh Praapti mein dimag lagana na bhoolein, shriman!

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  2. Agree in parts.
    Complete Lack of Originality in the movie. Fake Desi Dialogues were just too much, you would want to get up and slap the person delivering them. " Biksit " WTF ! However, as an industry, that's a cycle repeating itself I would guess. Partially good movie 'projects' would always seek to replace/make up for inherent originality of their story/script with a lure of 'exotica'. " An Evening in Paris" ki 90% collections Paris ki shooting ki wajeh se hui hogi. For the audience of that time, just the scenes of Paris would have been a clincher.
    For the Bombay grown ups of today, fed on Indian-English lives, a small town accent, a mispronounced English word is a cinematic high.
    Hence yes, the director fails.
    But, movie as a whole, still bearable. For one, the better than average music, innovative almost from Trivedi. Bollywood-ish, but still new music. At least, I have never heard harmonium and drums in the same song used to such awesome final effect. Parineeti Chopra is good, real good I would say. She might become an 'actress', I dare suggest. She has the acting/presence. Infact, I feel, this movie failed her miserably, with its average-ness. She would have done justice to even a much more challenging first lead role.
    Arjun kappor, well, the next Tushar Kapoor,not even Abhishek Bachchan.
    That's that.

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    1. So true. I watched the movie with a friend who has spent all his life in Bombay. He probably liked the 'realism'! Regarding Ms. Chopra, I think the movie gave her a personality because of the way she was introduced - as a firebrand. But she went to drain all of a sudden getting slapped, gagged, raped in ways more than one!

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  3. Too many film references for me to fully understand your review. But it appears that the bottom line is that we shouldn't watch this movie.

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  4. movie acchi lagi dost.. ab bollywood hai to itna to discount dena padega na.. timepass to thi, gaane bhi sahi lage aur acting bhi.. tumhari observations apni jagah sahi hain par unke alawa bhi movie mein cheezein thi jo tumne nahi likhi..

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    1. Kya cheezein thi? Bhai, timepass bhi nahi thi! It was predictable all the way through. I was like, chalo maaro ab ek doosre ko jaldi and get done with it already!

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  5. @VKG-Thnx for saving my Rs 150/-

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  6. @VKG- Thnx for saving my Rs 150/-

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  7. *Spoiler alert*

    The most disappointing factor about the movie was that it seemed to have potential to be different. I thought the director was trying to tell the cliched story in a different way. After a predictable first-half, the cliffhanger made me sit up and raised my expectations that perhaps the second half would redeem the movie, but a few mins after we brought in pop-corns and coke, it fell flat on the face again. But it was the ending which made me cringe, not because it was filmy, but because it was against everything (the few things) i liked about the movie - the feisty character of the woman who is ready to shoot back against the people shooting at the hero instead of being the damsel in distress, finally allows the bad people to win. Big anti-climax for me!

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    1. True! The one minute before the intermission was probably the only high point of the sad drama. And regarding the characterisation of the leading lady, lesser said the better!

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  8. Am frightened by the number of people who find the story to be cute! What's happening people?

    I found this blog (Thank you!) just when I was beginning to think...Am I the only one who was disappointed with the story that looked like a revenge story, but there was no justice, the screenplay that looked like it was going to be different, but ended up being more of the same with a barely there twist, two debutant but fantastic actors but given little scope to save me from rolling my eyes!

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  9. Yaar! VKG, Pehele batate, I could have saved Rs. 500 and seen Glades on Fox Crime. I, Amma and Vasu went for a late night show with 20 other XL people (Irudayaraj had no clue what was going on!) . The best comment was from Parya (Manish's younger son)-- Abhi goli chalegi aur film khatum hojayega! Even the theater people got bored and switched off the AC midway giving us more than a broad hint to leave! And yes, you forgot to mention Daud! I wish we had such people in our Olympic Team!

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    1. 20 XL people go to watch Ishaqzaade! This is stuff worth talking about at the Alum meet!

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  11. Hey, Should have warned me! I would have saved Rs. 500 in a hot and humid theater (Payal) and watched Glades on Fox Crime! Amma, Vasu and I had gone with 20 other XL people. Prof. Irudayaraj had no clue as to what was going on! You did not mention Daud....I wish we had likes of these "hero and Heroine" in our Olympic Track Team. I also felt a sense of relief! If all the goons wield guns like these jokers, India is certainly a safe country!

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  12. had no intentions of going to watch the movie and I can see I was right.. just another 'Barsaat' ( vehicle to launch star kids' ).. have heard the ending and am not a big fan of that either. As someone mentioned above, it goes against the grain of a so-called feisty female character, doesn't it ?

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  13. Bhaad mein gayi picture aur uski review..I am just happy your wrote a post :D

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  14. Long long time since u wrote..I saw ur post on my reader and jumped at it..ur writing is super!..:)

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  15. that movie, had its wrongs. but one thing is set. that chic, is definitely not gonna be a MIA. the end was a typical decent love story waala end but i hated how the story scipt ran. with u, on all of it except the chic :P

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  16. the script was pathetic. first the hindu muslim politics scenaio, then the playout and the emotional drama was kindoff not that great. but the chic. the chic. was exactly what it sounds like. fresh meat.

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