Jhootha Hi Sahi – My take on it

Movie Review

Rating: 3.5/5.0

I’ve heard a lot of people making fuss on the slow pace and boring plot of the movie. It has been ridiculed on various platforms and has been given lower than 2-star rating by many critics. But my experience from the movie was entirely opposite to this.

Yes, I agree that I didn’t like the heroine much, especially because she was more fitting to perform the role of John Ibrahim’s elder sister with 2 children – a 5- year old boy and 7-year old girl. But, she was nowhere suitable to be casted opposite John. And the choreography was also a notch below the average performance. Dance sequences seemed to be forcefitted into the story.

But, all said and done, I think the plot was very good. John, a partner in a bookstore, is forced into volunteering for an NGO that has this novel idea of speaking with people who want to commit suicide and convince them not to commit suicide. On one such call, he comes across the heroine, whom I didn’t like from the first scene. But somehow they get along very well over phone where he convinces the lady that he’s some kind of a superman. As the fate has it, she visits his bookstore and Sid(John) falls into love with Mishka (heroine) at first site. Then as an unknown voice over phone, he convinces Mishka to fall in love with Sid and on their way they face usual small hiccups. What happens in the end is for you to watch.

But John’s performance and looks are very nice. Other characters in the story are just supporting roles and don’t have much of an impact on the main theme, other than just being around. And yes, the soundtracks were fabulous. I liked two songs the most – Do Nishaniyan and Cry Cry. The lyrics and music are superb.

All-in-all, the movie was nicely created and was a nice watch this weekend when I had just 2 other options at hand – Hiss and Rakht Charitra – both of which are not even at No. 20 on my list of ‘5 movie I want to watch this weekend.’

-AS

My Ishqiya Experience

Watching movies here in Singapore is not as easy and as cheap as it is in India. Only a handful of cinemas show Hindi movies and the ones that do, also show only selected movies. So, you aren’t left with many options, but to spend S$4 (per person) on cab to reach the theatre, get a ticket for $11, get pop corn combo for $7.5, watch the movie, appreciate it (no matter how pathetic it is, after all you saw it) and then hire a cab back to hostel by spending another $4. So, in total, watching a movie can make a hole of atleast $27 in your pocket, albeit that’s small by Singapore standards.

This time, we thought our luck has been good with us and we went to watch “Ishqiya”. Without quoting the name of the theatre, its roof reminded me of the Swaran Palace in my small town of Faridkot. But I ignored it and decided to concentrate on the movie. Everyone had praised the movie a lot – Times of India, Hindustan Times and what not – had rated it highly, so it must be good. It all began in front of my eyes when the reel started rolling. My excitement knew no bounds to see Vidya Balan in the seducing posture that only a few girls could afford to give. But then, it all started to fizz out. I like Naseer sahib’s acting and I respect him as a performer, but I can’t say the same about his choice of movies, especially after he chose to do this movie. Though the kiss scene of Vidya Balan and Arshad Warsi gave me something to watch and appease myself, I can’t remember a single other scene from the movie when I felt good about spending so much of my education loan money.

Nevertheless, I’d recommend that you go and watch it atleast once and experience what an overhyped movie looks like. 😉

AS

Why is smoking so costly?

I am not a smoker, atleast not a public one. So you can be pretty sure that it’s not a biased view of a smoker who’s desperate to have a cheaper smoke in India. It was just that I was standing in balcony of my room sharing an occasional smoke with a friend that I realized why cigarettes are costlier than the bidees and why the cigarettes with better filters costlier than the cigarettes with bad filters. If you didn’t know, Indian government levies a tax on the cigarettes on the basis of the length of the cigarette. I just hope that it has to do something with the filter length.

But the point here is that if cigarette is harmful, then bidee is atleast as harmful, right? So why don’t we raise the price of a pack of bidees to Rs. 100 to discourage the consumers from using them. This can easily be achieved by levying a 1000% tax on bidees. And the cigarettes with better and longer filters can be subsidized to make them available to the ‘common man’. The revenues to the Manmohan government will go up like anything because it will take a while for people to shift their taste from bidees to cigarettes and vice versa . But, it will discourage them from consuming 2 packets a day. Want to laugh on the proposal? C’mon, if it’s possible with petrol and diesel, why not with bidee and cigarette?

I suggested this to my fat friend with almost yellow teeth and stinking mouth and guess what he said? Have fun, Arun!

And the old Dev Anand song played in the background.

Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya. Har fikr ko dhuyein mein udaata chala gaya…

AS