Tintin's Top Ten: Worst Bollywood Films of 2014

 

Tintin's Top Ten

Worst Bollywood Films of 2014

Oh God, has this year of Hindi cinema pissed me off.

It's produced some real gems and all time favorites, but as the good keeps on getting better...the worse just sinks to an all new low.

What's worse is that as with the growing theme of the decade, this year's worst are once again produced by the biggest stars in Bollywood. Whether it's to stick to formula, gain money and keep reign on their seats at the top of the food chain, or simply a mid life crisis forcing each big star to want to be soothed by a big ego movie revolving around their big selves.

So much so, that one thing is clear; below you'll see the correct list of worst films of the year. But you also will notice how low the scores are, this might be a slight biased because I just couldn't handle these terrible and I mean very terrible films.

It just pisses me off, that not only at a global but also local stage these are the kind of films that represent what Bollywood is. That's the saddest thing.

One film was so bad, it put me off watching or tolerating any others such that you'll see a triple bonanza of bad film making. Film making that's so terrible, it didn't deserve my attention for 1-2 hours.

Still there's worse movies this year, that I might not even have seen that scare me.

So here's a list of the films that looked so bad from the trailer I didn't bother seeing them. It's not that the worst films aren't on my list, but after seeing all ten of those I couldn't bother seeing these one's;

Action Jackson: Mind numbing stupidity meets scary misogyny. A film where a Independent working woman chases after a man to see his privates just cause she thinks it's lucky for her, no thanks. Prabhudeva falling to an all new low isn't so surprising, what is; is National Award winner Ajay Devgn destroying his reputation even further.

Creature 3D: It's a novel concept to bring a creature feature to Mainstream Hindi cinema and commendable for that. It still doesn't equal copious praise for just doing something different even in Hindi cinema, it needs to be good if not great and this one doesn't look like it.

Fugly: Shaitan-lite starring a talented boxer, two talented actors and a talented actors nephew in a film by a flop director.

More: Mr. Joe B Carvalho, One By Two, Ragini MMS 2, Kaanchi, Hate Story 2, Pizzar, 3 AM, Kill Dil and Ungli were all considered bad and I didn't see them

There were so many terrible films of varying scores, that an honorable or well dishonorable section is a must. Most of these movies had some redeeming factors, but their still terrible enough to induce a headache.

Here's the dishonorable mentions;

Holiday: A slickly directed espionage thriller remake of AR Murgadoss's own Thupakki. Surprisingly Kumar lacks the charisma of south star Vijay and the film in itself feels repetitive and dull.

Main Tera Hero: A charismatic Varun Dhawan and a hilarious Anupam Kher save a sometimes cool half baked David Dhawan comedy.

Kick: Nawazuddin Siddiqui chewing scenery like a pro and a game Salman Khan negate the bland effects of Jacqueline Fernandez in a high end production value action, romantic thriller. It might have propaganda all over it, but it's still guilty fun.

Bang Bang: Some stunning set pieces and lavish design. A terribly remade script of a terrible original one, with Hrithik and Katrina phoning it in. Style over substance, nothing else.

Total Siyappa: There are funny moments spiced in a feature that feels more like a sitcom episode than a whole movie. Stretching a short concept to nigh infinite minutes of dullness.

Khoobsurat: The Princess styled remake of the Hrishikesh Mukherjee classic. There's nothing new to the story and the actors mostly pull their same shtick; from an annoyingly loud Kirron Kher to a snooty Ratna Pathak Shah and a nicely brooding Fawad Khan. This films likability depends on how much you can tolerate Sonam Kapoor's real persona. For me; Not so much.

Raja Natwarlal: A terribly constructed con movie that wastes it's talented star cast. Also for a Bhatt film, it surprisingly has some bland music. 

Let me just say that this isn't even the base of the iceberg, let alone the tip. Some of the above listed films are even enjoyable guilty pleasures.

The bottom ten is where the real fun, I mean pain is. So let's just roast these fucking bitches!

10. Ek Villain

Director: Mohit Suri

Cast: Siddharth Malhotra as Guru, Shraddha Kapoor as Aisha Verma, Riteish Deshmukh as Rakesh Mahadkar, Kamaal R Khan as Brijesh Yadav, Aamna Sharif as Sulochana Mahadkar with Shaad Randhawa as ACP Aditya Rathode and Remo Fernandez as Caesar

Genre: Romantic/Thriller

Best Scene: Whenever Rakesh is on screen

Best Performance: Riteish Deshmukh as Rakesh Mahadkar

Best Dialogue: None, they were all atrocious

Pros:-The dark an gritty cinematography gives the film a real slick feel

          -Any and everything Ritesh Deshmukh and his character Rakesh do are wonders to behold. He nearly saves this sinking ship with a subdued turn that is equal parts funny and equal parts bone chilling

          -The music is as expected; amazing

Cons:-By the second act the film loses steam because the twist is revealed far too early and it then gets repetitive. By the third act it turns into a convoluted mess and writers and director Mohit Suri expand the elements of the film to end in a message that is contrived. It overlooks the main aspect of the film; the Villain

           -Dialogues are too in your face, they tend to explain everything and constantly drive home the idea or promotion of the film. When they don't explain, is when they tend to avoid key details that create plot holes and annoyances

           -The plot is ridden with clichés and is actually reminiscent of Kalyug and Awarapan. Films directed by Mohit Suri.

           -Guru's character arc is simple and done to death. It also alters the female protagonist into an annoying MPDG

           -The message behind Rakesh's character and the film can be misconstrued to be promoting patriarchal dominance and sexism because of how it is presented on film.  

           -Suri snips and cuts pieces and scenes from different films especially the films 'influence' I Saw The Devil. He mixes that with plots from his former films and shot by shot copies of scenes from I Saw The Devil.  He neither earns any of his conclusions because they feel wholly unreal and underdeveloped or too predictable.

           -Essentially what Suri does is that he crafts a dull lifeless film when Rakesh is out of the frame

           -Supporting actors sink this film by veering into a place Deshmukh doesn't; hamming

           -Saddled with such a character Shradda Kapoor becomes annoying and frustrating to watch on screen. Malhotra captures one expression and lacks the intensity needed to portray such a character, his gear is simply stuck on mindless brooding. He tries too hard to be bad ass.

           -Music sadly isn't as well placed, it crumbles an already shaky pacing

Score: 2.8/10 

The copycat hack Mohit Suri promises to bring you a love story of two villains (not between each other, but their love stories) instead he turns this into another redeemed hero looking for vengeance against villain saga.

A rip-off of Korean cult classic 'I Saw The Devil' without the much deeper thematic explorations of human condition and psyche. Ek Villain is the story of Guru (Malhotra) a gangster with a horrendous past who falls for free spirited (read MPDG) girl with a horrendous disease Aisha (Kapoor) who takes him away from his dark past.

He's pulled back into that world, when she is murdered at the hands of a serial killer Rakesh (Deshmukh), who uses the excuse of his nagging wife (Sharif) to kill other women. These two so called villains collide, while a lot of convoluted things mess up their confrontation in the background.

What it did right?

There's moments where the cinematography stuns with how it captures the dark moods the director is aiming for.

There's some really great scenes but I can't put them as a positive, as they are clearly in a shot for shot sense (apart from setting) lifted from much superior films.

Above all there's Riteish Deshmukh. Most will say his performance is only mind blowing because its something different from what he normally does, and that's true but that just means his performance is great if not good.

Most might think due to his association with Sajid Khan that Deshmukh has no taste of good cinema, they couldn't be further from the truth. I'm definitely not talking about this film, but one has to only look at his producer credits to see the films he backs; Marathi gems like Yellow and Balak Palak at the top of the heap (sly Underdog movie plug :D)

Now onto Deshmukh.

Too put it simply he's terrific. While he obviously never matches the level of menace Choi Min-Sik (I Saw The Devil), he puts a lot thought into the Indianized version of the character. The shifts in tone he brings with his facial expressions are superb and there are scenes where the characters cold blooded menace shine through thanks to his opacity on screen.

Sadly he's saddled by a terrible arc and a poorly constructed climax, that riddles his performance to naught.

Off the music, the electric riffs in the score are fantastic and the soundtrack isn't too shabby either.

What it did wrong?

From what you see above, you might think there's a lot of good to this film that it just shouldn’t have featured. At least not in the top ten.

Well you'd be right!

When I think about it now, Ek Villain should actually, maybe not be here. So I'm being a bit biased, but I believe for a valid reason.

The thing that irks me about Ek Villain despite the bad writing, editing and acting is not on-screen but rather pertaining to the film off it. It has to do with the film itself, yes. The film despite all this, is bad.

But what Mohit Suri has been doing for most of his career, further moves my hatred to culminate here.

Kim Ji Woon's I Saw The Devil, is one of my favorite Korean films. It's a masterpiece with stunning visuals, a gory premise and more importantly a sub-textual commentary on the monstrosities a man can commit in the name of vengeance/justice in the name of loved ones.

In my opinion it's about seeing the devil within yourself.

With Ek Villain, Mohit Suri and his writers take all that and subvert it into a hackneyed, trite and cliché ridden story about a man gaining redemption and then getting his vengeance on the Bollywood film villain.

It's so base in its nature and details that it feels like a totally different film but is exactly in basic structure and some scenes; the same.

It's not a total copy and that's why nobody can ever lay a finger on Mohit Suri, but everyone knows the truth. That he's nothing but an overrated copycat filmmaker.

What's more is the things he said in an interview, that really irked me.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/ek-villain-mohit-suri-i-saw-the-devil-sidharth-malhotra-shraddha-kapoor-riteish-deshmukh/1/363999.html

He clearly says that he wasn't born with dialogues in his head, like any filmmaker that's true.

That doesn't however excuse you to copy dialogues from other films. I mean Hindi cinemas most prolific writers Salim-Javed obviously came up with the dialogues for their blockbuster Sholay, they didn't have to steal to make their own words.

It shows you the kind of lazy film maker Mohit Suri is.

I don't mind that he copied the plot points, after all in its own girlfriend gets killed way I saw The Devil is clichéd and done to death.

The problem I have is that he shot for shot copied scenes. From Guru's confrontation and declaration of vengeance to Rakesh, to Rakesh's montage monologue to the dead women he kills.

What's worse is that the plot they copy, is terribly made a hash off. The thematic idea I have separate, the complete basterdization of characters and motives shows how terrible Milap Zaveri is as a writer.

He converts Aisha into an Manic Pixie Dream Girl, in a bid too avoid exposition he goes overboard in not telling the audience things. Such that we don't connect with Guru and his half assed backstory nor with Aisha, because we don't get to know what disease she suffers through.

Yet Zaveri and Suri expect us to sympathize and fall for these characters and their arc.

The worst he reserves for is Rakesh. A character whose reasons for what he does stems from the love for his nagging and terrible wife. It points the finger of the men's crime behind their women, sexism?

I don't see why not, considering the misogyny Milap Zaveri displayed in Grand Masti.

Of course to bludgeon that message we have of all people, Kamaal R Khan. KRK playing another character in a situation lifted from I Saw The Devil.

Also there's to many instances where the narrative drags because Suri decides to add in elements from his previous film. There's the hero finds god motif like in Aawarapan, and unnecessarily added tertiary characters (Guru's godfathers involvement in the end) which reduces the final confrontation to a mere minutes and poorly constructed death scenes.

At the end of the day, Suri's film lives and dies on its unoriginality and its villain. Without Rakesh the film is a mess and not only due to the director and his equally incompetent writer, but also his leads. I'd also like to add here that there's a difference between influence and ripping off someone's work, just in case the message doesn't get to all you Ek Villain lovers.

As for the performances. Shraddha Kapoor dies early on in the film, but we see her in flashbacks. I wish she'd remained dead.

There's proof that she's a talented actor; her singing scene in Haider or much of Suri's own Aashiqui 2. Here however saddled with a one note character, she's too chirpy and annoying that even if Rakesh doesn't murder her, you would.

The only person in Hindi cinema who nails it in the head with a Manic Pixie is Kareena Kapoor, just watch her in Jab We Met to know how its done.

Siddharth Malhotra is in the other spectrum altogether. He plays it to down, turning his supposed to be brooding character into a depressed individual with one expression stuck on his face.

Of the supporting cast. I don't know what the hell Remo Fernandez is doing, he clearly thinks its an unintentionally funny film so he badly hams in it. Aamna Sharif is okay but it's her character that makes her grating.

KRK is a master class terrible actor and it shows. Shaad Randhawa is clearly riding Suri's coattails to another boring supporting role.

The music is great, but unlike his previous film here the terrible narrative pacing of the film drowns the soundtrack making it completely pointless. The score at times begins to try and forcefully emotionally engage the audience.

Overall this is a shamble of a rip-off. Sure with the comparisons of I Saw the Devil  to Ek Villain, will get some people to check out the Korean version. It's still not worth the amount of money these hacks in Bollywood make over the way they steal better films that deserve more.

I hate that Dharma productions is remaking two of my favorite films; Warrior and 21 Jump Street. Yet I can't be happier that they're officially remaking it, not stealing it the way Suri does here.

9. Happy New Year

Director: Farah Khan

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan as Charlie/Chandra Mohan Sharma, Abhishek Bachchan as Nandu Bhide/Vicky Grover, Deepika Padukone as Mohini Joshi, Boman Irani as Tammy, Sonu Sood as Jagmohan Prakash/Jag, Vivaan Shah as Rohan Singh with Jackie Shroff as Charan Grover and Anupam Kher as Manohar Sharma

Genre: Musical/Comedy/Thriller

Best Scene: Despite being a bit bland, the most exciting scenes are the final dance

Best Performance: Sonu Sood as Jag

Best Dialogue: 'Dushman ke chakhe churdhe hum Indiawaale' ('We will send the enemies flying scared, us Indians!') a part of the lyrics of a song

Pros:-Lavish production design that is aptly kitschy. The costume design also adds to the films lavish brilliance

          -Sonu Sood carries this film with his physical performance and makes you laugh despite the repetitive dialogue.

          -Some of the soundtrack is beautifully sung

Cons:-Overall the film is dull and lifeless due to the repetitive dialogue lessening impact and the poorly paced plot that derails by the end. The script is bits and pieces terribly fitted together from much more superior films

           -Script is stretched thin due to focus on different areas on a surface level. The dance scenes are unfulfilling, the heist illogical and not thrilling enough while the dramatic stakes unfelt or unearned. There's also an unnecessarily tacked on jingoistic message

           -Comedy in the film is terribly tasteless. There are desperate undertones of slapstick, regressive and offensive humor that doesn't work to be worth it

           -Characters are terribly sketched out. Charlie's revenge saga is negated by the terrible portrayal of his misogynistic and selfish heroism.

           -Farah Khan while presenting a grand film, is out of her element. She lets the dance (her strong suit) fall in favor of a shoddily constructed heist element

           -Her and her producer Shahrukh Khan's love for himself causes the film to becomes an egoistic mess of overindulgence

           -Editing is sloppy as many problems can be seen in the overall texture of the film and the flow being disrupted by song and dance. The film overstays its welcome.

           -Shahrukh Khan is abhorrently bland as the straight man, phoning in his performance.

           -Padukone is grating with her changing accent and atrocious delivery. Abhishek with two roles gets no scope and is ridiculously hammy. Boman Irani goes over the top with his accent and mannerisms during both comedy and melodrama. Vivaan fails to leave any memorable impact. Shroff doesn't register either

           -Score is blatantly loud and obvious where as some songs don't work at all. The soundtrack is let down by terrible visuals

Score: 2.2/10

If your to mine the basic plot of this heist film cum musical revenge drama, then what it boils down to is an Ego Pet Project.

Happy New Year is the story of Charlie (Khan), who seeks to gain vengeance on diamond merchant Charan Grover over the death of his father. He assembles a team to rob him of his diamonds he has to keep safe on contract, which will be on transfer from Africa to Dubai during the World Dance Championship.

To get to the diamonds however the team need the help of bar dancer Mohini (Padukone) because the diamonds will be at showcase and in safe during the World Dance Championship. These incompetent losers have to carry a loser of a film to win a Dance show and a trophy.

What it did right?

The scale and design of the film is huge, it might not be top notch but it matches the loudness and boldness the film is trying to attain. It looks kitschy in the most nicest way I can say, that it attains to be.

None of the performances are really that great but for what is a stale and repetitive in not just this film, but many before it. Sonu Sood is surprisingly hilarious with his constantly shifting body language echoing the idiosyncrasies of his character.

Watch his reaction in the final heist scene to understand why he has excellent comic timing despite the bad tide of this film.

Some of the music is crooned beautifully especially with Arijit Singh at the mike.

What it did wrong?

I'll be honest and admit it, I really wanted to enjoy Farah Khan's Happy New Year. Unlike the hate her brother gets, I think the hate for Khan is totally unjustified...well until now.

Her original two efforts starring Shah Rukh Khan (Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om) are my staunch guilty pleasures. Damn enjoyable films featuring Khan playing the quintessential loveable loser in most situations (In college-Main Hoon Na and first half of OSO), that he does so well (See Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa).

However then with a fallout, Farah Khan would go onto make the atrocious Tees Maar Khan (I watched five minutes and couldn't take more) written by her hack of a husband Shirish Kunder.

So when the patch up came and the announcement that Khan would work with Shah Rukh Khan in her fourth feature (that had been languishing in development) Happy New Year. Part of me I admit, was excited.

Turns out that part was wrong.

Happy New Year characterizes Shah Rukh Khan as Charlie. The worst of Shah Rukh Khan's off screen persona (arrogant, snarky, egoistical) without the best (charming and witty).

The films plot lives and dies with the audiences connection to Charlie's emotional quest for revenge. Yet when the character itself is such an asshole and misogynist, how are we supposed to relate to a man and cheer him when he's constantly looking down at two of his team mates and treating the woman he loves like shit.

Charlie constantly ridicules Mohini and her social standing as a bar dancer, even when he apologizes the writing shifts to unnecessary unfunny jokes about breasts. It's grade A Bollywood regression, surprisingly in a film directed by a woman and where it's leading man gives first billing to his female co-star on the basis of equality.

As is with a Shahrukh Khan film. None of the other characters really matter. Mohini's aspirations for opening a dance school are given a nod to, especially with her wanting to become more than a bar dancer.

Its supposed to be heartening, cause were supposed to really care for Mohini's plight in a bad world. Yet Farah Khan lavishes her bar as Baz Luhrmann-esque wonder world where despite the number of customers in waiting, the boss allows his dancers to watch TV on the big screen.

It clearly tries to wrench emotions of the audience, without touching on a base of realism. It's just a cheap tactic at best. Which also isn't helped by the fact that Mohini clearly is so into Charlie that she doesn't mind his abuse of her, at any point in the feature.

And why does Mohini love Charlie?

Because he can speak English.

May I reiterate that this film point which pushes feminism back hundred years, comes from a female director.

Of the other characters, their basic caricatures with just one note displays of any humanity. Farah Khan stated that each character is a sum of what her husband is.

A vomiting drunk (Nandu Bhide), a partially deaf dude with severe mommy issues (Jag), an annoying Parsi with occasional spasms (Tammy) and a hacker with no personality (Rohan). Clearly I weep for Farah Khan, if her husband is as she describes.

The film relies on these four tertiary characters to provide most of the laughs, formed around their nonsensical idiosyncrasies such that the humor is stale and repetitive.  

Speaking of the humor, overall there's tons of crass jokes, too much slapstick and a gay joke that just ruined the image of Anurag Kashyap for film buffs all around the world. Say bye to Cannes brother.

There's none of the tongue-in-cheek humor or meta references that make her first two films fun.

Instead all that is doled out into reworked dialogues from Shah Rukh Khan films, that are so overt they add to the nauseating feeling that this film is an obvious ego trip for its makers and for/on it's leading man. It's sad that a film made for the masses, clearly celebrates the one thing their in the cinemas for (Shah Rukh Khan) in the most obnoxious sense.

SRK clearly seems to be going through mid life crisis. With a film that caters to his star powered (but earned) ego with a story that solely focuses on the heroics of his past glories in the written word.

What's worse is that the whole plot of the film sounds very grand Bollywood fun on paper, but that paper is clearly scrunched up and thrown into the dustbin.

For a film that could have been equal parts Step Up, equal parts Ocean's 11 and equal parts revenge saga and been enjoyable, the script is sadly stretched all way such that no part feels connected to the other logically and none of them resonate above this SRK fiesta.

The heist while obviously illogical, grows to become a convoluted and too obvious messed up plan despite the other plot holes within it.

The dance show is relegated to some questionable heroics on the part of its characters (cheating to get to the finals while deflating the dreams of young children) and a poorly tacked on message of patriotism that is twisted and rendered stupid by certain instances (team India is together, yet India doesn't want them as the representations of their country).

In all these moments of hateful misogyny, lackluster competition scenes, poorly thought out heist, farcical patriotism and above all Shah Rukh Khan ego massaging; the film loses its main emotional crux, the vengeance Charlie desperately fight for.

Farah Khan is at the helm of both writing and directing. As such the film plays out as terribly as stated above, even her choreography in the dance sequences slips. What could have been a finale of triumph, is no more than a showboating of the production and effects.

Overindulgence on Shah Rukh Khan is unwarranted and the kind of humor displayed is her brother's (Sajid Khan) thing, not hers. She loses grip on the film and the rough editing which lets the film run a half an hour too long doesn't help.

As I said before, Shah Rukh Khan plays Shah Rukh Khan without the charisma or charm. He phones it in and his cocky act has never worked on screen, turning anybody not his fan completely off.

Deepika Padukone plays her Chennai Express card once again. But this time she's way overboard and her accent and mannerisms become an annoyance.

Abhishek Bachchan with a double role could have been funny if it weren't for the fact that both his roles are wasted just like his character. His turn as Charan Grover's (Jackie Shroff) son Vicky is dull and lifeless. It's actually sad cause Vicky is much more nicer to Mohini, and he goes to jail for no other reason than being his fathers son.

Boman Irani overdoes the Parsi shtick and is so annoying that you could punch the screen. Vivaan Shah proves that the apple falls quite far from the tree, he is terribly bland and Jackie Shroff matches him step for step.

The soundtrack in its entirety is a disappointment. What I'm really getting tired of is Hindi filmmakers using their soundtrack as a score with lyric while also bludgeoning us with what each scene means through that score, example the romantic track playing during every instance Mohini and Charlie look at each other.

It's blatantly obvious and insulting to the audiences intelligence.

Overall what could have been one hell of an enjoyable feature, turns to dust under the boot of its leading man and its director trying to be something she's not. Maybe it's my liking for her first two films, that doesn't let me see that Farah Khan is as terrible as her brother and husband but still she could do better than them and this isn't it. 

Oh and Farah Khan thought Lootera was overrated! Fuck you, bitch!

8. Gunday

Director: Ali Abbas Zaffar

Cast: Ranveer Singh as Bikram Bose, Arjun Kapoor as Bala Bhattacharya, Priyanka Chopra as Nandita Sengupta, Irrfan Khan as ACP Satyajeet Sarkar, Saurabh Shukla as Kali Kaka, Darshan Gurjar as Young Bikram with Jayesh Kardak as Young Bala and Pankaj Tripathi as Lateef

Genre: Action/Period/Romance

Best Scene: When the young Bikram and Bala kill an army officer about to rape one of them in coldblood. Harrowing and gritty, what the film should have been. 

Best Performance: Darshan and Jayesh as Bikram and Bala

Best Dialogue: Everything from the trailer, without the movie tacked onto it

Pros:-Underneath all that plagues the film, there's something that could be vaguely entertaining and a hundred times better.

          -Youngsters Jayesh and Darshan are the best thing about the film. Arjun and Ranveer share an intriguingly electric chemistry... 

          -A few songs are good

Cons:-Overwrought, overdramatic and overlong, the film is excruciatingly dull and lifeless. It is historically inaccurate and is insulting to Bangladesh, Bangladeshis and their liberation

           -Each filmy dialogue comes after another with no real speak in between thus diluting the impact of key moments

           -It has a fairly typical cliché plot with a highly illogical script and an odd pacing. There's no real sense of timeline to the feature that is identified as a period film

           -Initial and end narrative device used is clunky and full of unnecessary exposition

           -Writer/Director Zafar executes his deeper themes of refugees and identification very poorly that they fail to resonate and hence make the characters flat and un-relatable

           -The editing of the film is sloppy and uninspired making it too easy to identify faults in its production value

           -Action is shot in a fashion that is neither appealing nor discernible. From covering the budget to excessive slow motion it makes for a poorly constructed film

           -…even then, both leads are just simply loud, melodramatic and obnoxious without actually doing any good acting. Their performances fizzle to the point of bland yet hammy when separated

           -Chopra has such a terribly conceived arc that it sinks her equally reserved performance . She as well as others tend too go overboard in too many scenes. Irrfan Khan seems disinterested in the film and it shows in his performance

           -The music adds to the terrible flow and pace of the film

Score: 1.9/10

Gunday was one of my most anticipated films of last year. It looked like a fun retro throwback to the Masala movies of another generation with some gritty action too boot. Sadly the film turned out to be a hodge podge of annoying clichés, terrible acting and pretentious realism that reeked of maddening inaccuracies. 

The film is about Bangladeshi refugees Bikram (Singh) and Bala (Kapoor) who becomes the biggest goons in Kolkata. They eventually fall for one woman; Nandita (Chopra) and in turn it causes a rift that threatens to take the city and themselves down, much to ACP Sarkar's (Khan) delight.

What it did right?

Ali Abbas Zafar acts as if his film is serious and steeped in realism, when it actually isn't.

If it had just focused on being a masala film without any real message or idea about identity and faux nationality and patriotism. The film would have been as electric as its trailer.

What is it with Yash Raj getting terrific young actors to outshine their older counterparts?

Last year it was Suddharth Nigam who stole the show from Aamir Khan in Dhoom 3. This year it's the duo of Jayesh and Darshan who clearly have better chemistry and give performances against the trite film unlike their older versions played by Singh and Kapoor.

Some of the songs are also nice...

What it did Wrong?

At one point this year, the film was the worst rated movie on IMDB because a select group of Bangladesh citizens decided it (and it actually did) insulted their history.

Ali Abbas Zafar through his writing and direction pretended to make a period film that had a social message regarding identity, but he instead came out to be condescending because he decided to make his own historical facts rather than actually rely on reality.

The fact that he, his fact finders and even his actors (Priyanka Chopra in a hilarious interview) thought that their film history was about a 1971 war between Pakistan and India is a sad fact for this prestigious production house, country and its people.

In truth the war in question was a Civil War between two sides of Pakistan, which saw Bangladesh gain their independence.

What’s sad is that he also tacks on the message that it is India who liberated Bangladesh. That Indians hate Bangladeshi refugees and thus our heroes desperately want to become Indian cause of the patriotic jingoistic message the film throws at us.

This film could literally sink, just for the fact of how stupid Zafar and his team are. But then there's more to how bad this film can be.

It gets too melodramatic with this message and due to the inaccuracies and terribly etched out characters, Zafar never earns the audiences trust and emotions.

There's a barrage of high impact dialogues that could have worked if the characters in the film just constantly didn't speak like that. No one expects realism when it comes to dialogues in masala movies, but most at least provide a breather between these loud words of proclamation and these heroic lines.

Here one thing or the other that is spoken is a thundering proclamation or a heroic jab. It gets tedious and frustrating.

For a film that is supposedly shaped to look realistic, the action and design is the complete opposite. The films period setting seems retro, but doesn't really give us a sense of time and place.

There instances where you feel your like in a fake period setting being play acted by a modern crew. Basically this means that the film looks fake.

The same can be said for the action, that is excessively in slow motion and seems to be shot in such a way that you realize Yash Raj were really being stingy with their purses.

Imagine this that a film of a low budget indie nature like Ashim Ahluwalia's Miss Lovely really capture its period era despite it's obvious production constraints, where as a film made by India's premier production house doesn't because it relies heavily on shoddy vfx and a downsized production design.

The editing which should have been more tighter with length, doesn't help either. There's so many mistakes in production that the editing just fails to cover. Making this film a technical abomination.

Off the performances. Priyanka Chopra is too reserved, she neither emotes as well nor convinces you of any of the shoddy writing thrown her way.

The film is littered with supporting actors that are clearly either disinterested or buried by the haphazard material given. Saurabh Shukla is neither funny nor interesting to listen to, Pankaj Tripathi is wasted and Irrfan Khan clearly couldn't care apart from for that paycheck.

It's the lead duo that are a head banging mess. They share fine chemistry because both men are obviously trying to upstage each other in who can be the loudest. They over act to headache inducing degrees, it's hard to say which one is worse.

They even ham when separate, bringing this film down to an all new low.

The overall soundtrack is a disappointment, and the songs really just pop out of nowhere and aren't visually enticing. The score overtly manipulative.

For a film that had an electric trailer, it's a disappointment it turned out to be this. There could have been something good in this but Zafar's insistent false realism and atrocious picturization makes another film where the Yash Raj company just doesn't know what the audiences want anymore. 

7. Heropanti

Director: Sabbir Khan

Cast: Tiger Shroff as Bablu, Kriti Sanon as Dimpy, Prakash Raj as Chowdhary with Sandeepa Dhar as Renu and Vikram Singh as Rajjo Fauji

Genre: Romantic/Drama

Best Scene: Despite being a contrived and stereotyped scene, 'Aa Raat Bhaar' is the highlight of the film

Best Performance: Kriti Sanon as Dimpy, for being charming and doing luminous like no one else

Best Dialogue: 'Kya karu sab ko aati nahi, aur meri jaati nahi'-Bablu ('What can I do, no one has this attitude and mine never goes away') about his Heropanti (his attitude and style)

Pros:-The action is shot stylishly and in this case slow motion works best to make each stunt and move visible

          -Tiger Shroff gets points for his great dancing and action work

          -Kriti Sanon is a breath of fresh air in an erstwhile terrible film

          -A few songs are fun to watch and listen to      

Cons:-An overlong film that bores you due to its clichéd and done to death premise, that went out of fashion a decade ago

           -The ridiculous cheesiness punctures any moment of tension which all together kills the narrative pace of the film for the first two acts

           -Dialogues lack the punch in such a film

           -Romantic angle is undercooked. It isn't believable and is  regressive

           -This is because writer Sanjeev Dutta depicts his female protagonist as a flawed representation of a modern independent woman yet makes her the damsel in distress and her fall in love with a man stalking her. The writer wants the best of both worlds and falters in making Dimpy believable.  

           -Film is melodramatic, its adds in too much unnecessary instances in emotion overload in order to both stick to it's message on honor killings yet not make anybody a pure villain. So it neither works to elevate drama nor depicts its only major theme realistically

           -Director Khan tries to twist the  sequence of plot such that the clichés aren't visible, but in turn causes the film to become convoluted and over-long

           -Still Shroff is terrible where it counts, he doesn't know how to act at all. He doesn't grasp the nuance of emotions properly neither does he deliver the dialogue as they should be

           -Prakash Raj is a through disappointment, he never adopts the accent or mannerisms of a Jat character and in emotional scenes he is too over the top. Other actors are either the same or underwhelming

           -Like with any mainstream movie the score is manipulative in forcing specific emotions from the audience or just spoon feeding scene aesthetics

           -The soundtrack overall is a disappointment

Score: 1.9/10

Sabir Khan's follow up to his nauseating Kambakht Ishq, is a terribly typically clichéd Bollywood film about an outsider hero falling for a girl dominated by a jat patriarchy. There's the usual father is a bad man, boy girl romance, boy fights father's family but never runs away with girl and Heropanti (as the title puts it).

Basically the plot is. Bablu is a free spirited boy who would die for his friends. Ina bid to help one of his friends, he comes into conflict with a Jat family with outdated values that relate to their patriarchal dominance on their family. Bablu though falls in love with one of the families head Chowdary's daughter Dimpy, and vice versa. Now they must fight for their love against all odds.

There's nothing wrong with clichés, there is something wrong when those tropes amount to nothing especially when you have such an intriguing topic like honor killings at hand.

So to a plot that's there just to showcase a half assed performance from another star son. Here's an examination.

What it did right?

This year's seen Sajid Nadiadwala spend quite a lot on his films. From the stunning locales in Highway, to the slick shots in Kick and the sheen the film is given in Heropanti. The production looks rich and it's aptly seen with the sleek camera work in Heropanti.

The action is captured in slow motion, but it never gets too much like most films. It feels fun and organic and lets the viewer see each and every one of Tiger Shroff's top notch moves.

Speaking of which, Shroff has been brought to the fore with much fanfare. Whether it was his looks, his body or his dance moves, prior and even after the film everyone was talking about the Tiger Shroff.

Now his acting skills aren't much (Elaborated below), but there's no denying for the Hindi film hero requirement he's got certain tools ready. He dances brilliantly and is equally efficient with the action choreography.

Opposite to that is Kriti Sanon. I can not state this enough, this woman is a breath of fresh air to this film. She looks gorgeous but she is equally efficient in her performance, which like any Masala film is with minimal scope. She's the only reason worth sticking through this bland cliché ridden mess.

The music is also not so bad. Whistle Baaja is annoying, but it is quite peppy as required. It's 'Aa Raat Bhaar' despite it's stereotyped ideologies, that works as a song. It is wonderfully crooned and gives the film an extra zing it needs.

What it did wrong?

The script had an intriguing theme behind it; honor killings. It could have been used to make a much more refined dramatic social commentary, yet that's wasted on a film that is truly neither interested in the subject or invested in the plot.

This is a trite film we have seen one to many times, and takes the story back a decade and more when such movies were released at a feverish rate.  There's nothing new the film tries to add, and that is why the profound message and theme would have helped it.

Instead the writers choose to focus on such a mixed bag of tones that it cancels out the tension the film tries to create as it heads towards its inevitable end.

At the fore is the battle between a patriarchal family who don't believe in love and a bold hero Bablu and his quest to save his and Dimpy's (the families daughter) love. 

There's also the idea that Dimpy needs to become independent and move the societal structure her father and family have placed. It's a nice notion, but one that's played out in such a condescending fashion that director Saabir Khan gets his cake and eats it too.

The idea of independence or a modern woman by the writers is punctuated by the idea, that Dimpy needs to let loose and party. It's an ideology that's been stereotyped.

Now that film makers are being bashed left right and center about their regressive writing formulas, they do the opposite. Instead of presenting a minimized arc where Dimpy gets to realize she has a choice. We are told and by de facto her, that her independence and arc to turn into a modern woman equates as her partying and what not.

Another example of this Modern Independent woman stereotype is Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya. Where the main female protagonist in question Kavya is considered to be a modern girl because she drinks and parties etc.

In truth a independent female character/woman is one who chooses what to do, whether it be to get drunk or not to or to wear a bhurkha or a mini-skirt. The idea that Bollywood perpetrates however is awfully contradictory to how they're trying to show that we're no writing regressive films. 

There's also the dual nature he presents when Bablu courts Dimpy. I totally throws the message and the way the writer paints the father as the villain, out of the window.

He tries to romance her by stalking her creepily which the male writer feels is a sign of love, since the girl falls in love with him back but in it's actuality is regressive.

 It doesn't paint Bablu in a better light, when we already know non-working young man with attitude. Such that you root for her father whose actually making the right decision for her yet curbing her independence. This where the film, to not paint the father as the villain includes an overabundance of melodrama. It kills both the aforementioned tension of the film and the dramatic resonance it tries to achieve.

Overall the idea of independence for a woman in this case is that instead of marrying someone her father chooses, she needs to marry someone she wants and also party to enjoy her life. It's stupid and doesn't commit to it's vision because the writer and director himself is disinterested in a truly strong, independent female character. 

The idea of the woman fighting for her rights is there, but is in proxy through the male character. It may be true, but it presents the idea as the man being the only one who can give the woman her rights, she can't really fight for herself or find the strength to fight without the man in her life.

For a film that has some good if not great technical points, the editing is completely shoddy. Supported by a director who tries too hard to hide how simplistic and done to death his film is instead making it overlong and convoluted, the editing isn't able to tighten the seams of the film and lets the picture just run roughshod.

Of the acting. Despite being one hell of a dancer, Shroff is an abhorrent actor. His expressions and body language (apart from when doing stunts) are non-existent and his dialogue delivery dull. For a film that's meant to be his star vehicle, he looks uninspired and lacks the charisma needed for a feature such as this.

Prakash Raj, who has been stuck in such roles is equally unimpressive. He doesn't even try to get the accent right, rather speaking in his normal voice thus disengaging the audience. He is too over the top even for the melodrama the film tries to attain.

The score blares in your ears, another relic of a time long past like the film it tries to emotionally manipulate the audience. Whether it's too feel the heroes entry or the melodramatic nonsense.

To conclude, this is a film Bollywood doesn't need. Everybody's in a hoopla over Industry son Tiger Shroff, but the truth is this is another film that depicts why nepotism just isn't right in Hindi cinema. The only thing to takeaway is Kriti Sanon. Hopefully she chooses great projects in the future to help back her good acting skills.

6. Singham Returns

Director: Rohit Shetty

Cast: Ajay Devgn as Bajirao Singham, Kareena Kapoor Khan as Avni Kamat, Amole Gupte as Satyaraj Chandra Baba, Dayanand Shetty as Inspector Daya, Zakir Hussain as Prakash Rao with Mahesh Manjrekar as CM Vikram Adhikari and Anupam Kher as Gurukant 'Guruji' Acharya

Genre: Action/Drama

Best Scene: The mindbogglingly shot action scene on the bridge

Best Performance: Ajay Devgn as Bajirao Singham

Best Dialogue: of course 'Aata Maaji Saatakli'-Singham

Pros:-Certain scenes have a brilliant sheen to them thanks to the cinematography at hand

          -Despite the material, Ajay Devgan is wholly convincing as the no nonsense cop. Portraying his most famous role with the same intensity and screen presence

          -The major action scene on the bridge is the highlight of the film with the slick way it is shot 

Cons:-The script is not only your typical cliché ridden masala film full of stale repetitive jokes, over the top moments and unnecessarily loud violence

           -But it's also a lazy form of filmmaking as it retreads mostly every important plot point from the first film in one form or the other without sadly not being even half as entertaining

           -No real development from the previous film carries over as such Singham is left as a character without a real arc or any sensibilities to his relations and characteristics.

           -The romantic angle is also shoddily handled and most characters are left a simple caricatures and one note pieces spouting exposition to tell the audience every single thing

           -Despite this to avoid instances of telling everything to the audience and losing exposition when it was necessary, the film fails to establish through subtext of relations of characters within the world created

           -Dialogues have neither the impact nor the dynamics of its predecessor and a real let down considering the genre

           -The script also has characters spout dialogue with rhetoric. Giving no meaning to the message of the film with action.

           -Rather the climax is both contradictory to everything and compromises character while promoting the idea of fantasy violence and justice

           -Most of the scenes are to in your face and thus become cringe worthy. Every frame is punctuated without any sense of subtlety, depicting each motive and each motion with an annoyingly blaring declaration

           -Despite the overblown melodrama and bad dialogue, none of the scenes of confrontation leave an impact due to the way the director lazily unravels the story around the action

           -Excessive shaky cam and slow motion kills the grit the action is depicted with

           -Shoddy editing where the film drags for long and scenes have no flow between them feeling disjointed and jarring

           -Kareena Kapoor is shrill and annoying, she shares no chemistry with Devgan. Amole Gupte and Zakir Hussain literally ham to much to the point that they become disturbingly over the top. Everyone else from Daya to Anupam Kher carry an expression of total disinterest

           -The soundtrack is bland and boring where as the score is overbearingly loud. Action scenes are riddled with headache inducing sound    

Score: 1.5/10

I'll be honest. I am unabashed fan of the first Singham film, despite being quite stupid; it was fun, slick and one hell of an action packed joyride. Prakash Raj and Ajay Devgan make for an iconic Hero/Villain duo, in my honest opinion.

Sadly the same cannot be said for the sequel. All this film does in it's base sense is replace the film's first heroine Kajal Agarwal, for a grating and annoying Kareena Kapoor. While also replacing the power packed sneakiness of Prakash Raj for the annoyingly over the top Amole Gupte.

One thing that really bugs me is how Indian film makers eschew continuity between film franchises, we never know what happened to Kajal from the first film neither how Singham moved on from Goa to Mumbai. It's like a pick and choose reboot that Rohit Shetty does with this sequel, and it get's bothersome.

I've always that despite the hate he accumulates or the stupidity of his films, I like Rohit Shetty. He has his own style of action that works and is clearly visible unlike a Michael Bay, who most fans compare him to. Yet his past few films have seemed more like money minded vehicles, rather than genuine entertainers.

What it did right?

The cinematography in the past few Shetty films has been gorgeous, here the camera captures Mumbai with a nice gleam. It gives the feel of a city that's equal parts a metropolis and a community, as well as safe and dangerous.

It really makes the action scenes shine, especially a scene on the express highway in Mumbai. It's a stunning set piece that is beutifully tinged with the glow from the camera and photography, there's a sense of fervor the shaky cam captures while also being vivid and having clarity in the shots. It's a beautiful scene that just cannot sadly make up for a dull feature all together.

Like with Robert Downey Jr. being remembered as Iron Man, rather than for his mesmerizing performance as Chaplin. Ajay Devgn will be remembered for his larger than life Singham persona, rather than his National Award winning roles in Zakhm and Bhagat Singh.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, because Devgn's performance as Singham is something of a brilliantly charismatic depiction of a superhero. It works because Devgn imbues the character with such an honesty and rage that you believe in the fight that Singham fights.

It's much more fun to see the talented brooding figure play Singham, than it is as any other trite character he plays in shitty films like Rascals, Action Jackson etc.

What it did wrong?

It's just too damn hard to not see that this is a clear cut copy of the original just with a different issue that the villain raises, one was a corrupt politician using extortion the other is a corrupt yogi dealing with black money.

Scenes are literally lifted from the first film, from the Singham confronts villain in his lair to the Singham trashes villains amidst all his officers in an ironically corrupt manner.  There's too many instances of comedy that will never make you laugh and clichéd moments of romance and loud action.

Singham is a super cop, but it's high time Masala movies added some tension into the mix to make us worry for the heroes life. Even in Sholay they had Jai killed so that we felt for Veeru an feared Gabbar Singh.

There's a reason why this generations so called Masala movies are unable to move beyond their trite formula and excite us, there's to much of a focus on unbreakable heroes and not any on their unbeatable foes.

On the romantic front, the plot is so loose and unnecessary, one wonders why Rohit didn't just carry over the love plot from the previous film. He sets is up but then jumps half way to Kareena's character having already fallen for Singham and then to their romance in full bloom.

It makes the Chennai Express romance actually feel like the DDLJ one.

There's something to be also said about how Indian writers utilize exposition in film. Dialogue is a powerful tool that can explain certain instances in a film, but has to be done organically. An example of the right way of dealing out exposition to the audience is Shanghai. The devil is in the details with the film and it reveals enough information, without getting to a point of spoon feeding the audience.

Singham Returns is guilty of divulging too much unnecessary, while also going the extreme opposite. As mentioned with Ek Villain, Indian film makers have gotten so wary of criticism regarding spoon feeding that they do the opposite. They tend to eat up information that is necessary with the unnecessary, creating a purposely vague film where there is none required.

An example here is the set up of characters, we're thrown right into the relationship that Singham and his lad loves family have. We aren't even allowed to register the relationship between Singham and his guru or Singham and the force, such that none of the drama regarding these characters and situations works.

The insistence on just dropping the story onto the frame destroys everything that made the original enjoyable. This film neither earns the melodrama and heroics that the original did, because it fails to set up that power packed feel.

It all together muddles in a film that has now flow, we're not sure where it's headed and it keeps the viewer disengaged. The films drags on for quite too long, if I were Shetty I would have been smarter and cut out the whole romantic angle altogether.

After all, isn't it high time we realize how little women are given to do in such films? Even the director doesn't want them, remove them and put in three-four item songs to appeal to a disheartening crowd!

That should be done considering how loud and annoying Kareena Kapoor truly is in this film.

Here is an actor who doesn't mind being typecast into the Geet (Jab We Met) role and dial it times ten, just so she can work with the actors she likes.

There's nothing wrong in working with a team your comfortable with, it helps build a better flow and make a better film. But Kareena Kapoor's problem (Recorded by some prolific directors and producers)  since day one has been; Who's in the film?

Not, what is the film about?

I complain about this a lot because the Kapoor scion is one of the most fascinating actors of the past decade. She had at one point been shunned by a number of big film makers and went onto improve as an actor tremendously, just look at her performances in the aforementioned Jab We Met, Dev, Omkara and Chameli.

Yet here she is picking projects on the basis of the star value, it's easily going to kill her career; that with age could sadly be winding down (patriarchy at its best). To see how an actor reinvents themselves, just look at the balanced work both Vidya Balan and Priyanka Chopra (her contemporaries) are doing.

Ironically she must have worked with Devgan about 5-6 times and three of those times with Shetty as their director, yet that comfort never shows in the chemistry the duo share. It's basically non-existent.

Maybe I haven't watched enough of his films, but I really don't think I've ever seen Anupam Kher phone in a performance...until now. His bit role is played with such lack of interest it's annoying. Equally does the same thing he does in his TV show, CID; nothing.

The worst of the bunch are two terrific character actors Zakir Hussain and Amole Gupte. They are gratingly over the top in this film as the major villains, it never feels like you're seeing them perform on screen but rather their taking part in the bloopers of the feature.

Not funny I know, but neither are they. I didn't think I would say this, but I desperately missed Prakash Raj.

The soundtrack is full of terrible songs including the title track 'Aata Maji Sataakli'. To Honey Singh's credit he noted that the filmmakers didn't give him enough time to make that song and so it came out bad, if filmmakers are that invested in a film it shows.

Even then Honey Singh's music at most times is terrible, so somebody should just trash the idiotic man.

The sound design is abhorrent, the noise blares across the screen threatening to make you deaf as Singham begins to beat up the villains. Their needs to be a better understanding of the technical aspects of sound in film making, and not just reliance on the score and soundtrack.

Overall Singham Returns is just boring. It's the biggest sin it can commit. It's a complete retread of the original film but with such terrible acting and dullness involved, that not even Singham himself; Ajay Devgan, can save it.

With Singham Returns and Action Jackson, there's a part of me that wishes Devgan would wake up and smell the bad coffee. It's high time we saw a Gangajaal, Omkara or Bhagat Singh from this wonderful underrated actor. 

5. O Teri

Director: Umesh Bist

Cast: Pulkit Samrat as Prantabh Pratab, Bilal Amrohi as Anand Ishwaram Devdutt Subramaniam/AIDS, Sarah Jane-Dias as Monsoon, Mandira Bedi with Vijay Razz and Anupam Kher as Bilal Khawaja

Genre: Social Satire

Best Scene: Maybe the bridge breaking scene

Best Peformance: Vijay Raaz

Best Dialogue: Cannot remember

Pros:-Vijay Raaz is hilarious as always

Cons:-A blatant inferior misguided, melodramatic rip-off , off Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron

           -The satire in the scripts works only to a small point before the writer loses the plot, on top of that it fails to make you laugh. Which is the genres point

           -Characters are never fully established such that their decisions don't make sense and neither is their heroism earned

           -Dialogues are lame, when spoken they feel inorganic and disengage the viewer   

           -Narrative pace is terrible, songs pop up out of nowhere

           -Thus the film is overlong and stretches for no use, where scenes begin to feel unnecessary. Script takes long to find its point, that the climax becomes rushed and filled with plot discrepancies

           -Editing is sloppy, the flow of the film from scene to scene is poorly matched and feels jarring

           -The director has no tight reign over the picture, the overstuffed film and acting is tonally all over the place without any energy to it at all

           -Pulkit Samrat is a disappointment as the straight man and doesn't exude the honest persona required for his character. Bilal Amrohi's muscles act better than he does. Supporting actors especially Anupam Kher seems disinterested and phone it in. Samrat and Amrohi's chemistry doesn't work because they tend to overact when together

           -The soundtrack is dull and none of the songs are hummable, money just seems to be have spent to make the music videos and that's it. The score itself is deafening for no use

Bollywood remakes Hollywood films; Cool, if done right. Bollywood copies Hollywood films; Okay if good, annoying if bad. Bollywood remakes regional films; not so awesome.

Then Bollywood copies its own films: An utter travesty.

O Teri is basically the same plot as the magnificent cult classic Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. There's nothing different in the story of the film barring the ridiculously optimistic tone, terrible narrative structure, unnecessary overt comedy, terrible acting and terrible music.

It's about two genuinely dim witted news reporters trying to make it big in an honest world full of dishonest people.  In this case the dishonest people are politicians looking to capitalize on a situation where a man is murdered and a bridge construction comes undone (sound familiar?).

What it did right?

There's something to be said about this actor, no matter how much Vijay Raaz is dragged into the dirt he manages to still rise up again. It's another typical to the type comedic character that Raaz plays, this time an evil closeted politician.

He's funny, he's wacky and he does this thing best. I just wish people would see Raaz is much more than a talented bum you can laugh at. Typecasting is a Bollywood forte, but it works cause Raaz is so spectacular despite the material he's given.

What's it did wrong?

As aforementioned, the film's storyline is a wannabe Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. There's nothing of original here, heck even the film's poster is stolen from The Other Guys.

There's too many mixed elements and tones to the comedy that the writing clearly loses the scope of what a satire is supposed to do. There's no subtlety to the unnecessary comedy and there's no profound answers or questions raised regarding the issue at hand.

Instead by its climax the narrative is reduced to an action set piece and an eventually happy ending resolution, that feels hollow and unearned. This all falls onto the first act establishment of characters which is completely negated, we don't get any introduction to these characters and nor are we able to relate to them or believe their virtues and values.

If the film had a cynical and true ending, then throwing the viewer into the deep end of the issue at hand would have made sense but here it feels like two sides were fighting for what the script and resolution would represent.

The film also includes some weird humor and dialogues to boot. From gay stereotypes to jokes regarding pregnant cows, nothing is funny and nothing is clearly evoked by the dull dialogue.

The film could have done with a tighter reign, director Umesh Bist has no clear sight of the themes of the feature and could have had a better editor to focus this jumbled mess.

His actors are also clearly all over the place.

There's no denying that both Bilal Amrohi and Pulkit Samrat are quite muscular men, but there's also no denying that their muscles act better than them. For a person who does seem quite dim witted, it's funny that Amrohi is unable to channel that on screen and seems like he's just limping his way towards the end.

Samrat's inconsistency as a performer will do him no favors, he is a terrible fit for a straight man and requires the kind of sly edge a film like Fukrey gave him. He is unfunny, unheroic and too boring.

In a spate of two films this year,  once again Anupam Kher clearly phones it in. He clearly isn’t interested in the subject matter and it shows, he does a bored version of his own strict man persona as the villain of the film.

It's obviously sad to see an actor of his caliber not get work to his level, but it's also sad to see him not bother to give his best in any role.

It's then that you can clearly see where the money in the film has been spent. There's a clear indication that the producers of the film could care less about their content. After all they thought copying Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron and tacking on a happy ending to it would work.

The film's music is terrible, the soundtrack just doesn't have anything worth listening too yet the videos within themselves do have a sense of grandeur. Despite looking tacky, money has been spent to make sets for the music videos to look great and even then the songs totally kill any mood.   

Overall, O Teri is a shamble of a rip-off with no clear indication of what it wants to speak out against. Instead it all concludes into a mess of a win for protagonists you could care less about. Pulkit Samrat could become one hell of a character actor despite his movie star looks, so Salman Khan and friends could think of better roles to offer his protégé.

4. Jai Ho

Director: Sohail Khan

Cast: Salman Khan as Major Jai Agnihotri, Tabu as Geeta Agnihotri, Daisy Shah as Rinky, Sana Khan as Kavita Patil, Mukul Dev as Patil, Mahesh Thakur as Rehaan, Ashmit Patel as Sumit, Yash Tonk as Babu, Naman Jain with Danny Dezongpa as Dashrat Singh and Monish Bahl as CM Ashok Pradhan

Genre: Action/Drama

Best Scene: Can't remember

Best Performance: Tabu as Geeta Agnihotri

Best Dialogue: Won't remember

Pros:-Tabu and Namaan Jain give apt performances as to their characters and tone of the feature

Cons:-The film's main message while wonderful is sadly a blatant rip off from Hollywood feature Pay it Forward

           -Dialogues are full of exposition, telling you every single detail. Sohail Khan uses it as a crutch to unravel character and each plot point

           -Film has odd pacing with songs constantly jerking the scripts motion

           -It takes long to get to its main plot and message. Yet in that much time it wastes potential to build character

           -It has no sense of logic, which ends up deflating any point of emotional resonance eg. When the Suman suicides cause no one helps her, shouldn't the college have had a person at hand for her or given her an oral examination

           -Moments of drama and comedy bog the script down, the film gets fairly dull during these points

           -Sohail Khan doesn't reign in the feature. He lets his form of nepotism run rampant with his poor control of actors. While there's an abundance of uninspired and confusing camera angles used.

           -This also affects the action sequences which are shot in the wrong method divulging the incorrect tone and feel of the scenes

           -Editing is choppy, film oddly cuts to black at times and the length is too long. VFX shots are poorly rendered and wiring is easily noticeable. Making for an amateurish production.

           -Acting is all over the place, Khan uses a plethora of who's who of friends and gives them roles when they really cannot act or have no screen presence. Daisy Shah gives a terrible stilted debut

           -Salman Khan moves through the motions, phoning it in.

           -Music does nothing to be worth listening to again and again, after already messing the plot

Score: 1.0/10

Jai Ho takes the base plotline from Hollywood flick Pay it Forward and tacks it onto a film that is sold as Salman Khan 'is a good guy' propaganda without the thrills, spills and fun acting that Kick provided.

While it copies it's basic plot idea, the film is a remake of Telugu hit Stalin. It's about an ex-army officer Jai (hence the title) who's a big ho...just kidding, Bhai fans...who loves helping people and trashing public property while doing so. He was court martial cause he actually did his job and now has a formula to help people he saw from a Hollywood movie. In his bid to help three people and bore three audience members, he faces off against a corrupt politician and his power.

Oh and he falls in love with a woman who teases his nephew, about his little wiener. I kid you not.

What it did right?

In any given year the underrated Tabu could have won a national award for her performance in this film, where she tries her level best to rise up against the shitty material she is given. Thank god that this year saw her in another magnificent performance, or Jai Ho would have had one award to its name.

Namaan Jain should get equal credit for playing the oh so typical annoying filmy kid well, as he takes the most trivial material, about his wee wee and Salman's girls pink panties and actually plays it off better than it sounds.

What it did wrong?

Speaking off the panties issue. I really love that it happened, because it overtly pontificates what Masala movies regularly hide (that is how unsubtle this movie really is) and shows that Salman is one hell of a hypocrite.

This was Salman Khan's quote on the kind of films he does, compared to the mature or adult themed films an Anurag Kashyap makes;

“I do clean films, straight out. Mujhe meri picture main gaali vaali rakhne ki koi zaroorat nahi padti. (I don’t needto use abusive language in my films.) I just want to do my kind of cinema. I just want our filmmakers to make movies with our culture and value system. I watch films with friends and family. But I can’t take my family to watch that film. Even though everybody is grown up and mature in my family. And we all are adults and aware and very chilled out but I don’t I think I will want to see that film with them.”

Basically what Khan means is that he makes family films. Now that might be true for a Kick but here he clearly seems to think he makes a family film where the violence is nigh infinite and brutal while there's a little kid and an adult woman making jokes that veer into uncomfortable territories (like Veer itself, inside joke).

Most Masala films these days can be accused of being two faced and double natured in many aspects, whether it be family friendly and then sticking in an overtly sexual and regressive item song to the film.

This is of course isn't the worst thing about this film.

I hate the fact that the writers treat the message of the film with such a heavy hand. Not only does Sohail Khan use excessive exposition to sell a message he pretends to have created in his film (when it was copied) but he uses that message to beef up a film that is clearly Salman Khan propaganda.

It's basically a stripped down version of Kick, that tries to sell you the idea without the gloss the better film had. Maybe this is better, such that we can call out Khan for his incessant behavior to make himself look good, but it turns out to be coincidental because of how shitty the production is.

Sohail also uses dialogue as a crutch one too many times to reveal things about Jai and other characters, increasingly using exposition such that scenes and dialogues get repetitive.

The message itself is good, it's about helping people but as I said its copied and to pretend otherwise would be a disservice to the original film. The message works in tandem with the larger than life character Salman Khan plays, which is basically another word for him playing himself.

It literally takes away any form of characterization, as the film is obviously just going to focus on Jai who really is just Salman Khan in a uniform. Then you'd think Sohail would be smart to dive right down into the story or the message of the film, no instead he spends time introducing us to a lengthy line of characters he's clearly just written off hand to cast his inept friends.

One of the weirdest cameos is that of Genelia D'Souza playing Suman. She's a girl with no hands whose about to give one of her most important exams and when no one comes to write her paper for her she decides to commit suicide. The amount of screwing logic takes here is undeniably sad, why a girl with such strength to go on with her life over an exam is not made sense of.

Worse still why the school would not provide her with an insider to write her paper or let her give an oral exam is completely stupid and unethical. Yet it's a politician's daughter who is too blame according to the girl's brother and Jai cause she stopped traffic. Okay so the politician's daughter did something wrong, but Jai's reaction for this is to fight against these people while conveniently forgetting at the end why he was really doing it in the first place.

Seriously Jai is the worst form of heroic fantasy doled on the audiences. This is a man who in the name of true justice trashes villains and destroy public property for the sake of the public. Now where will the money come to fix the city? The tax paying public.

The story aside, the production is in shambles. Camera work is terribly amateurish. There's too many instances where Sohail Khan tries to place in different angles to make the film comes off as stylistic, but ends up being dull and confusing. There's no point to the way he frames his film.

The VFX work and some of the sets that are designed look fake and really pop out thus disengaging you. Editing is all over the place, the film runs to long, there's no flow between scenes, songs constantly destroy any pace the film picks up and there's too many odd instances where the film just cuts to black.

As for the acting I've already spoken at length about the cast Sohail Khan has. From Ashmit Patel to Yash Tonk and from Sana Khan to Bruna Abdullah, Sohail attacks the viewers with his plethora of friends who have failed in Bollywood for a good reason; they just can't act, even the smallest scene that requires nothing of them.

The talented Mukul Dev is wasted, Danny Dezongpa doesn't make for a threatening villain nor does the actor portraying his son. Monish Behl is clearly not at the top of his game and of all the worse actors there's debutant Daisy Shah.

No doubt a fantastic dancer, she was not made to be an actor. Assaulted with the worst make up job you could ever see, she has no screen presence and lacks the basic tools to even give a competent performance in a film that clearly shoehorns the female characters.

Being a film clearly based around Salman's good guy persona and the fact that it's directed by his brother, you'd expect Salman Khan to channel his likeable charisma (like he did in Kick) and steal the show. The sad fact is that the actor is so complacent about the work he does and know will become hit, that he phones it in. He channels the rage required for the character, but it comes off more as dull and arrogant from the superstar. It's a performance of clear disinterest.

Any atrocious masala movie film maker would be smart to then add great music to his presentation. Yet the soundtrack here is dull and feels done before in a basic sense. So much so that certain songs sound so sadly stupid (hey alliteration!), e.g. Photocopy.

Overall, the film is clearly the kind of subtextual vehicle Kick is. It's meant to promote the stature of Salman Khan as a good man with the social message the film presents. What it turns into however is a film with terrible production value, annoying acting and some really questionable sequences in the narrative.

It's another run of the mill Masala film from this decade, that thankfully never got the kind of box office other Salman Khan films have in the past few years.

3. Youngistaan

Director: Syed Ahmad Fazal

Cast: Jacky Bhagnani as Abhimanyu Kaul, Neha Sharma as Anwita Chauhan, Depankar De as Shubhodeep Ganguly, Kayoze Irani as Ajay Doshi with Boman Irani as Dashrat Kaul and Farooq Sheikh as Akbar Uncle

Genre: Political Drama...more like Unintentional Comedy

Best Scene: The video to 'Suno na Sange marmar'

Best Performance: Farooq Sheikh as Akbar Uncle

Best Dialogue: Can't remember

Pros:-Farooq Sheikh gives a great turn against the bad tide in sadly his last film

          -Sunona Sanghemarmar is the highlight of the film

Cons:-This isn't a movie, it's a travesty hinging on stupidity and nepotism

           -With a logic less and unrealistic plot point driving the script, the film falls on itself

           -The scripts harps on it's plots stereotypes to build a story that is full of clichés 

           -Dialogues are rife with exposition that is irrelevant. They also tend to be cheesy, hackneyed and idiotic

           -Abhimanyu is a character unrealistically developed and has an arc that doesn't resonate and is predictable

           -Characters are terribly fleshed out. Anwita is a one note stock character. The whole film is littered with them.

           -Key scenes are terribly structured due to the abundant use of wholly unnecessary shots such as shaky cam

           -The editing is choppy, scenes just come and go with no flow in between. The tone of the film drops and the sluggish pace makes for a boring experience

           -Director Afzal has no handle over proceedings, his amateurish film making shows through the lens and method with which the screenplay unravels

           -The acting by both Bhagnani and Sharma can make you weep on the account of how terrible it is.

           -Score tends to constantly force the emotions on its audience without earning it

Score: 1.0/10

Disclaimer Warning: This stupid film is not based on the equally stupid Pepsi ad campaign.

While the board is allowed to choose the Indian film they send to the Oscars as they like, other films through their own funding can send the film in categories as they wish. An example is the short listing for Jal in both the original score and film ballots.

Of course sending the film doesn't mean you're ever going to be shortlisted. Thank god, the idiotic Youngistaan wasn't.

How did Vashu Bhagnani think that this-what it is it now?-fourth (I think?!) re-launch for his talentless son could be worthy of even being in the same consideration as films like Fandry, Jatishwar and Liar's Dice let alone the Oscars.

Heck, that talentless loser Jacky Bhagnani also got to appear in Cannes to promote his shit pile of a film.

The saddest thing isn't even the film, but rather the heart breaking fact that it is meant to be Farooq Sheikh's last film. I weep for the memory of this amazing actor, who even gives it his best in this feature well below him.

The films story follows a game designer Abhimanyu (Bhagnani) who is forced to become the prime minister when his father (Irani) passes away. He begins to change the city and effect the polls of the upcoming elections, causing for the youth to rise up for the future of India.

What it did right?

This is Farooq Sheikh's last film and despite how terrible it is, Sheikh once again gives it his all. Playing the PA to Bhagnani's political prodigy he is sincere and natural as he helps the young man rise against the inner struggle in the party and the outer struggle of politics.

Sheikh has always been a force of nature, and this performance despite how small is proof of that. If only he could have imbued his greater qualities onto his cast members.

Another highlight of the film is Arijit Singh's beautifully crooned 'Suno Na Sange Marmar'. It's one of the best songs from Bollywood of this year, and another example that when you have Arijit Singh people will flock to the theaters.

What it did wrong?

A lot.

Clearly a film that thinks itself Oscar worthy when told otherwise by the critics, public and a panel of well read judges is kidding itself.

This is the fourth vehicle in years that Vashu Bhagnani has wasted money on for his talentless son Jacky. It's a clear indication that as long as you're a producer's son with 'acting' aspirations, you'll get as many chances as a great script will get rejections.

This time round Vashu substitutes the contemporary stars for veteran thespians to try and make up for Jacky's lack of acting talent. The young man's dreams are clearly going to cost his father money for generations to come.

Eventually Jacky will realize that he's not cut out to be an actor, when he does; he will go the Uday Chopra way and become producer occasionally coming out of retirement to torture us little folk.

The irony of the film lies in its story, in my opinion Vashu Bhagnani read this film and drew parallels with  his and his sons career right now. Bhagnani's production house has never been known to really produce and top notch content, and his insistence to push his son shows in the sub text of this film.

As mentioned, the film is about a dying prime minister played by Boman Irani who calls his son Abhimanyu (Jacky) back home to take his place, this is the 21st century mind you when there's something called democracy in India. Abhimanyu goes on to become a stellar politician, winning the hearts of millions despite mostly being seen singing and dancing with his money minded annoying girlfriend (as 'Acted' by Neha Sharma).

There's no denying that the film is trying to promote the idea of how well Nepotism works, and how in some cases it can save the country. It's not a coincidence that Bhagnani was styled like another political family son turned politician Rahul Gandhi; a man who has proven to say some of the most weird things on stage and truly promote that Nepotism isn't the key to our future. 

Ranbir Kapoor they are not.

Since the dawn of time, screenwriters in Bollywood have used dialogues as such a terrible crutch for their films. It comes as no shock that now Indian audiences would be used to being spoon fed information from any film, it's why when an Ek Villain goes the opposite way; it gets overboard.

Here though the writers use the worn out formula of explaining every little detail yet it's confusing because the topic at hand is so complex. Indian politics is something that just cannot be truly unraveled.

Characters are also clearly just sketched out, there's no development in Abhimanyu's arc as what we see is him singing songs with his girlfriend Anaita, a stock character that doesn't help make sense as to why  Abhimanyu falls for her.

The abhorrent way in which the film is shot disregards any semblance of narrative, the editing equally helps with choppy cuts that create a distinct lack of flow in the feature. It's like you're watching scene after scene separately, bringing the music into the fold makes it even worse.

Of course Jacky Bhagnani alone isn't the worse thing. Saddled with a terrible character, Neha Sharma whose proven to be a terrible actor, really outdoes Bhagnani in the performance department. She's shrill, annoying and despite actually looking good gives her character an ugliness you can't be unseen.

Overall, I'd like to assure the masses. This Jacky 'Hack' Bhagnani starrer only got shortlisted for the Oscars, is because it was Independently sent by the producers (Despite the objections of India's own Oscar selection committee) and to be shortlisted isn't such a big deal, it happens for mostly every film sent to the Academy. The sad thing for me apart from seeing Sheikh one last time, is that the film allowed Jacky Bhagnani to be a part of the Cannes film festival festivities.

The only redemption was his idiotic misspelling of Nobel laureate Malala, making her into Masala (spices) on Twitter. 

2. Humshakals

Director: Sajid Khan

Cast: Saif Ali Khan as Ashok Singhania*3, Riteish Deshmukh as Kumar*3, Ram Kapoor as Mamji aka KANS/Johnny/Rajvinder, Bipasha Basu as Mishti, Esha Gupta as Dr. Shivani Gupta, Tamannah Bhatiya as Shanaya with Satish Shah as Y.M. Raj and Chunky Pandey as Bijlani

Genre: They say its comedy...I doubt

Best Scene: End credits

Best Performance: End credits

Best Dialogue: End Credits

Pros:-Riteish, Ram and Satish Shah are a failed redeeming factor to this downright shoddy film. They stand out as funny only because the film itself is terrible

          -Two songs raise the tempo of the film when it is already lagging   

Cons:-The film's greatest crime is that it's just not funny, overall.

           -Lazy writing is afoul through the script, as the writers use plot points to reinforce the illogical story

           -Dialogues spoon feed a lot of unnecessary information to the point of annoyance

           -There is no particular consistency in the narrative, as such the jokes fall flat and dramatic moments ring false

           -Khan wears his influences on his sleeves, he literally lifts scenes and jokes from other films including his own and presents it as a false homage

           -Production design overall is shoddy, the use of tacky sets and unnecessary vfx highlights the poor vision of Khan and his producers

           -There's a fine line between funny hamming and totally out of control over acting. Every actor in the film commits this crime at least once. Saif Ali Khan can be especially singled out as he is ill suited to the slapstick brand of comedy

           -The other pieces of music in the soundtrack are dull and lifeless

           -Sound mixing is shoddy, the dubbing of dialogue can be clearly seen as incorrect and incoherent with the visuals from time to time

           -Worse yet, the score seems to blare out each occurrence in the narrative eg. Cocaine ke parathe playing in the background when Kumar 2 uses cocaine as flour

Score: 0.4/10...that even feels to lenient

Some people fall from the greatest heights, I wish Sajid Khan could do the same.

Seriously, I'm not joking; I really wish he could just fall and keep on falling down for eternity.

He's never even reached a metaphorically acceptable height in his career, yet with each film he has fallen to an all new low.

For me Humshakals was a must see for two reasons;

The first, I needed something to be filled in this top ten post. This one was for you all.

And the second because I wanted to know how bad it can get and fucking rip apart this man in this post. This for myself.

And it can't get any worse. Humshakals is the epitome of stupidity of not just the film maker, but the people who shelled money to watch this in the theater and allowed Khan to pocket 70 crore's from this film.

So to all who saw this in the cinema, FUCK YOU! To those (hopefully little) who enjoyed it; go check yourself for FUCKING BRAIN DAMAGE, YOU BLOODY FUCKS!

What it did right?

Well to be honest nothing, it's not that the trio of actors; Riteish Deshmukh, Ram Kapoor and Satish Shah were funny or any good, but it's that the film was so bad they seemed better for it.

For Riteish the piece of cake was that a film like this, where he's doing the same thing he's been doing for a decade added value to his performance in Ek Villain (which came a week after Humshakals) which was great if not mind blowing.

Clearly Deshmukh needs to move away from the kind of crap rut he has been in and do things like Ek Villain (performance wise, not film wise) or the Marathi films (Balak Palak, Yellow, Lai Bhaari) he produces.

What it did Wrong?

I'm proud to say that I checked this out through pirated means. Heck, I'm even proud to say I watched it till the end. Now I know the level of torture I can stand.

This was such a piss poor film, that I'm even ashamed to not have given it a negative score.

Even its own star cast lambasted it. From Saif Ali Khan to Esha Gupta, every actor had something bad to say at one point or another even though in Esha's case she has no other film to really be proud of. Apart from Bipasha Basu (who decided to not promote the feature) I commend the other actors from putting on a straight face and trying hard to sell this shit.

Of course the worst was in the feature itself. Stale repetitive jokes, odes to comedic legends that felt more like rip-off's and insults to their memories, shots stolen from his own films and the usual men including Riteish Deshmukh dressed in drags.

Wow! Saif Ali Khan would make one ugly woman!

The story is clearly non existent, it revolves around rich kid Ashok and his friend Kumar put into trouble by Ashok's thieving uncle called KANS (Indians will get it) and replacing them with doubles to take his business empire.

He uses clones from the mental hospital and when they don't work; his associates gay (you know that from their insulting stereotyped mannerisms) lab assistants, who are done plastic surgery on. KANS also has his own doubles, an anal mad man and a hyper bar dance owner.

Each double being much worse and much more insulting and annoying then the next. The effects work on the doubles looks so fake, it reminds you of some seventies movie.

Whatever point you dissect it from, the story runs null and void. It's nothing, it's just a thin thread connecting each joke to the next in the most banal fashion with jokes with the most inept punch lines that just fall flat.

Worst of all is of course Sajid Khan himself, he's a real idiot or an asshole from any perspective. A clear joke in his film indicates this, when he has the mental patient versions of Ashok and Kumar put through mental torture. Not shocks like you'd expect, rather the warden played by Satish Shah shows the duo Sajid Khan's own Himmatwala.

Is he making fun of himself? And if so does he actually know that he's films are terrible?

It doesn't seem so if you see the making attached at the end of the film, he's clearly shown laughing at a lame joke he's shot along with Saif Ali Khan. The funniest bit is here, when we see his longtime collaborator Riteish Deshmukh's wife on set scowling at Sajid Khan, obviously cause of how unfunny this hack truly is.

Speaking of the actors in detail; when a film that is unintentionally hilarious trying to be serious and an actor in the production realizes as such, that such actor produces a hammy but terrific performance against the tide. Just look at Nawzuddin Siddiqui this year in Kick.

Sadly when you force each of your actors to ham in a film that clearly realize is stupid, your bound to produce an even stupider product. Each actor is much more terrible than the next.

The women have no scope apart from looking hot and falling for the useless heroes.

Thank god for the music that raises the energy of the film, despite being terrible examples of music. The score is the most atrocious piece, a scene sees the not yet mad duo of protagonists instead of using flour to make their special parotha's (Indian breads) using their gangster bosses cocaine. The background music blares loudly 'Cocaine ke Parathe'. It is so blatantly stupid and spoon feeding that it kills the modicum of shitty humor the film maker was creating.

This is not even the worst joke in the film. At the beginning, KANS conspires with a scientist friend to make a drug so that Ashok and Kumar go mad and thus lose investor confidence in a board meeting. It sounds smart, except for the fact that the drug makes them act like dogs; Saif literally gives the most insulting imitation of a dog.

The one thing I would like to do is pick Sajid Khan's brain. I would love to understand how such a man thinks to make the kind of films he does. Anyways, salute to the idiots who watched this including me cause...Hum pagal hai aur hamare dimaag bhi kharab hai (We are mad and our minds are bad).

While this film is the worst of Bollywood in 2014. But there were three films I watched for at leas tan hour or a half and I couldn't tolerate them because they were terrible and also because I had already just seen Humshakals so I was in no mood. 

Also I'm not going list the cast and shit. 

I couldn't be bothered. So here are the three in perspective, worst films of the year. 

1. Entertainment/Xpose/Yaariyaan

As aforementioned, if you're not going to make an effort in giving me a film worth watching, then sadly I won't give a damn about watching it. Now in this case it means that I might go all the way with certain terrible films, but with some (like these special 3) I wont even bother one bit to switch the movie off and out of my head.

After an ordeal of going through watching some of the films on the list and then begrudgingly gaining a headache by wrapping my eyes around Humshakals, I checked out each of these three films. As such I had neither the patience nor the inclination to check these out, rather giving a lazy zero for a lazy film.

First; Yaariyaan

A hodge podge of teen film clichés and copied plots from the likes of Student of The Year, mixed with an unnecessary jingoistic message. Yaariyaan is a film directed by Divya Khosla Kumar. A producers wife, who formerly dabbled in acting (under her Husband's banner) and now direction.

Nepotism thy name is Bollywood.

This atrociously directed film-let me reiterate-is directed by a woman, big deal because through out the film the camera flits onto the chests and skirts of nubile young models trying their best to act. It's disgusting and it panders to a low IQ demographic of Indian teenagers around the country and maybe the world.

So it's not surprising that a thin plot, painful acting, annoying Honey Singh songs would make a 100 crore grosser of a film.

Mainstream cinema in India, is definitely going to hell. 

After 30 minutes, I kept on fast forwarding the film to a point acceptable; what I found was the end credits.

Next; Xpose

With Happy New Year, Kick and the likes, I can in some form understand why the superstars helming those pictures feel they deserve their ego's to be soothed on celluloid. Now with Himesh Reshamiya, despite his decades worth of chart bursting mediocre music, I don't see how as an 'actor' or 'writer' he deserves the audiences attention over a film that caters to his swollen head.

Set in the 70's, just a few years prior to the arrival of Rajnikanth or angry young man Amitabh Bachchan, there's a famous cop Ravi Kumar who gets fired for pointing a gun at a minister and murdering him. Not put in jail for an infinite period, but actually just fired...heck I think he quit the force, I can't even remember.

He goes on to become the biggest superstar in Tamil Cinema, wearing his modern slick Ray Bans as he does this. He then prepares to make his mark in Hindi Cinema, with his superstar ego coming into play (not Reshamiya's but Kumar's) like it naturally would.

From there on we're presented to a convoluted murder mystery that is neither thrilling nor shocking enough, after all director Anant Mahadevan and writer Himesh Reshamiya twist the tale so much that the narrative returns to where it predictably began giving us the most obvious killer. Of course Reshamiya also goes on to solve this case as well, since he's a super cop, super actor and superstar.

It's a depraved attempt to make oneself feel better. The film also features a head shaking Yo Yo Honey Singh, with music by the talentless duo that produces duds such as a song about eating ice-cream and a tune by tune copy of Aashiqui 2's  'Tum Hi Ho'. 

Let's not forget to mention the party where the murder happens, a blatant rip-off of Gatsby's parties in last year's Great Gatsby movie. Right from the color of the drapes to the way Ravi Kumar nods at his guest, Leonardo DiCaprio he's not. 

The icing on the cake or rather the lack of it?

Irrfan Khan. Yes the Irrfan Khan of Life of Pi, Namesake and Paan Singh Tomar is part of this film.

And now Reshamiya has announced a sequel to the film, after the first was such a blockbuster.

KILL ME NOW!

Finally; It's Entertainment

First of all let me just say that the collective IQ of India went down when this film became a huge hit at the Box-Office and got uncountable ten stars on fucking IMDB.

Now let's talk about Akshay Kumar a little bit. Last year when Sajid Khan decided to release his Himmatwala with a new star at the forefront, rounds of his broken relationship with regular collaborator Akshay Kumar made the rounds. This year's Saif Ali Khan starrer Humshakals confirmed it, Kumar had been saved by the graces of god from the clutches of a turd of a director.

Then he had to go on and do this film.

Now I don't mind that the film revolves around an animal, heck Oggy was the best part for me about Oscar winning The Artist. Yet for a film that promotes loving your animals, I can't begin to comprehend how poorly tortured Junior (the dog in question) must have been when he saw himself on screen in this mammoth crapfest.

This is literally a fucking three hour sitcom episode on screen. One that isn't even remotely funny and features what should be considered an Oscar nomination for the poor pet.  The dog literally wags it tail and tongue to a performance that is much better than the combined cast.

When your films funniest actor is a comedic hack like Krushna Abhishek, then you know your film is catering to those beyond the lowest IQ. It's sad then, that the film became a mega hit behind the star power of Akshay Kumar who looks like a dog himself in this movie. Seriously, what the hell's wrong with your hair dude?

Tammanah, already a top class superstar down south has the opportunity to take the Sonakshi Sinha mantle of 'Women doing nothing in Movies', after her third Hindi film dud in as many as two years.

Of course then the film is littered with Masala movie actors doing everything but acting.

Hammy villain duo of Prakash Raj (man just go back to Tamil cinema) and Sonu Sood (dude seriously needs a make over). 

The dance king Mithoon as the patriarch; who really needs to realize that he's not going to make anything as worse and as intentionally funny as Gunda, so he should give up.

And a has been Johnny Lever.

The duo of Sajid-Farhad have proven to be the most terrible writers of this decade, churning out crap masala movies to the most misogynist comedies on celluloid. Their resume reeks of terrible movies and this (their directorial debut) is another entry in that long line.

They will be next seen taking the helm of the unfortunately successful Housefull franchise from Sajid Khan. 

There's also some haphazard vfx included, for no other reason than to seem cool but making the filmmakers come of as fools.

To conclude, not many people will see the good product that is coming into Hindi cinema. The independent sections needs a big push in distribution and exhibition. Most will see the worst and they will complain but do nothing else.

Mainstream Hindi cinema hinges on its audience, and its audience is willing to suffer through these forms of lazy film making under the guise of entertainment. Then so be it.

From complacent actors to ego pushing stars with severe case of mid life crisis, and a host of downright lazy film makers...some of which are considered innovators, FUCK YOU MOHIT SURI!

Now A special for you tolerant fans and for those fuckers (including me) who decided to watch these films. 

It's the opposite of my HIndie, the Bollywood Razzies!

The Deshdrohi award for Worst Film-Humshakals (cause I watched it all the way and got a headache)

The Kanti Shah Award for Worst Director-Sajid Khan for Humshakals

The KRK award for Worst Actor-Jacky Bhagnani for Youngistaan

The Katrina Kaif award for Worst Actress-Shradda Kapoor for Ek Villain/Neha Sharma for Youngistaan

The Scriptless Award-Humshakals

The RGV ki Aag Award for Worst Remake/Rip-off-Ek Villain and O Teri

The April Fool Award-The Audience that made money for all the above films

The Honey Singh Award for Useless Music-Yo Yo Honey Singh/Himesh Reshamiya  for Xpose

The Sonakshi Sinha award for Wasting your Career-Tamannah Bhatia for Humshakals/Entertainment

The WTF is He/She doing in This Crap Award-Irrfan Khan for Xpose/Junior the Dog for Entertainment

The Uday Chopra Award for Nepotism Gone Seriously Wrong-Divya Khosla Kumar for Yaariyan (let's spare Jacky this one and award someone else for a change)

Best Thing About A Bad Film-Riteish Deshmukh for Ek Villain and Kriti Sanon for Heropanti

Worst Thing About A Good Film-Mona Ambegaonkar for Mardaani

This has been a sort of good year for Bollywood in 2014, but there's something so bad about the bad films in 2014. The disparity between the good and bad is becoming so huge that its obvious that this decade is turning into another 1980's for Bollywood. 

Most will remember it for the crap that were the highs of box office in mainstream cinema. A few will remember the best gems of the decade. 

If we've seen an Action Jackson, Happy New Year and Humshakals then I'd urge audiences turned off by Hindi cinema to remember that we've also seen a Haider, an Ugly, a Queen and an Aankhon Dekhi. 

Next: A look at the nominees for my new HIndie Awards 2015 

'Nuff Said

Aneesh Raikundalia