Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari Is The Most Anti-Film Of The Year
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This new Dharma film is an abysmal endeavour where all four characters have the personality of caterpillars and share deeper chemistry with their designer outfits than with each other, writes Ishita Sengupta.
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| | | Cast: Varun Dhawan, Janhvi Kapoor, Sanya Malhotra, Rohit Shroff | | | | ONCE UPON A TIME, Varun Dhawan was an interesting actor. He experimented with promise and, later, when his choices became conventional — leaning mostly on playing a man-child oblivious to the ways of the world till told otherwise by his female counterpart — the actor managed to inject intrigue in repetition. Once upon a time, his performance was a crossbreed of the 90s’ excess and modern alertness, evoking more nostalgia than awe. Today he is unable to not just diversify but even essay the same roles with conviction; this devolution, and not lack of evolution, is a thing of wonder. On paper, Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari is the kind of film curated for Dhawan’s filmography. Sunny Sanskari, his character, is goofy, oddly charming and a little bewildered. All he truly has is a beating heart. Therefore, when his girlfriend, Ananya (Sanya Malhotra), declines his Baahubali-coded proposal, he sulks a little and plans to win her over again. The cost is ruining her wedding, but this won’t be the first time he’d do so. He had done the same in Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania in 2014. Your pop culture fix awaits on OTTplay, for only Rs 149 per month. Grab this limited-time offer now! But here’s the thing: a decade has passed since then. The world has changed, and yet the actor is still in his lane, hydrated, unperturbed. The repetition freshly hurts because a lot of his portrayal is derivative. Dhawan channels Govinda a lot and grimaces like Akshay Kumar. When he is not falling back on others, he is free-styling his way through scenes. While this might be objectively concerning, it fits well with Shashank Khaitan’s new work, which unfolds as a cautionary tale about ad-libbing. Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari, written by Ishita Moitra and Khaitan (the writers of Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani), is all shine and glamour signifying nothing. |
| | Rishab Shetty's Kantara: Chapter 1 Is All Sound & Little Fury
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Kantara: Chapter 1 is a visual spectacle with some good performances, but the film suffers from its incohesive writing, simply because the scale takes over in the pursuit to become a pan-India legend. Subha J Rao reviews.
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| | | Cast: Rishab Shetty, Rukmini Vasanth, Jayaram, Gulshan Devaiah | | | | THERE'S A SCENE in Kantara (2022) where you know something is going to happen to Guruva, who is Shiva’s cousin. He’s the voice of God, he’s the good one. And, before that, you see flashes of who Guruva is. So when landlord Devendra travels with him, you instinctively know Guruva is going to be the sacrificial lamb. Despite that, when you saw it on screen, the tears flowed. Because, you cared. Because, by then, they’d told you who Guruva is. You know what the loss of that life meant. Kantara was full of such moments, where characters became people in flesh and blood. The scene where the daiva embraces the do-gooders gives goosebumps even on a phone screen. And, recreating that is never easy. I was waiting for at least one such moment here. Kantara was a movie. Kantara: Chapter 1 aspires to be a pan-India legend because of the kind of popularity the first film received. When you set out to better something, the first to suffer is the writing, simply because scale takes over. Unless you rein in everything else and get the foundation and scaffolding right. That does not happen here. So, Kantara: Chapter 1 is a visual spectacle, yes; it has some good performances, yes, but suffers from a lack of cohesive writing. Not a single joke really lands, and the lame attempt at humour in the epic climax leaves you cringing. ALSO READ | Rishab Shetty: The basic theme of Kantara Chapter 1 is the same as Kantara, but… The reason for this, I suspect, is also because you’ve seen the actors essaying these roles take on roles with gravitas in the past three years and rock them. To see them reduced to what they once were is difficult to digest. Be it Prakash Thumminadu, who plays an amorous soldier, much like the person he was in the first film, or Mime Ramdas, who plays a musician with exaggeration. After seeing the depth both are capable of, this is like picking low-hanging fruit. |
| | Cillian Murphy’s Steve Does The Job
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It’s an all-time performance by Murphy, who somehow stages Steve as both victim and survivor in a setting that democratises the nature of suffering, Rahul Desai writes. |
| | | Cast: Cillian Murphy, Tracey Ullman, Jay Lycurgo, Emily Watson | | | | STEVE opens with a 48-year-old man (Cillian Murphy) on his way to work. He’s full of nervous energy. The way he’s psyching himself up, you’d think he’s going to war. It’s going to be a long and complicated day. He knows it, not because the film revolves around this day, but because it’s just another day. The moment Steve reaches work, the war begins. As the headteacher of a school of reform for troubled boys, he is pulled into the quotidian mayhem of his ‘job’. The students of Stanton Wood are already at it: Jamie and Riley are fighting like animals again, Tarone is provoking everyone, Shy is brooding and simmering after a heartbreaking phone call with his mother. It’s 1996, and the heavy-metal emotions of youth clash with the hard-rock resilience of adulthood. Steve tries to calm them down, assuage them, warn them, banter with them; he’s everywhere and nowhere. There’s more to deal with than usual. A television news crew arrives to produce a social interest segment, interviewing the foul-mouthed boys and staff while overlaying the footage with serious questions like “is this a criminal waste of the British taxpayers’ money, or is it radical societal surgery to turn rotten apples into valuable fruit?”. A snooty local politician is expected to visit for a byte; Steve is sure that one of the boys will humiliate him. Steve and his deputy, Amanda, also have an ominous meeting with the State trust that’s funding this controversial rehabilitation program. Add to this the traumatic experience of the newest teacher, 28-year-old Shola, with one of the rowdy students, and an edgy session between counsellor Jenny and another. It’s enough to drive anyone to the bottle, but it drives Steve back to the bottle he had supposedly forsaken. |
| | The Game: You Never Play Alone Tries To Be Serious, But Ends As A Parody
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The Game wants to comment on the internet, cybercrime, privacy laws, misogyny and sexism, but really knows nothing about any of them. Shoddy filmmaking and performances only make it worse.
Aditya Shrikrishna reviews.
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| | | Cast: Shraddha Srinath, Santosh Prathap | | | | THE GAME: YOU NEVER PLAY ALONE is ominous not only in its title but also in its inaugural stature as Netflix India’s first Tamil original of the year. So far, Netflix has mostly dabbled in anthologies in Tamil; web series are a rarity. The world of web series is slow to take off in South India owing to factors like budget constraints, the scepticism about streaming within the film industries, and operational reasons from writing to production. It’s still at a nascent stage, even as OTT platforms introduce new series in several south Indian languages, and streaming itself is undergoing a churn in how it is viewed and operated. At this time comes The Game, a Tamil series starring Shraddha Srinath and Santhosh Prathap, written by Deepthi Govindarajan and directed by Rajesh M Selva. It takes long form’s trusted entry-level genre — thriller — and encapsulates it within a game developer’s world where digital objects become as much of a minefield as real life. Stream the latest films and shows with OTTplay's Power Play monthly pack, for only Rs 149. Unfortunately, The Game doesn’t pass muster. The disappointing part is not just that the series is mediocre; it is so ordinary that the average series on YouTube and other platforms from first-time filmmakers or young teams boasts of better quality in production and direction. Almost nothing here works. Kavya (Shraddha Srinath) is a game developer with a small-time Chennai-based company; she works alongside her husband Anoop ( Santhosh Prathap), though they belong to different teams. She is moderately active and famous on social media, just enough to have fans and receive hate online for the mere fact that she is a woman who speaks her mind. Just as the reaction to a sexist online interview goes out of hand and the trolls get sinister, masked men (Anoop’s flagship game is called Masked Mayhem) physically assault Kavya on the night of her winning a game development award. In the hospital the morning after, Kavya has no memory of the previous night beyond a point, and all suspicions point to the amazingly resourceful and savvy trolls on the internet. |
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