Jhoom Bore Bore Jhoom would be a more apt name for this sleeping pill of a movie.



Utterly bereft of any entertainment value, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom has no artistic raison d'etre and is an all-out assault on commonsense.



Yet another sophomoric love story, Jhoom Bore Bore Jhoom's only redeeming feature is an above par performance by pretty face Preity Zinta.



Jhoom Bore Bore Jhoom is the second terrible film from India's premier movie house Yash Raj Films in as many months. If you thought Ta Ra Rum Pum was bad, you ain't seen bad until you see this buffoonish spectacle called Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.



Jhoom Bore Bore Jhoom's got no story. It's got no uplifting music. It's got little in the form of acting. All you get is dollops of nonsense in this bizarrely awful movie.



From the first frame to the last, Jhoom Bore Bore Jhoom is an eggregious offense against good taste.



Lead actors Abhishek Bachchan and Bobby Deol are hopelessly incompetent and show no signs of improving despite both of them having over two dozen movies each under their belts.



Rikki Thukral (Abhishek Bachchan) and Alvira Khan (Preity Zinta) meet at a London train station as both wait for their respective sweethearts Anaida (Lara Dutta) and Steve (Bobby Deol) to come in from Birmingham.



And lo behold, in a matter of hours Rikki and Alvira (a Brit of Pak origin) start singing songs and are in love.



So what happens to their respective beaus Anaida and Steve? Don't bother to find out.



This ghastly movie is just not worth wasting your time or money on.



After watching them go through the motions of acting in one inane movie after another and flop after flop, we are inclined to believe that Abhishek Bachchan and Bobby Deol are the kiss of death for any Bollywood movie.



As for Lara Dutta, the Bollywood Bozos must have dredged the low end of the human gene pool to find such an incompetent actress.



And pray what is Amitabh Bachchan doing in this assine movie?



Every once in a while he shows up wearing an outlandish cosume and starts singing Jhoom Barabar Jhoom in a London train station.



Hoping for some decent music at least? Ain't gonnna happen in this repellent farce.



Jhoom Bore Bore Jhoom should carry a statutory warning that it can put the worst insomniacs into a deep slumber.



Jhoom Barabar Jhoom is Bollywood at its pathetic worst. Watch this trash at your peril. ... More ... Collapse

I was bowled over by Johnny Gaddaar.



A fast-paced thriller, Johnny Gaddaar is ample testimony that you can make a gripping Bollywood movie without any of the big names.



Also, as long as you have a decent story you don't have to go gallivanting around the globe filming in locales like Namibia, Australia, Switzerland or Brazil.



Without doubt, Johnny Gaddaar comes with a nice story and a tight script. No meandering or sloppy detours here.



Most Bollywood movies are unwatchable despite the presence of big name heroes and sultry sirens because of the wafer-thin stories. That is when our Bollywood bozos are not shamelessly stealing from Hollywood. Fortunately, Johnny Gaddaar is different.



In the late British author James Hadley Chase tradition of providing a strong protagonist who is usually a criminal but not really a completely evil or loathsome figure, Johnny Gaddar offers us the criminal Vikram. Bad but not repulsive and carried along mostly by the tide, Vikram holds our attention throughout the movie.



Johnny Gaddar packs all the ingredients of a fine thriller - love, crime, sexy girls, action, unexpected twists and betrayal.



Newcomer Neil Nitin Mukesh (grandson of the famous singer Mukesh) does a decent job as the young lad Vikram in a haste to get rich. Only in one crucial scene featuring a confrontation with Dharmendra does Neil Nitin Mukesh falter and fails to deliver the goods.



Besides Neil Nitin Mukesh, Dharmendra, Zakir Hussain, Vinay Pathak and Ashwini Kalsekar deliver solid performances too. Even that Bollywood clown Rimi Sen has thrown in an acceptable performance here.



The story centers around a gang of five criminals headed by Seshadri (Dharmendra) who embark on an assignment that is supposed to net them a hefty profit in just a few days.



But one member of the gang has other ideas.



He wants all the money for himself so that he can make a new beginning in a far off place with his girl friend Mini (Rimi Sen). So the doublecrosser sets in motion a train of events with deadly consequences for the others.



Johnny Gaddaar is easily one of the best Bollywood movies we've seen in the last six months. ... More ... Collapse

The Bollywood thieves have done it again.



They have stolen a successful Hollywood plot (Three Men and a Baby), made some changes and brought us an unwatchable horror show called Heyy Babyy.



Starring Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson and directed by Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame, Three Men and a Baby was a delightful comedy that deservedly went on to become one of the biggest hits of 1987.



There are so many unforgettable scenes in Three Men and a Baby.



For instance, Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson singing Well, it’s time to go. Goodnight, sweetheart to the baby, Tom Selleck buying baby food, Tom Selleck and Steve Guttenberg rushing back home halfway through a play to check on the baby because Ted Danson doesn’t answer the phone, oh, we could go on and on.



Sadly, there’s not a single decent, noteworthy scene in Heyy Babyy.



Watching Heyy Babyy is sheer torture from beginning to the end. This is an ugly movie that should never have seen the light of the day.



Like Three Men and a Baby, Heyy Babyy is mostly the story of what happens to three bachelor friends when a baby girl is deposited on their doorstep one morning.



Although initially upset over the new arrival, the three womanizer friends Arush (Akshay Kumar), Tanmay (Riteish Deshmukh) and Al (Fardeen Khan) gradually warm up to the baby.



So, what’s wrong with Heyy Babyy? The short answer - plenty.



Mediocre performance by the lead stars, poor story development and horrible music are some of the key elements that make Heyy Babyy an ugly disaster.



Of the three shortcomings listed above, poor story development inflicts the maximum damage on the movie.



Before you can say Heyy Babyy, the baby is deposited on the bachelors’ doorsteps without anything leading up to it. Then, there’s Boman Irani’s poorly fleshed out role.



While much of Three Men and a Baby was filmed on the studio, our Bollywood bozos flew off to Australia to make this horrid nightmare hoping to bamboozle us with pictures of Sydney and skimpily-clad white girls.



Heyy Babyy is one of the crudest Bollywood movies we’ve seen with shit flying into the faces of the lead stars (literally).



None of the key actors in Heyy Babyy distinguish themselves. The hospital scene was one of the most contrived scenes we’ve seen in a Bollywood movie lately. It was shallowly amateurish.



Even a fine actress like Vidya Balan fails to impress in Heyy Babyy. And by the way, who were the clowns responsible for her makeup, hairstyle and costumes in Heyy Babyy? Whoever it was, they managed the difficult feat of making Vidya Balan look unattractive most of the time.



Akshay Kumar is no patch on Tom Selleck. Akshay is just unable to summon the range of expressions that Tom Selleck displays time and again in Three Men and a Baby to our great delight.



With most of Akshay Kumar’s movies in the last two years - Deewane Huye Pagal, Hum Ko Deewana Kar Gaye, Jaan-E-Mann, Bhagam Bhag, Namastey London - turning out to be duds, one wonders whether this dude’s career is on the wane.



Among the scores of bad Bollywood actors, Riteish Deshmukh and Fardeen Khan stand out for their eggregious performances in movie after movie. How these two lousy actors manage to land roles in movies is an unfathomable mystery to us on par with the enigma of the Bermuda Triangle.



Fans of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan will be pleased to see their hero make a brief appearance towards the end of Heyy Babyy.



Heyy Babyy’s music is hopeless and completely without merit. We would charitably describe it as cacophony.



Ultimately, Heyy Babyy is nothing but a bastardized and tawdry version of Three Men and a Baby.



Watch this insufferable Bollywood trash only if you have time and money to waste. ... More ... Collapse

Mani Ratnam's Guru does an enormous disservice to Dhirubhai Ambani, a colorful buccaneer and one of the most larger than life figures of modern India.



Like many of history's unforgettable characters, Dhirubhai Ambani was a hungry man all his life. Driven by his insatiable appetite, Ambani dramatically altered the landscape of Indian business, particularly in the 1970s and 80s, for both good and bad.



But Guru - the movie - fails to capture the essence of this extraordinary personality, the license-Raj times Ambani lived in, his role in creating an equity cult among the Indian middle class and his vicious fights with rivals. Also, don't forget his pernicious dalliance with corrupt politicians, venal bureaucrats and grasping journalists.



As Australian journalist Hamish McDonald rightly observes in his book The Polyester Prince, "Dhirubhai was never simply an industrialist, a trader, a financial juggler or a political manipulator, but all four in one."



But very little of Ambani's hunger or explosive energy comes through in the movie Guru. The movie is a pathetic caricature of a giant.



Of course, Guru has the inane disclaimer that it's a work of fiction. Does anybody really believe that drivel?



Guru is the story of Gurukant Desai a.k.a Guru (Abhishek Bachchan), a young lad who travels from his village of Idhar in Gujarat to Turkey before making it big as a Polyester tycoon in Bombay. In reality, Ambani worked in the Yemeni city of Aden before returning to India to start his own business.



Guru, the movie, has many things going wrong. More than anything else, it's Abhishek Bachchan's passionless, effete performance and Mani Ratnam's inept screenplay that robs us of the pleasure of seeing the life of an extraordinary individual brought to the big screen.



Abhishek Bachchan can't act. And the dude has proved it time and again. Why Mani Ratnam chose Abhishek Bachchan to play the role of one of Modern India's most interesting personalities is a mystery.



If Abhishek Bachchan can't act, he's in good company in Guru - his co-star Ms.World Aishwarya Rai can't emote for the life of her. Mercifully, Ms.Rai doesn't have that big a role in Guru.



Admitted, it's hard to distill the life story of many decades into two hours and 40 minutes. But it's been done by more competent directors than Mani Ratnam. Watch Robert De Niro's new movie The Good Shepherd for a fine lesson in keeping the audience spellbound through several decades in the life of CIA agent Edward Wilson, played with great elan by Matt Damon.



But then Mani Ratnam is not only no Robert De Niro, Mani Ratnam is also a director in decline. It's hard to believe that Guru is the product of the same director who brought us delightful movies like Kannathil Muthamittal and Bombay. Mani Ratnam's last Hindi movie Yuva was lousy. Guru is only a few notches better.



And what is that fine actress Vidya Balan doing in the movie? We searched hard for an answer but came a cropper. Her character as the Multiple Sclerosis granddaughter of the newspaper baron Nanaji (Mithun Chakraborty) is poorly fleshed out.



Madhavan has a limited role as the fearless journalist Shyam Saxena hellbent on exposing Guru's corrupt path to the acme of business.



The sole distinction of Guru is its music. Music maestro A.R.Rehman has yet again worked magic. We loved Guru's songs. Our favorite was Baazi Laga. Set to a nice beat, the song is a treat for the ears. We also enjoyed Barso Re and Mayya Marem featuring that voluptous babe Mallika Sherawat.



In a telling comment on the quality of the movie, a group of Gujjus behind us at the Regal Commerce movie house in North Brunswick (New Jersey) quickly grew restless and started chatting, talking on the phone and periodically walked in and out of the hall. They were clearly bored with Guru. And so were we.



Dhirubhai Ambani's rich, multi-layered story waits to be told on celluloid by a more competent cast of moviemakers. ... More ... Collapse