One look at the poster and you know what this film will be like. It is not rocket science to figure out that this one will be nothing more than an extension of the MIND IT…yanna rascala…episode from Om Shanthi Om. Financed by a Hollywood brand studio, starring an extremely talented Telugu hero, releasing in four languages, finally in Hyderabad after a delayed regional release and promising to be an out-an-out comedy I had high hopes on this film. Alas, the Quick Gun Murugun is disappointing I say as it does not rise above the labels on its posters.
Yes, there is a concept, but the treatment and story are bad. Murugun is pure vegetarian cowboy from the 70s when Rice Plat Reddy (Naseer) a bad rowdy fellow is ruthlessly converting all vegetarian hotels in to non-veg. Murugun is the only guy who can stand up to him and defeats Gunpowder who is Rice Plate Reddy’s point man. Oh yes, Murugan is super fast with his guns and thus the name. However, in one such shootout, Murugan is killed and goes to hell where he requests Chitragupt (Vinay Pathak in an insignificant role, which he does great as usual) to be sent again to take revenge. Chitragupt also feels that vegetarianism is the “need of the hour” and transports him back to Earth in to present day Mumbai. Now, Murugan needs to find out about Rice Pate Reddy (RPR). By this time, RPR is a major business rowdy running a non-veg dosa chain called McDosa. RPR and his gang of rowdies are busy kidnapping all the mummies of Mumbai to get the best receipe for dosa as their scientist has failed to make a perfect machine-made dosa. Meanwhile, Murugun has a locket which has his lover’s photo and he keeps talking to her. In addition, he begins to fall in love with Mango Dolly (Rambha, a Souther-Siren) who takes a liking to Murugan and also happens to be RPR’s mistress or in Murugan’s words “keep”. Mango Dolly helps Murugan in chasing and catching up with RPR and finally after a heavy gun battle everything kids well.
While the concept is fine (veg/non-veg battle, re-birth, south indian backdrop) the story is ultra childish and the
treatment is just plain Bad with a capital B. There are no funny or hilarious sequences. The only supposed-to-be funny moments are when the North Indians in the theater laugh at the South Indian accent and choice of words like MIND IT….what is this I say, all you mummies etc. Some of the dialogues and sequences are best suited for comedy bits in a film, but to make an entire film based on these comedy bits just does not work. There is also excessive display of violence. Rajendra Prasad is a Numero Uno hero when it comes to comedy films and is an extremely talented actor down South, particularly in the Telugu film industry. Perhaps, he accepted this film because of the Hollywood branding associated with this film because the film has nothing other than making fun of South Indians and their accent. Clearly, Shashanka Gosh the director is a childish man who loved the yanna rascala episode from Om Shanthi Om. Heroine Rambha is hot as usual. There is really hot scene to which the audience in the theater cannot but react. Suddenly we are shown Rajendra Prasad and Ramba sitting side by side and Ramba is wearing only the blouse and langa…this scene in my view is the only highlight scene of the film where you can feel Ramba’s juicy body and her sensousness. Alas, there is no such heroine today.
Although most hindi critics seem to have given favorable reviews to this film, the truth is Quick Gun Murugun is childish, immature, lousy and totally disappoints. The film is a flop. Avoid and do not expect anything creative here.
Mr. Inkenti’s Movienomics Verdict: Two Thumbs Down! A few laughs here and there, but definitely not worth a trip to the theater. Watch it on cable.
PS–it is essentially a Tamil film with lots of Tamil in it and English here and there too. Subtitles present.
One of the silliest interviews I have ever read in recent times is that of hero Ram’s that appeared on idlebrain.com a couple of days prior to the release of the film Ganesh (…just Ganesh). Hero Ram claims that kids in India and USA loved his performance as spider man in Ready and asked him when he would do a full length kids movie ( this is the heights of stupidity). If this is true, then hero Ram and his producer uncle Ravi Kishore have taken this silly appreciation a bit too far. The result: they made Ganesh with the tag line just Ganesh and just about everything about this film is Stupid with a capital S from the tag line to the story to the treatment. 
Neither is there any story nor is there anything interesting happening on screen. The movie begins with a chase where Ganesh (Ram) is introduced saving a baby sitting on the back of a vegetable truck (savior of kids kinda message I guess). Ganesh is supposed to be the ideal kinda friend who does anything for friends. His close lady friend is in love with a guy, but that guy’s father has given a word to his dieing father that he will marry his son to his sister. On the other side, the sister too gave the same promise. So what is the issue you ask? apparently, both brother and sister think the other must be the first to ask for marriage and there does not seem to any specific reason why it should be problematic. Fine, we accept that the director has no story in mind and just wants to play out some fun, but where is the fun? The entire movie is dedicated to kids and it really gets annoying. Make no mistake, although all other web reviews are talking about the 26 kids artists this is not by any measure as much fun as Mr. India or JVAS. Now, Ganesh plans to make the sister’s daughter, who happens to be (Divya) Kajol Agarwal, fall in love with him as he pretends his love. The point of all this? to show to the respective parents that both the boy and girl are in love with others so get these two lovers married. If you thought this stupid…then read on. Ganesh then plans to settle down below Divya’s apartment, but he realizes that the entire housing complex is dominated by a set of kids who are notorious. So Ganesh makes them beleive that is Super Man…yes, Super Man, just so that he has their trust and meanwhile he can make Divya fall in love with him.
drama. But of course, by this time our hero is genuinely in love with the heroine. So the second half is all about he proving his sincerity. Oh yes, shouldn’t there be fights for our hero Ram? so there is a villan by name Mahadev who gives loans to middle class. Most of his debtors default upon which Mahadev decends on them to break their hands etc. So our hero also fights with Mahadev, again, to prove to the kids that he is indeed SuperMan. And believe it or not there are sequences in the movie, which actually show the hero in the SuperMan get-up! Gosh….hero Ram has some super-hero fantasy! The movie is maha long. Just when you feel there should be an interval a song pops up and it takes a full one hour and thirty minutes before the interval. The movie is totally insane and boring to the core. The kids do not behave like kids, but are made to behave much older than their age. This is common in most Telugu movies. Up to a point, some sequences with the kids is okay, but it just gets on your nerves as nothing else is going on other than the silly episodes of Ganesh, the kids, and the silly super man thing. Hero Ram is full of overconfidence. He continues to act like Pawan Kalyan whenever he can and he seems to be the same in all his movies. He must understand that Ready was not a hit because of him and thats why Maska was average and now Ganesh will flop for sure. He feels he is full of attitude, but he needs to select good stories and do some variety. His dances are just okay as he tries too hard to do MJ all the time. Fights are total crap. He says in his interview he learnt some japaneese martial art for this film…he needs to stop day dreaming. Kajol Agarwal is just average and it confirms that Magadheera is a flash in the pan for her. Music is okay with one really good song. Brahmanandam comedy is the usual routine fare. He too needs to quit these routine roles where he feels like a hero, but then gets beaten up.
A couple of months prior to its release, Salman Khan made a comment that WANTED will be the Ghajini of 2009 in terms of box office collections. It is quite interesting to see how Bollywood’s top heroes are banking on out-an-out South Indian masalla blockbusters to boost (read reinvent) their image. However, what makes a difference is the kind of movie you choose to remake. Expectedly, the Salman Khan starrer has opened well at single screens and not-so-well at multiplexes obviously because of his image and the audience can tell a movie by sniffing at the trailers and posters. Unfortunately, Salman Khan chooses a Telugu film of the lowest standard, Pokiri in Telugu, and as expected with no change in treatment WANTED looks and feels like a full fledged Telugu film and gives you a headache. 
Radhe (Salman Khan) is a Mumbai-based topiri who also engages in cash-for-murder activities. His only loyalty is towards money. So he switches from one gang to another engaging in various action sequences. Meanwhile, he falls for Jhanvi (Ayesha Takia Azmi) who regularly attends aerobics classes and is constantly harassed by a corrupt and perverted police inspector Talpade (Mahesh Manjrekar). Mr. Talpade has no other official work other than dropping by at Jhanvi’s house to verbally harass with perverse talk and to send rowdies to make it appear that they have raped Jhanvi so that he can make the case to marry Jhanvi. Of course, Jhanvi is always walking around the city and bumping in to Radhe and his gang. She loves him and so does he, but he cannot take it further as he is a gangster. Now, poor Jhanvi is torn as her lover is not willing to change career and neither can she change her heart. In this pretext, some really lousy songs are performed. In one such gang wars, a close aide of Ghani Bhai (Prakash Raj) is killed, which brings the Bhai himself to Mumbai. Now, the film moves to eliminate Ghani Bhai, but not without the Bhai’s gang videotaping the rape of the Commissioner’s daughter and the killing of an ex-police officer. In a climax fight, which includes a shirt-less Khan (this is the only one time he takes his shirt off!), all the badies are killed and Jhanvi is maha relieved and impressed that her gooda boyfriend is actually a….(SPOILERS AHEAD….it turns out that Salman Khan is actually an under cover cop!)
scene worth mentioning and this is original: the scene where Salman and Ayesha are seen in Mughal dresses and Ayesha as Anarkali swipes her credit card at the electronics store. In fact, Salman Khan looks so ultra handsome in the Salim get-up that I wish he did such a period film. Hmm…other than this I did not really enjoy any other scene. Now, let me make one thing clear about the difference between Bollywood and Tollywood. In Bollywood, if a movie is a sensational hit then it is bound to be really good, but in Tollywood (the Telugu film industry) this law does not necessarily hold true in all cases. Star power is the main force and even an average to below average story is enough to make it a super-hit at the box-office: Pokiri, directed by Puri Jagannath and headlined by Mahesh Babu, is one such film. Even with such a story the film went on to become a sensational hit only because this was the first time the chocolate-baby faced Mahesh Babu was shown in a new avatar along with super-hit songs, a hot and ravishing heroine Illeana and super-comedy. Compared to Salman’s choice, Aamir Khan choose a Tamil film where the director applied more brains to develop the story and the sequences.
The biggest problem with WANTED is that it is imported just like a Telugu film without any changes and to top it off the songs are simply bad and the comedy makes you not want to laugh. The only saving grace of the film is Salman Khan who has really put in his heart and soul in to every scene of this film. Prabhudeva has made him dance although the struggle is visible when Salman Khan is made to do typical Telugu dance steps (in Jalwa song especially). Nothing wrong in remaking Telugu/Tamil films, but you have got to add your brains too to it; remember David Dhawan’s movies? Producer Boney Kapoor continues his fascination for South Indian remakes. Ayesha Takia looks cute, juicy, and sexy, but unfortunately she gets a raw deal in the film. The pairing of Salman and Ayesha also is good. Mahesh Manjrekar is good as usual and so is Prakash Raj. As already repeated at several places in this review the music is a letdown.
It is that time of the movies at the box office when a Yash Raj Film arrives and falls flat on its face. I saw the first trailer of Dil Bole Hadippa! (DBH) in a Cinemax at Mumbai when I had gone to watch New York. My first reaction when I saw it: over-action, pakka flop. My reaction after watching the film last night at Ramakrishna Glitterati, which by the way was not House Full on its first day: over-action, pakka flop, no story. The review can end right here, but I will have to present at least a decent write up about how Yash Raj Films continues to finance, produce, and distribute silly movies with no head or tail like Dil Bole Hadippa! 
The film has all the usual suspects of a YRF film: punjab, over-the-top punjabiness, two jokers who talk and practice India-Pakistan peace, cheesy messages, and actors delivering over-action in order to convey the energy. Now, if the story is in place then these elements are not irritating, but in DBH it is only these elements. Based in pind or somewhere in Punjab close the border everybody is always energetic and happy as though they are a deranged lot. Veera (Rani Mukherjee) is a cricket fanatic and is a fan of Sachin pajji. However, she cannot enter the male dominated world of cricket. Meanwhile, there are two totally deranged jokers on either side of the border–Dilip Tahil from Pakistan and Anupam Kher in India—who meet once a year at the Wagah border with their teams to talk about peace and connecton between the two rival countries. For the past 9 years the Indian team has been losing. To win the next match Anupam decides to call his son Rohan (Shahid ‘Kamina’ Kapoor) who is also is a star cricket player in England and lives with his separated wife. When the team announces for selection Veera decides to transform as Veer (yes, you’ve seen the posters) to pass off as a male to enter the cricket team. During this process, just before the Intermission of the film Rohan sees Veera naked/in-a-towel in the male dressing room when he goes searching for Veer and he falls for her! Wow, whatte a twist! He begins to confide in Veer about Veera. Meanwhile, Veera begins to change Rohan and gets him to fall for India (yes, the typical i-love-my-India kinda song). Towards the end of the final match Rohan realizes that Veer is actually Veera (in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi style) and totally flips out and almost derails their chances of victory. Anyways, they finally win the watch because our Veer hits, hits and hits.
infinite imagination for a director, Aashish Singh, to make a film with no story and make it last for close to 2 and 1/2 hours. There is absolutely no story and 30 minutes in to the film you can feel how empty this film is and how it is being dragged. What is it about?—India/Pak, gender, love, cricket? What is even more daring is that the director borrows from all the latest flop films of Yash Raj…you can see and smell these scenes sprinkled all over the film; from Aaje Nachale to Rab Ne to DDLJ. The number of times the prayer, Ik Onkar, is repeated gets you irritated. The heights of silliness of the film is the India-Pakistan peace talks and messages and ofcourse the gender discourse. According to this film, even women who are as good if not better than our present players should be allowed to be part of the Indian cricket team. Shahid Kapoor is a total idiot in this film. What is the need for him to act like Kabir Khan of Chak De! India? His hair style is awful and he is basically made in to Rani’s side artist. Rakhi Sawant and Sherlyn Chopra are wasted, but good for these two D-grade models who are not part of a YRF production however idiotic it might be. Rani Mukherjee must have seen the potential of doing a dual role and decided to make this her comeback film, but with no story to bat for what is she going to do? As Veer, Rani Mukherjee packs in so much of incredible energy! Quite often we see this in Telugu films, where without a story a film runs entirely based on a Star-hero powered with fights, songs, and comedy—this is exactly what Rani Mukherjee tries to do in this film. Her dance steps are superb and energy infectious, but there is no matter in the film. All that the film has is loads and loads of typical YRF elements that simply get on your nerves.There is no chemistry between Rani and Shahid. Typically, in South Indian films we have an old hero with a young heroine to make the old guy look young…it is the opposite case here.
A few minutes after the show ended in Prasads, we bumped in to my wife’s cousin and she asked us how the film was. “Below average” came the answer from my wife. It turns out that even her cousin was rooting for Nara Rohit just like how I have been as I see his posters everyday on my way to the Jubilee check-post. However, 123telugu.com’s live commentary indicated that the film is “serious”, not entertaining, but meaningful and I knew the movie will fall short. Next sign was at Prasads when the theaterwala called it “average”. Yet, in spite of all these signs I still hoped that the film will turn out a pleasant surprise, but alas the film tries to be a lot and ends up being neither here nor there. Baanam is neither engaging or entertaining.
The film begins in the mid70’s with Bhagat (Nara Rohit) as a kid and his dad (Shivaju Shinde) leaving his kid behind and jumping in to the river to escape police firing. He is a naxal. Years later, in 1989, he surrenders and comes home to see his son all grown up, preparing for UPSC exams and aiming for IPS. Meanwhile, a retarded thread dedicated to a young and ruthless goon called Sakthi Patnaik runs parallel. He kills his own father, banishes his uncle to take over the throne. The third thread is a love story. Subalakshmi is married, but is asked orphaned when her father dies and in-laws ask her to get out of the house. Bhagat decides to be her “guardian” and brings her home. The story goes forward only because of a silly development: Subalakshmi’s ex-husband (she pulls of her mangal-sutram to throw away the marriage) in a drunk state brings one of Sakthi’s mean along who eventually gets beaten up and later dies. Sakthi is upset and wants to finish off Bhagat, but little does he know that our hero is all-powerful and is able to bash-up all the goons set for him. Yes, Bhagat is selected for IPS, but he is too big for his shoes even before the training so he requests his the training officer to give him four trainees from the bottom. He trains them to begin eliminating Sakhti’s gang. All ends well, except that Bhagat’s father dies while trying to kill Sakhti. And by the way, it never really struck me as a period film set in the late 1980s.
name is Three Angels? why be so Hollywood-ish?), a blockbuster distributor (Geetha Arts), and a new hero with whom a variety subject can be experimented with without the burdern of a star-burden (he is only the nephew of a former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh). Why choose such a dark and pale subject of naxals, police, system vs out-of-system theme, and of course the mandatory goonda in every telugu film (perhaps having such a goonda and showing a few killings makes this film a commerical one). The film lacks the intellectual elements to qualify as an off-beat or artsy film and neither does it have any entertaining elements to qualify as a commerical film. Although the film is earning praises from virtually all other telugu film websites (“honest” “sensible” “path breaking”—-it is none of the above), in my view the film does not deliver or rather the film does not know what to deliver. Music is good, I just liked the first song (btw, too much of jogging is shown in this song). It will be unfair to Gamyam to compare Baanam with Gamyam. Sure, Baanam feels like Gamyam wannabe. Anyways, I cant understand why our filmmakers cannot choose good stories with variety instead always seem to making the same things a little differently with the mandatory evil-than-evil goonda.
Just the other day I was in a discussion how about unfortunate Telugu audience are that they are having to watch all the bekar bacchas of Tollywood’s old heroes. To this list, kindly add the name of another incompetent, joshless, hopeless, useless, and untalented baccha by the name of Naga Chaitanya. My worst fears have come true. The initial promos of the and posters eerily suggested that neither the film or the debutant will carry any josh. The possibility of coming up with an out-an-out entertainer when you have a college backdrop is limitless, but hats of for Vasu Varma’s story, screenplay, dialgoues, and direction the film Josh is not only stupid, but also is totally useless.
Lets get one fact clear right at the beginning: it is not that there is no story worth mentioning, but it is a case of no story at all. After struggling to sit through the first half you wonder what is the point of this film. All we see in the first half is Satya (Naga Chaitanya) decides to quit college in Vizag and decides to move to Hyderabad to work and stay. God alone knows what work he did, but all we are shown is him sitting in an irani cafe and documenting the goondagiri of MGM college students. As ususal there are two warring gangs and one college alum JD (JD Chakravarthy) who is their role model–a former goonda of the college and now in politics wanting to become a youth wing president or something like that. Slowly, our hero begins to get involved in college fights. You wonder why. Then in a flashback it is revealed that Satya himself was a full-time goonda in college at Vizag. In spite of being a goonda, smoking, smashing and burning cars, his principal, Prakash Raj, will call him aside and tell him that he has talent (what did he see? oh perhaps because he is Nag’s son and the film’s hero) and requests him to reform. However, Satya is against the education system and those who educate. He gives a major speech on how the teaching methodology is outdated, syllasbus is never updated, no practical applicability, pressure on students leading to suicides and calls for a change in the system and the students will themselves change. Phew…big words for chutku, clearly he is capaigning for Kapil Sibal’s education reforms. Unable to bear this intellectual outburst he insists on going back to his foolish ways and in one such bike ride his friend dies. Then…and only then does Satya come up with another weird discovery—that it does not matter who or what changes, it is important for the student individual to realize their mistake and change (Oh God…somebody please help me!).Unable to bear the guilt he decides to move to Hyderabad and guess what…he finds that students here too are as distracted!—what did he think? he and his bunch of friends in Vizag were the only crackheads?
course, there is no link or convincing story connecting this message to the story of the film. Anyways, towards the end Satya unites the two warring camps and exposes JD as a man who is exploiting the students. Movie ends with the college system functioning in full dicipline and perfectly. Oh yes, there is a heroine…yesteryear heroine Radha’s daugther. The heroine looks like Naga Chaitanya’s elder sister and so there is nothing much to write about it. She is 17 years in the film and is a teacher for an elementary school and is obviously embarassed about it. This is her first and most likely last film. I just cannot beleive that Nagarjuna invested in such an idiotic Dil Raju production. As a father, Nagarjuna has done a major disservice to his son by financing a close to 3 hours film so that Naga Chaitanya can make a major fool of himself in front of millions of moviegoers. Debut hero Naga Chaitanya has no talent and is most uncomfortable acting. It is almost as though somebody was putting a gun to his head to act. He just cannot act—-he is fine only when he is silent, the moment he opens his mouth you feel like covering your head with your hands. He cannot dance and he tries so hard to dance that he can’t get the lip sync correctly. His diction is awful. His get up and body language in the flash back also is least convincing. My advice to him would be to keep off the film industry as there are several other occupatioins available for youngsters. I have a question for his father and the producer: didn’t you do a screen test? couldn’t any of you make out that Naga Chaitanya, however decent he may look, is not gelling well with acting? couldn’t any one see that when the hero and heroine are standing next to each other the hero is looking like a younger brother? did anyone read the script or just got swayed by the heavily loaded education reform message that the director narrated? The end result: the film has no josh and is a total let down. I also fail to understand why show the hero like a super hero? and what is the need for the scene which shows college students sandwhiching a girl on a bike? for what is the scene which shows the college guy checking out adult websites? they have nothing to do with the story.
