Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari, Review: Heavy load to carry It is difficult to decide what was more burdensome: sitting through the film or reviewing it for the benefit of unsuspecting prospective audiences. There is just too much happening, a lot of it without logic, over the two hours 19 minutes that Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari spans. In the hands of a competent editor, the two hours would end in the bin and the 19 minutes would then make an interesting TV episode. This is one of the films wherein an item...

Pati Patni Aur Woh, Review: Eternal try angle Same title, same production house, same concept, yet Pati Patni Aur Woh is nothing like its 1978 original. Crucial elements like the ‘woh’ (she) being the protagonist’s secretary and the lead couple having a son are missing in this 2019 ‘remake’. Yet, the film works quite well, and if such a brazenly adult theme can avoid becoming a bedroom farce, while delineating the plot on a tight-rope walk, there must be somethi...

Jabariya Jodi, Review: Scaring, paring and pairing Imagine a country where dowry demands are the bane. Imagine a state in that country where the demands of families of educated and gainfully employed men of marriageable age range in the region of one to ten million bucks. Now imagine a gang that kidnaps such extortionist grooms and marries them off to the hapless women, at gunpoint, after giving them the treatment. Jodi, literally, means a ‘pair’ or ‘couple’, in Urdu a...

Setters, Review: Questionable answers Job-oriented education has been a hot topic in India, where unemployment figures and poverty levels are very high. Corruption begins when a child is admitted to the kinder-garten class, with the help of a handsome bribe, euphemistically called ‘donation’. The spiral often continues till the graduation level, where the focus shifts to obtaining leaked examination papers, getting proxy candidates to appear on behalf of weak students, feeding liv...

Mitron, Review: Food-truck’s mixed menu, part tasty, part insipid Meaning ‘friends’, mitron is among the most favourite opening words when the current prime minister of India addresses an audience. Before becoming the PM, he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat and his mother tongue is Gujarati. Mitron is set in Ahmedabad, the main city in Gujarat, and among its lead players are a gang of three friends. All its characters are Gujaratis, some of who speak the language occasional...