Two Movies You Must Watch !!!

Last week, Jayanthi along with a group of her SP friends (all giggling teenagers@heart), went out for a movie. 12 noon Matnee show.

And I was abandoned, home alone. With half a tumbler of milk to make my own tea. And 4 sad looking (bought out) dosas stacked inside the microwave.. And a small katori of dangerous looking red chutney.

And the calm serene environment inside my home created the right ambiance for me to fire up my computer and type out this post.

Happy Reading !!

Two films I saw recently on Amazon Prime.

And I strongly recommend them for  the very same reasons that they did not become box office starrers nor get top 5 star ratings and raving reviews.

Dhunki: A 2019 Gujarati film starring Pratik Gandhi and Deeksha Joshi.

The Wedding Guest: A 2018 English film starring Dev Patel and Radhika Apte & produced in UK/USA.

Reasons :  They do not have superstar casts and were not backed by huge promos. So they were not aggressively sold. And they still survived to make a decent ROI.

There was no masala or hit songs or fancy foreign locale shootings either.

TWG is in English - So more than 85% of the target audience that loves Hindi or other regional languages was lost.

Dhunki is in Gujarati with English subtitle – and obviously for similar reasons.

Both movies are good to watch – not because they are great in any way, But because they are so ordinary and easygoing (mediocre may be a harsh term)  that they will have a soothing  effect on you.

Imagine you had a a hectic day @ office – an exhausting business negotiation, or  a firefighting situation or an intense counselling session with a difficult employee. And you want to reformat yourself.

You can go to a pub and sozzle yourself. That will help suppress your  feelings, like a steroid , but will not cleanse & relieve you of your  stress . And you get a nasty hangover as well.

Or you can go home and get irritable and pick up a fight with your family – Not advisable.

Or have a quite dinner, nestle up in your den with a chilled glass of your favorite and watch these two  movies back to back !

And I can assure you that you will soon feel peace, de-stressed and maybe even end up in a peaceful slumber and wake up the next day fresh as a daisy!!

Alternately if you are retired and bored of watching action packed thrillers on NetFlix or those Horror ones on  Hot Star, then these two movies will be a refreshing change.

Both will detox you, and leave your mind sober & peaceful. Much like an annual mental pilgrimage to Tirupathi or Vaishno Devi.

Or else imagine your partner is on a long tour, and the maid does not turn up, and predictably the power goes off.  Your day heads south. And  on top of this you go for that dreaded dentist appointment,. And you return back all psyched up. What do you do?

Just mix a tall glass of chilled lemonade on the rocks, add a shot of Bombay Sapphire Gin if you will. Curl up into your favorite bean bag and switch on these two movies back to back !!

Guaranteed solace and peace rolled into one!!

And with that I end my promo pitch and get to the review.

Dhunki story revolves around two sober software engineers,  Nikunj and Shreya in a startup company.

So obviously  you do not expect Nikunj to fight 5 local goondas single handed. Nor does he punch the big fat  one and launch him up 10 feet into the air and see him roll midair and fall back to the ground in slow motion.

And Nikunuj is married to Ankita (Kaushambi Bhat) even before the movie starts. So there is no college scenes, no skirmishes and ego clashes before love ultimately blossoms.

And while Nikunj”s profession is Software QA, his passion is Cooking!  And very soon you see him quitting his job and starting is own food catering business. And its USP : good healthy food supported  by an easy to use on-line ordering App!!

And Nikunj is struggling with his startup (nothing unusual). So he has little time to attend to friends' birthday parties, participate in group dances like those in Karan Johar’s films,  or take part in quawali contests.

And his other colleague, Shreya – ditto.

Except that she has the additional burden of managing her possessive & high maintenance fiance’.

So no sugar, no salt , no spice ! No Onion no Garlic either!!

You are served a Gujarati version of a plain diabetic Jain meal at best.

And this movie rolls on for 135 mins  at a very leisurely pace. And you can almost predict what will happen next  and obviously the story gets centered around work life balance and cash flow challenges and chasing potential investors for funding . And haven’t we seen that so many times ??

There are some mild background  songs. And Thankfully NO slapstick comedy or forced suspense, nor unwanted action and fight sequences  to spice up the mildly boring  story-line. And I must give credit to all the actors and directors for they somehow just manage to keep you awake and sufficiently interested so that you do not switch off.

And the 135 min, you spend in a mild trance that soothes your frayed nerves, brings down your pressure, calms your pulse rate takes you to a level on Neo Bliss.

Nice sober acting by all and particularly Kaushambi’s expression and her subdued smile are great to watch!!

And what happens in the end. A happy ending or a uncertain suspense ?

Does it really matter ??

The Wedding Guest is dubbed as an Action Thriller.

I only saw some mild action, a hint of suspense and definitely zero thrill element. Never once did my pulse rise nor did I get on to the edge of my sofa.

An interesting story of a hired professional Jay (played by Dev Patel) , who kidnaps a Pakistani girl Sameera (played by Radhika Apte) from her house on the eve of her wedding. And she is smuggled into Amritsar at the behest of her lover  so that they can elope and drop off from the radar of all their families. Apparently the lover boy and the girl both grew up in London and planned to marry ….  until the girl’s family decided otherwise.

And even the best of plans fail. A security guard gets killed during the snatch and scram operation and the kidnap cum killing makes headlines both in the Pakistani and Indian media. And basically s*&t hits the fan!

Lover boy chickens out and wants to dump the girl back into Pakistan and run. The hired pro does not want to baby sit an unwanted bride any longer and the story takes an interesting turn.

Not for long. The lover boy gets killed in a fight  and the story-line gets thinner and thinner as the pro and the girl travel by road from Jaipur to Goa . And the plot maintains just the bare minimum stickiness level  so that your eyeballs do not drop off the screen.
And as one can understand, the Stockholm syndrome takes over and there are some intimate scenes between the kidnapper and the kidnapee.

Again this movie has no intentions of giving a great social message nor does it have any lofty ambition of wining an Oscar!

It just manages to continuously transition your attention from one slow-moving scene to another and it does a great job at this.  And your mind is blank , body comfortably slouched into the sofa corner and the second refill of your favorite erases all traces of your day’s stressed out memories.

Dev and Radhika are at their mature best. And they carry the story throughout with not  much support from anything else. Good direction , good clipped British accent and no extra baggage.

And during  the last section of the movie, Radhika Apte, very briefly , but boldly flashes certain parts of her anatomy.

Interesting & nice,  especially for a pair of  64-year old eyes to see!!

And if you ask me what happens finally…

Does it really matter ???

And if you are really particular, Chk it out for yourself!!!

Krish..