Chillar Party Movie Review

Cast: Irrfan Khan, Sanath Menon, Rohan Grover, Naman Jain, Aarav Khanna, Vishesh Tiwari, Chinmai Chandranshuh, Vedant Desai, Divji Handa, Sherya Sharma, Ranbir Kapoor.Director: Vikas Bahl, Nitesh TiwariProducer: Ronnie ScrewvalaBanner: UTV Spot BoyMusic: Amit TrivediScreenplay: Vijay MauryaStory/Writer: Vikas Bahl ,Nitesh TiwariChoreography: Bosco Martis, Caesar GonsalvesCostume: Aki Narula

All the Pamela Andersons and Celina Jaitleys who strip to stop cruelty to animals and whose steamy PETA ads are like magnets to many eyeballs, now have competition from a very unexpected quarter: a bunch of feisty kids in a middle-class housing society in Mumbai.

A tribe of tykes ride on bicycles, congregate in dusty sheds, and steamroll the enemy team on the cricket field. The gang is called Chillar Party and they have a new task at hand: a poor waif Fatka (Irrfan Khan) and his inseparable other half Bheedu (a dog).

Fatka enters the housing society and takes up petty car-washing jobs and comes under the crosshairs of the Chillar Party before securing his place in it by proving his pluck on the cricket field.

All is well in the first half and the audiences are laughing silly at the juvenile gags. But then the film moves onto a somewhat serious terrain as a dog-despising politician vows to clean the city of stray dogs, which means Bheedu, now an inseparable part of the Chillar Party, could soon be cooped and done away with.

That’s when the spunky kids decide to take the cudgels for the canine and hoist a banner of rebellion against the cynic and corrupt politician. Their way of protest -- stripping to their undies in public. And they do grab the eyeballs.

Chillar Party is a sweet little film that starts off very well but steers into a bumpy zone in the second half as the standoff between the kids and the politico begins. Of course, there’s a message or two squeezed in here by the director duo Vikas Bahl and Nitesh Tiwari.

The kids are all right, but it’s Fatka, Encyclopaedia and Mottu who stand out. The movie packs in funny moments aplenty, most notable being the ones where the kids begin to imitate Fatka’s style.

All in all, a film with a heart and ample humour. Quite canny for Salman Khanto back it as a producer - his first one and surely worth a watch.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Murder 2

Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Jacqueline Fernandez, Yana Gupta, Prashant Narayanan, Sudhanshu Pandey, Sandeep Sikand, Shweta KawatraDirector: Mohit SuriProducer: Mahesh BhattMusic: Harshit Saxena, Sangeet Haldipur, Siddharth Haldipur, MithoonSound: Kunal Mehta, Parikshit LalwaniLyrics: Sayeed Qadri, Kumaar, MithoonCinematography: Ravi WaliaEditing: Devendra MurdeshwarScreenplay: Shagufta RafiqueDialogue: Shagufta RafiqueStory/Writer: Mahesh BhattChoreography: Raju Khan





 Murder 2. “Just cut off the darned root of the problem.” Well, that seems to be the mantra of the psychopathic, misogynist, serial killer inMurder 2. He’s sure had a troubled past. When the sexual attraction towards women had the better of him, he cut off the damned root of it (if you know what I mean). But when the attraction didn’t cease, he turned the blade towards women and began abducting them and slicing them off in little pieces and packing them in big poly bags (not banned in Goa yet?) and dumping them in a deep dark well in the backyard of the creepy mansion he lives and kills in.

Meet the consummate nutcase Dheeraj (Prashant Narayan) who’s plain lame, and anything but his name. And meet the ex copper Arjun (Emraan Hashmi) who works with Goan pimps and druglords and sleeps around with a PYT named Priya (Jacqueline Fernandez). She loves him, but he reciprocates her affection by doing the obvious in the bed and later offering her a wad of money. “Rakh le,” he says with a deadpan expression.

But Murder 2 is more about Reshma (Sulagna Panigrahi), a young girl whom Arjun uses as a bait to trap the man behind the mysterious disappearances of prostitutes in Goa, not knowing that he was feeding the rookie hookie to a raving lunatic.

Far from being a crank with an ingenious methodology, the serial killer inMurder 2 is impulsive and even downright dumb, and his murders are artless despite him being a sculptor. So the hammer and chisel are mere props while his weapon of choice is something that will put a lot of kirtan-loving ladies at unease.

Surprisingly, Prashant Narayan isn’t bogged down by the sketchy character written by Mahesh Bhatt. Narayan lends edginess to Dheeraj’s lunacy, a discomforting menace to the madman. In comparison, Emraan Hashmi as the cop is mostly left huffing and puffing. His character is resentful towards God, and much like the Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) of Deewar he doesn’t step inside the church even when a semi-clad Jacqueline Fernandez eggs him to do so. In one scene when he stands in front of a statue of a crucified Jesus, you half expect Hashmi to say “Aaj khush toh bahut hoge tum”.

Director Mohit Suri displays shocking amateurishness in a lot of scenes. There are continuity blunders like Hashmi’s stubble mysteriously getting bushier or lighter from one scene to another, or a scene where posse of cops appear out of nowhere at a temple just as Emraan rushes in to have a dekko at the dead body inside. And guess what? Once he sees the victim in the welter of blood, a song follows!

Jeez! At that point and threw my arms in the air and looked around to check what other people were doing in the theatre. A couple necking and petting in the front row. The guy next to me glued to his cell. The aunty in the front gorging on popcorns. The uncle looking around, just like me.

This was a film that was supposed to keep us on the edge of our seats and knock the very breath out of our lungs. It doesn’t. Not that we expected some sort of Hitchcockian suspense, or Hannibalistic chills, or John Doesque lunacy. All we bargained for was a taut thriller which Murder 2 is far from being. Yet, credit to Prashant Narayan for saving the day for the Bhatts. For once, the serial killer outshines the serial kisser.

Rating: 2 stars out of 5