Nepali Joker bites the dust
When the first-look poster of “Selfie King” was released a few months ago, it was widely criticized and trolled on social media for its similarities with the Hollywood movie “Joker”. But having watched both, I can confidently say there is no similarity of any sort. Joaquin Phoenix’s “Joker” was a psychological thriller that had the lead character—a failed comedian—descend into insanity and nihilism. Bipin Karki’s “Selfie King” is rather about a successful comedian who fails to manage his life. The big difference is, while Phoenix was able to put in an Oscar-winning performance, Karki has become a victim of bad writing, poor direction, and lethargic screenplay, a casualty of his own reputation as it were.
“Selfie King” disguises itself as a compelling drama depicting the problematic life of a popular performer, but the movie turns out to be an overly ambitious project. It is a cinematic blunder that botches Karki’s reputation as an ace method actor, because there’s no method to this madness. For an actor who has banked more on his acting skills than on his looks and publicity, Karki’s credibility from roles like “Bindu” in Chhadke (2013), “Bhasme Don” in Pashupati Prasad (2016), “Phanindra Timsina” in Jatra (2016) and even the lesser known “Goldie” in Naakaa (2017) are questioned as he utterly underwhelms as the “Selfie King.”
Debutant director Bishal Sapkota relies too much on Karki’s character and gives him so much screen time that all other characters pale into insignificance. And Karki, despite his proven talent, is unable to connect with the audience in and as “Selfie King.” He manages to emulate the intensity of Phoenix’s Joker at times, but rare are the occurrences. The result is an excruciatingly slow movie with no palpable conflicts and resolutions, and no grit to hold the story together. And, would you believe it: despite being centered on a comedian, the movie doesn’t have a single laughter-inducing scene?
The protagonist Gopal Dahal goes by the stage name Selfie King, for no convincing reason as it’s evident from some scenes that he’s uncomfortable taking selfies. His mother is his biggest fan but his father, not so much. But when his father has a brain stroke and is hospitalized for surgery, the story takes a new turn.
Selfie King then has to undertake two journeys. One, travelling to the remote Salleri in Solukhumbu district for a stage show. The other, his journey to find himself amid self-doubt, guilty recollections and fear of fading out. Unfortunately, the parallels are far from perfect and the audience soon tires of the forced efforts.
Written by the director himself, the film’s screenplay is extremely loose and the story unconvincing. Selfie King appears to be a well-recognized comedian since people instantly recognize him. Then the question comes, why is he not making much money despite the huge popularity? Only the writers know.
There’s no evidence that his popularity is waning either. There are tangential hints at times, but not enough to justify his downfall. The drinking and extramarital affairs are his vices, but again, not enough to spiral him into the state he is in. Without backstories to establish his situation, the character of Selfie King is so poorly written that even an actor of Karki’s caliber cannot get the audience to empathize with him, including in potentially the most poignant scenes.
The film does tries to portray the lives of performing artists whose work is not taken seriously by even their own families. Lack of privacy, stress of having to keep a presentable personality in public inner suffering, fear of waning popularity, cost of stardom and insecurities from younger prodigies—the film tries to paint them all. But the painting has by this time become so abstract that the audience is unable to understand either its form or features.
Who should watch it?
This is one of those painful times we cannot recommend even a highly-anticipated Nepali film. But we have to bite the bullet on this one for our revered readers and advise them to stay away. Not worth your time.
Rating: 1 star
Genre: Drama
Director : Bishal Sapkota
Cast : Bipin Karki, Laxmi Bardewa, Abhay Baral
Run time: 1hr 50mins
Changing narratives
Once upon a time, my favorite fairytale was Cinderella. A rags to riches story with a fairy godmother and a handsome prince thrown in the mix. It was hopeful, happy, and magical.Or so I thought.
Years later, I realized how problematic the story is or all fairytales are. Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty—they are all the same: There is a perfect girl—with flawless skin and glossy hair—and she has many problems in life. She is unwanted and often mistreated, and she always pines for a prince. Then comes a dashing ‘Prince Charming’ who puts an end to her misery by fighting against the ‘villains’ and becomes her ‘hero’.
The girls never become their own heroes.
These stories are still what most of us are reading to and telling our children because they are popular. And by doing so we are covertly perpetuating the idea that girls are the weaker sex and thus fueling misogyny.
Stories can be powerful resources for confidence building and our fairytales—despite its goodness-always-prevails message—do nothing in that regard.
I feel it’s time to move away from Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen so that our daughters don’t grow up with a warped idea of how we are defined by our gender. It helps that there are so many new and exciting takes on classic fairytales now. ‘Fierce Fairytales’ by Nikita Gill is one of my favorites. Here, the once helpless heroines are empowered and don’t sit around waiting and wishing for a prince. The poems and stories also deal with issues of love, feminism, abuse, and mental illness.
But retellings aside, there is a book that we should all be reading to our children. ‘Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls’ by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo is an illustrated collection with stories of 100 inspirational females. Written in a fairytale format with the classic opening line ‘Once upon a time’, these are real stories of phenomenal woman like Marie Curie, Coco Chanel, Michelle Obama, Malala Yousafzai, and Serena Williams, among many others.
Growing up, I felt there was a severe lack of female role models to look up to—in the worlds of science, politics, history, art, sports, etc. But it wasn’t because there weren’t remarkable women out there but because their stories never came to the forefront, always being overshadowed by the triumphs of men. Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls can be an empowering read for all girls (and women too!) as the stories convey an important message: Though damsels might sometimes be in distress, they are capable of finding their own way out.
Saif shines in his signature role, again
From his entry into the Bollywood film industry in 1993, Saif Ali Khan has played a wide variety of roles. In fact, he is one of the few mainstream Bollywood actors who take huge in playing non-conformist characters. But coming straight from the success of “Tanhaji” which was preceded by the semi-flop “Lal Kaptaan,” Saif as an actor and a producer in “Jawaani Jaaneman” goes back to doing what he does best—playing the ladies’ man, the cool dude, the Casanova, the ‘man-child’ with commitment issues.
Be it his first commercial success “Yeh Dillagi” (1994) with Akshay Kumar through which he Oley Oleyed into limelight or the box-office successes “Hum Tum” (2004) and “Salaam Namaste” (2005), Saif has excelled in playing the urban alpha male with suave. And in this latest release, he reprises his character into making this light-hearted, PG comedy “Jawaani Jaaneman.”
Directed by Nitin Kakkar, Saif stars as Jaswinder “Jazz” Singh, a London-based real estate broker who lives a happy bachelor life. Jazz is this upper-middle class, 40-something dude who doesn’t have to put in a lot of effort at work, has the self-proclaimed ‘swag’, is a serial womanizer, parties almost every night and is terrified of commitments or any changes in his life. Seemingly, he is oblivious to his growing age too.
But the real story starts when he ‘picks up’ a 21-year-old “Tia” (Aliya Furniturewala) from the bar with all the wrong intent and she in turn surprises him by revealing that he might have 33.33 percent chance of being her dad. It won’t be a spoiler to let the audience know that Jazz eventually turns out to be Tia’s father, and Tia is pregnant with her ex-boyfriend. The film’s intent is not to keep secrets from the audience but reveal conflicting situations in the characters’ lives after these shocks.
With witty writing and equally fitting performances, JJ is an entertaining comedy that explores different realms of life such as the struggles of a single mother, the stress of fatherhood, the impact of dysfunctional families on children, and how lives change with the addition of a family member. The story is set in London to conveniently place it away from the orthodox Indian society. Had the setting been India, the story would perhaps have evolved differently, without much scope for comedy, we dare say.
As mentioned earlier, Saif is at completely home in the movie. Saif’s Jazz comes across as natural as his “Karan Kapoor” in Hum Tum, which also won him multiple awards including the National Film Award, and “Nikhil Arora” in Salaam Namaste. He does show a few signs of ageing, but with that also comes the maturity through which he handles emotional scenes.
Debutant Aliya also gets an impactful character and is probably the most successful newcomer in her age group. A string of star kids have entered Bollywood in 2019/2020 and so far only Aliya (daughter of actress Pooja Bedi and granddaughter to movie veteran Kabir Bedi), has been able to give a promising performance. The actress as the young Tia—who is out on a journey to find her biological father and is overwhelmed with happiness when she finally finds him, but also gets a big shock on discovering her pregnancy—knows how to rightly portray the mixed emotions without over-dramatization. There is definitely room for improvement but only time can shape those acting skills, if Bollywood is kind enough to give her more space.
The only complain about the film is that the makers put way too much stress on certain scenes and sequences, making the movie slightly lengthy and close to boring. It definitely feel unnecessarily stretched out. Also, the story gives too little space and too little significance to Ananya (Tabu), Tia’s mother. The audience don’t get enough time to know her. An actress of Tabu’s caliber definitely deserves more space.
Who should watch it?
The 1hr 59mins long movie, albeit tardy at times, is definitely an entertainer. Underdog as he is, we believe Saif does have his fans and for a Saif fan, this is the best zone he could be in.
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Family
Run time: 1hr 59mins
Director: Nitin Kakkar
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Alaya Furniturewalla
Melodramatic but mighty fun
So the latest news is, arch nemesis India and Pakistan have settled their differences and have joined hands to beat the British. They don’t use bombs and guns to defeat their colonizers though; their weapons of choice being hip-hop and bhangra this time around. Well that’s the plot of Remo D'Souza’s “Street Dancer 3D”, his third dance flick.
When the dancer turned choreographer turned reality TV judge D’Souza directed the 2013 hit “Any Body Can Dance”, the film with a cast of real dancers and not so popular Bollywood faces, besides Prabhu Deva and Kay Kay Menon, had an organic nature to its production. It was one of the first dance-oriented films in the industry and using actual dancers for the entire cast, the film was special and created a milestone. The director then decided to back this success with ABCD 2 in 2015. This one was more commercial-minded featuring star kids Varun Dhawan and Shraddha Kapoor in starring roles.
While D’Souza’s choreography skills are reaching new heights, the director seems to have entered a rabbit hole of filmy clichés in this one. With Varun and Shraddha repeated as the leads, “Street Dancer 3D” is more of a generic Bollywood drama than a full-fledged dance movie.
Shraddha (Inayat) leads a team of Pakistani dancers called “Rule Breakers” and Varun Dhawan (Sahej) is the leader of a team of Indians called “Street Dancers,” both based in London. Inevitably, the two teams are rivals in dance and also in cricket banter. But things change when Inayat discovers a group of homeless illegal immigrants in the undergrounds of London and takes it upon herself to help them. How? By winning a dance competition that has the huge prize money of £100,000. Very typical, right?
Yes, it gets too melodramatic at times. Yes, the incorporation of Bollywood masalas into the movie has stretched it into a lengthy 2hrs 30min run time. And yes, the under par acting performances and direction are evident. But does Street Dancer fail to entertain the audience seated it the theaters? It definitely doesn’t. All sorts of lapses in film production are nullified by the fact that the choreography is unprecedented in the industry.
The centerpiece of the drama takes place in the first half and the second half sees it unfolding with exceptional dance performances not only from the cast but also from different dance groups featured in the film. Besides Varun and Shraddha—both accomplished dancers—the cast includes Prabhu Deva (Ram Prasad), Norah Fatehi (Nora) and a list of familiar faces from Indian dance reality shows including Punit Pathak as Inder, Salman Yusuff Khan as Zayn, Raghav Juyal as Poddy, and Dharmesh Yelande as D.
Coming back to the film’s choreography, combined with excellent cinematography, it sets a benchmark. The music is basically Punjabi hip-hop and RnB but also draws influences from house, trance, trap, and much more. While the songs are not quite memorable in themselves, the combination of choreography, dance routines and photography create a visual extravaganza, especially with the deliberate 3D effects.
Who should watch it?
Anybody who enjoys watching dance will love this movie. Also, if not for anything else, do watch it for our homeboys Sushant Khatri, who plays “Chotu” in the movie and the dance troupe Wild Ripperz who feature as themselves. A stepping stone for Nepali dancers to be featured in such a huge stage.
Genre: Drama
Rating: 3 Stars
Run time: 2hrs 30min
Director: Remo D'Souza
Cast: Varun Dhawan, Shraddha Kapoor, Prabhu Deva
