Chaarfutiya Chhokre is a lost cause. It’s intentions are pure but it’s method is embarrassing and dull. Sad to say but it is a terribly tedious movie.

Even the spicy and spirited performances by Parineeti and Aditya fail to satiate one’s appetite for real drama. Even Sajid Wajid’s tasteful music goes to sheer waste. This could’ve been a real seven-course fiesta but the misguided vision and thanda drama reduce this feature film to side dish status. Nothing wrong in it technically. A side dish can be the perfect complement to a good meal. But it can never be a stomach full. No matter how much you stuff yourself with it.

It’s definitely not as good as the original. But it’s perfectly in tune with the times.

If you’re in India, do not waste time with other big ticket releases playing in theatres right now. Go watch this wonderfully executed and delightfully funny crime caper comedy. The characters will engage you, the story will surprise you and the dialogue will make you laugh out loud. Go criminally good time.

Do yourself a favour and do not commit the sin of watching this movie at a theatre. Just wait till the DVD release or a legal download near you.

For the average multiplex viewer Mary Kom could be a wry affair. No songs, no action, sparse boxing scenes… but there is the occasional punchy dialogue and PC’s heroics. Might not be the bout everyone’s looking for. But hats off to MC Mary Kom. If anyone deserved a special place in celluloid it’s this awesome champion.

You can watch Mardaani for all the wrong reasons and feel underwhelmed. Don’t watch it for Rani Mukerji trying to be a Salman Khan. She’s not. Don’t watch it for true grit or precise realism; this is still a dialogue driven entertainer. Don’t watch it for song and dance, there isn’t any. Watch it for thrills; watch it with a pro-feminist stance. And you could find the right perspective.

Having the indelible Meryl Streep and the charming Jeff Bridges together in a movie sounds like a casting coup. But even their best talents can’t thaw out the deeply refrigerated treatment. The characters, their situations and their emotions are ice cold. You never feel the much required spike of passion. It just flat lines into an open ending. The young and spirited would just say, WTF.

Rohit Shetty has latched on to the craft of filmmaking and given us a great entertainer. The climax of the film is never-seen-before. It’s good to see a young filmmaker trying to innovate and make films as much with the head as with the heart. For once a film deserves to be a blockbuster.

Good parodies are the ones that make most of their tongue-in-cheek flavour. Add too much slapstick and it only gets more annoying. That’s entertainment. It treads a thin line. And in our industry it’s a habit to fall off the line, too often, too easy.