No expense has been spared to ensure that Girish Tairani post-debut vehicle catches the audiences’ fancy. But flaunting urban affluence and trying to write dialogues which try hard to sound  like  the metro-youngsters internet babble gives this film an embarrassing aspirational aura.

Here is every Indians ultimate tolerance test: sit through this film. I dare you.

Finally though you come away from the film wondering what our cinema is coming to and where is it heading. Guddu Ki Gun is a one-line joke carried too far.

Guddu can’t keep it down. This film just can’t keep it up.

Shaandaar is awfully written and indifferently directed enough to put you off destination weddings forever.

The duo does nothing without seeking backslapping punchlines in their violent arguments. It’s almost as if they’re two stand-up comedians seeking an audience.

Some effective acting by Rajit Kapoor as the disciplinarian principal who crumbles when faced with a domestic crisis ,and Jimmy Sheirgil as a cop who changes colours faster than the film’s loose-limbed script can register, and a powerfully sung anti-rape song are the saving grace in this film over-populated by cardboard characters mouthing overzealous dialogues.

There are bad films. Then there are bad films masquerading as works of art. Hamari Adhuri Kahani exposes Mohit Suri to be a shallow and superficial director who scratches the glossy surface of living-room relationships to reveal more of the creator’s own spiritual emptiness rather than the angst of his troubled characters.

It’s not easy to make a non-stupid film with two stupid characters at its helm. Welcome 2 Karachi pulls off that daring feat without falling
flat on its face.

For that alone this film deserves a bit of our attention.

In Jai Hai Democracy the enormously accomplished actors struggle against the tedium of repetitive jokes about the banality of parliamentarian exchanges. Ranjit Kapoor is a brilliant writer, no doubt. As a filmmaker he is not too successful in extracting thatstagey quality from the material which most of us refer to to see as the rang-manch of life.

Instead of trying so desperately to weave the landscape into a plot, the director should have made a documentary on the coffee plantations of Coorg.

For now, I am off coffee.