Bombay Talkies

'Bombay Talkies' boasts of superb craft; crisp writing, skillful direction and brilliant performances. Four directors, four stories, one film; is there a common thread? Maybe.

Bombay Talkies is a format that needs to be praised for its concept. The sequencing of the stories works and the pace is swift, never showing signs of lethargy. If this was a tribute to 100 years of cinema, then we need to have an array of directors from different genres pay such homages more often.

Bombay Talkies lets us celebrate ourselves as viewers. It leaves a warm afterglow reminding us that cinema in India flourished thanks to its audience.

Bombay Talkies is a novel concept, glistening with bravura short films. With the script predominating the film's flavor, it is a sincere attempt to provide a Eulogy for Bollywood. The passion and craze for cinema in India dictates most part of the film. Here's a piece of advice -Walk out of the hall before the 20 star song. The bromidic and hackneyed feeling it leaves by, spoils the entire beauty the film distinctively weaves all through. I am going with 3.5/5 for Bombay Talkies. It could have been way more entertaining, but overall it comes across as a perseverant effort!

It is genuinely not possible for me to pick a favorite or rank them in any order as tempting an idea it might sound. Each film has something to say, and their authors get it across effectively and without fuss. Sure they have their blips and flaws, but Bombay Talkies made me want to stand up and break out into spontaneous applause on multiple occasion. The best film of 2013 so far.

Bombay Talkies may or may not celebrate cinema in the direct sense. Except for its hopelessly tacky end-credits -- a complete waste of star power and resources, Bombay Talkies is an absorbing ode to the language of cinema that is part of our collective system. It honours the imagination and enthusiasm that attracts so many young men and women in this country to embrace a life of risk and rush – filmmaking.

So, BT's a good experiment, celebrating movies, mindsets and Mumbai's moods - but it isn't the coolest film doing so. Woh picture abhi baaqi hai, mere dost.

Bombay Talkies plays out dreams in four separate films. Each film is a mirror to a different reality of Mumbai. Each film is a reflection of different memories of Bombay.

There's not much to savor except the brilliance of Nawazuddin Siddiqui. If only for his performance and a brief cameo in the same frame by Sadashiv Amrapurkar, you will not mind walking in.

The combination will remind you why you love the movies and why you still return to the theatre week after week, wide-eyed and hopeful in spite of the tripe we too often have to endure. If you must fault Bombay Talkies for something, perhaps one could complain that for a 100-year celebration, it isn't weighty enough, but that's about all.

...after you have left the theatre, it is not gratification you feel, but the short-lived aftertaste of a music video or a good commercial. It eulogizes Bollywood, sure, but in a Bollywood-crazy nation it is like preaching to the converted. Surely there is more to the desire, madness, ugliness and fantasy in Hindi cinema, and to the millions who work here. If you wait to watch the terrible promotional video at the end of the film, satrring all our stars, you will most likely forget the best of Bombay Talkies.