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Film Reviews

Film Review: The Kerala Story (2023)

STORY

Shalini takes admission in a college and befriends three other girls in her hostel. One of her roommates Asifa successfully manipulates and misguides Shalini and another girl Geethanjali towards Islam and destroys their lives in deception by love jihad. Consequently, hell breaks on them while seeking heaven.

BACKLASH

‘The Kerala Story‘ sparked nationwide criticism and ignited deadly religious tension in India. Several petitions were filed at the Kerala High Court, the Madras High Court, and the Supreme Court of India to ban the film. Eventually, the West Bengal government banned the film for hate speech.

The Kerala High Court did order to remove the teaser of the film that claimed 32000 girls to have converted to Islam to get recruited to ISIS. 32000? The film begins with a disclaimer stating that there is no authenticity to back the claimed figures. But in one scene, a character does press to be more than thirty and even quotes that the unofficial number is 50,000. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, approximately 30,000 fighters from at least 85 countries had joined the ISIS until December 2015.

BJPWOOD

Although, countless films have been produced in India for decades about Islamic terrorism and the militants waging a holy war or a crusade against India funded by Pakistan. The speciality of ‘The Kerala Story’ is that the film worked on the audience as a reminder to distance themselves from the Muslim community because there is every deliberate chance of pushing you towards Jihad. And especially, if you are a non-Muslim female, then be prepared to spread your legs for “Muslim Mujahideen” as one of the babas suggests in the film to the young recruits to impregnate the girls.

I do not deny about the forced conversions of non-Muslims towards Islam worldwide. This is happening in many countries. And let me inform you that forced conversion is not only a Muslim thing now, this physical and spiritual abuse is happening in all major faiths around the world. Also, keep this in mind that spreading extremism or religious terrorism is completely different than preaching.

Whatever cruelty by the militant fighters is dramatized in the film, without a doubt, half of the madness is accurate. There is no denying about that. But another factor that cannot be denied is that “The Kerala Story” was heavily promoted by the ruling party of India, Bharatiya Janata Party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi quoted the film during the Karnataka Assembly Election of 2023. Recently, BJP welcomed the film’s screening by the Idukki diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church for catechism students. And this is not the first time that BJP have raised their voice in favor of such films with similar contents. Remember ‘The Kashmir Files’?

CINEMATIC DISASTER

Another failure is the joke of an execution. Director Sudipto Sen and producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah were neither smart about story-telling nor gave a sensible continuity. Engrossed with ordinary dialogues, irritating background score, and ridiculous sense of brainwashing, the film looked completely amateur and first-day first-show debacle.

‘The Kerala Story’ is a propaganda film due to the fact that it was more about the Islamic extremism and the supreme invasion of Islamic terrorism blended with the hows and whys of the religion’s punishments and tortures than growing the unfortunate stories of those girls. The only thing that was good about the film was the performance of Adah Sharma who played the leading character Shalini. The changing of mood, facial expressions, shocks, beliefs, surprises, suffering, tension, the whole body language was there.

CLOSING REMARKS

‘The Kerala Story’ is for those who have fire in their hearts for Muslims and Islam. The film is for those who want to read a conspiracy theory against the religion and beliefs. The film is for the violent protesters who are interested in damaging properties of the Muslims and make them suffer for a few notes of money. The film is for those whose favorite life moment is watching a man on the street burning the Holy Book or looking at the cartoons of some French newspaper.

RATING 1/10

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Film Reviews

Film Review: Laal Singh Chaddha (2022)

STORY

Laal Singh Chaddha narrates his incredible story on the train to the nearby passengers as he travels to meet the love of his life.

INTRODUCTION

Laal Singh Chaddha is the official adaptation of the Oscar-winning film ‘Forrest Gump‘ with Aamir Khan returning to the silver screen after a gap of four years to play the Indian version of Tom Hanks‘ most memorable and one of Hollywood’s iconic roles ever.

REVIEW

So obviously, considering what ‘Forrest Gump’ means to the audience and the reputation it has built for decades being the darling of the global audience, there was immense pressure on Aamir Khan and the crew to put on a show that gives at least half-decent remake of the original classic. Most regrettably, Laal Singh Chaddha stands nowhere close to an average crafted film, forget about being a remake.

ALIEN KHAN

It is a classic disaster thanks to Aamir Khan that the mighty collapses right from the beginning when he opens his mouth to speak to the passenger on the train. It is no surprise that the center of satisfaction from the film rests on Aamir Khan’s shoulders. What surprises me is the actor, Mr. Perfectionist, who is well-known for his original takes on some interesting characters he has played throughout his career, is attempting to imitate Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump instead of bringing his own method. And in this process, Aamir Khan is neither convincing the audience nor appealing. And this is one of the major reasons for the film’s box-office failure.

When you listen to his Punjabi accent, it clearly sounds that something is not right. Aamir is certainly not the right choice for a Punjabi character and that was visible in Rang de Basanti. And then the younger version of Laal that he acted, it was like watching Aamir in ‘3 Idiots‘ and ‘PK‘. Same facial expressions and performance. And it is disappointing that an actor known for perfectly adjusting himself to the character has given identical performances in not one but three different films. In the younger version, he looked more mentally unstable than he was as a child. Extreme overacting.

WRITING NEXT TO NONSENSE!

The entire continuity questions the credibility of the screenwriting which is second to nonsense. Spreading humor in a drama for average entertainment is acceptable if executed well. But here, I feel as if the director was confused about how to justify the remake and connect the dots. First, he ridiculed India’s historic timeline to settle Laal’s stupendous journey to legacy. Second, he overstretched the plot and suffocated the audience in an awful second half. And third, the entire film looks like a Google translation.

Laal’s childhood highlights India’s state of Emergency under former PM Indira Gandhi, India’s World Cup winning moment occurs minutes later, and then the Anti-Sikh riots in Amritsar. If you have watched the film with active brains, you will realize that these three incidents occurred in different years. The emergency event happened in the mid-70s, India won the World Cup in 1983 and the riots occurred the next year. So how is the young boy Laal Singh Chaddha not growing for approximately eight to nine years? Or if the director is depicting that all three events happened one after the other which is more silly. In both cases, there is a big hole in the writing.

I must mention the supporting character of Bala played by Naga Chaitanya in his Hindi debut. It must have to be the most annoying character of 2022 or maybe of recent years. Playing the original role of Bubba from Forrest Gump, it was sickening to watch him repeat his passion for undergarments and remake scene-to-scene from the original source.

When you remake an original source, the writing demands a re-introduction on a whole new level of presentation expecting that the writer will come up with a thoughtful story adapting from the original idea. But here, Laal Singh Chaddha shows no intention to play a different beat. Besides adjusting Laal’s life story with the Indian side of historical moments, almost every plot development, almost every scene is straight from ‘Forrest Gump’. And this is one of the reasons why the audience disliked the film. The writer made absolutely no effort in coming up with their own idea to revise the whole plot.

WHAT A MISS!

In order to settle Laal’s life story with some historic moments, the film shows how the local boy of Delhi become a megastar in Bollywood with Shah Rukh Khan playing his own role. It was funny that his iconic arms-stretched-out pose was joked to be inspired by Laal. But what I want to complain about is a big miss. Amongst the three major Khans, the two who have never shared the screen as the lead or starred in the same film are Shah Rukh and Aamir. Salman Khan has starred with both of them in the past. And Shah Rukh and Aamir shared the screen for a few seconds in a cameo in Ashutosh Gowariker‘s “Pehla Nasha“. Despite the fact that Aamir Khan is the producer of this film and roped in Shah Rukh to play a cameo, they still didn’t share the same screen. How idiotic! What a miss!

PLUSES

 

Yes, ironically there are a few pluses like Satyajit Pande‘s cinematography and Tanuj Tiku‘s background score. A couple of tracks were good too. The makers raised the issue of domestic abuse well. But the biggest plus of the film that impressed me was Mona Singh who played Laal Singh Chaddha’s mother. She was impressive throughout the film. Watch her, particularly in the scene of the riots.

CLOSING REMARKS

So Laal Singh Chaddha has all the reasons to terribly fail at the box office and disappoint the audience. This has to be Aamir Khan’s worst performance in ages. He needs to become choosy again about the selection of his films because his recent run has been awful. Those who have never watched Forrest Gump can enjoy this translated version.

Was Laal Singh Chaddha that bad to be rejected in India? I don’t think so. We have watched worse Indian films than Laal Singh Chaddha. Then what happened?

I feel there was a particular hate campaign by the Hindu nationalists of the ruling party on a large scale that played its part. Back in 2015, Aamir Khan expressed his insecurity about living in India in one interview. That circulated before the film’s release.

The ruling party pushed its supporters to share more than 200,000 tweets demanding to boycott film with the hashtag ‘Boycott Laal Singh Chaddha’. That flamed severe hatred and due to this reason, Laal Singh Chaddha earned only ₹58.73 crore in India against a production budget of ₹180 crore.

But, if you observe the collections from abroad, those were far better than in India. You will be surprised to know that Laal Singh Chaddha became 2022’s highest-grossing Hindi film at the international box office and earned more than Gangubai Kathiawadi, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, and ruling party’s all-time favorite ‘The Kashmir Files‘.

So yes, more than all the reasons I stated above, the hate campaign was a bigger reason that flopped the film.

RATINGS: 3/10

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Film Reviews

Film Review: The Kashmir Files (2022)

STORY

The film centers around Kashmir Valley in 1989 or 1990 when the hatred for the Kashmiri Hindu Pandits ignite and the Islamic militant terrorists begins to butcher them in their way. This is the story of an old teacher Pushkar Nath Pandit (Anupam Kher) who witnesses the riots and protects his grandson Krishna (Darshan Kumar) but loses everyone in the family who are murdered by his own former student Farooq Malik Bitta (Chinmay Mandlekar) who is now the militant commander of the terrorist organization there.

INTRODUCTION

I assume ‘The Kashmir Files‘ is the second chapter of director Vivek Agnihotri‘s Files Trilogy because Vivek’s previous film was The Tashkent Files and his next project is The Delhi Files. So it is quite an interesting and bold step towards planning to make films in Bollywood in a particular direction that is out of stereotypical masala entertainment which is still the usual existence. Plus a type of casting in both Tashkent and Kashmir indicates that the director is selective to rope actors where he believes that they suit the roles. He is not prioritizing his options to commercialize the chances of generating a lot of money but addresses issues through his stories.

His previous film Tashkent was a necessary wake-up call to the audience for remembering India’s former PM Lal Bahadur Shastri whose death is still a mystery. And now he raises the political issue of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits in the latest film. A subject hardly anyone had been raising for decades. Genocide of Kashmiri Hindus that, to my surprise, is termed their exodus. Being impressed with how Vivek executed Tashkent, I was interested to see how he directed Kashmir. With a cordial disappointment, ‘The Kashmir Files’ heavily turns out to be some propaganda film.

REVIEW

I do not deny the sufferings of Kashmiri Pandits who became refugees in their own country nor do I whitewash the tragic chapters of Kashmir’s history. It is the awful screenplay that indicates that the intention of the director was more to highlight straight visible hatred for the Muslim community rather than addressing the political event’s bullet anecdotes. Almost all the sequences that involved a Muslim character portrayed some special kind of evil sent on the earth to uproot the existence of Hindus in the state.

A stereotypical portrayal of the Muslims was something else we have watched in Indian films for decades but this film looks intentionally clear sending a wrong message to raise hatred for the Muslims. In one particular scene, a woman seeks advice from an elder Muslim with a Jinnah cap and reddish-brown dyed beard about her son’s education. In reply, out of nowhere, the man goes pervert and starts harassing her. Crazy writing!

A NONSENSICAL PROPAGANDA

I can judge the film by considering any of the two possibilities. One is that the hatred of Kashmiri Muslims for the Hindu Pandits was as real as portrayed in the film and involved no intentional agenda of misleading the general population of India believing that the Muslim community is the root cause of the evil that aims to kill their race. Second, the director chose one side of the story to address the fate of Kashmiri Pandits by dragging the Muslims in a villainous nature and labeling it a religious matter rather than a political matter. I choose the latter.

Why? Because every single Muslim character had a negative portrayal that sparks the intentions of the director and raises eyebrows. There were no sides to the coin, the story of the film was genuinely one-dimensional which made me think if Vivek Agnihotri directed the film or Narendra Modi? Did RSS finance this film? At such a terribly slow pace of almost a three-hour film, I felt as if this was some experimental film where the makers decided to treat Muslims as Nazis and Hindus as Jews.

Again, I do not deny the historic events of the Kashmiri Pandits’ genocide and indeed Muslims were the ones involved in their killings but the film played a vital role in making this an issue of religion rather than politics. As compared to all the agenda films produced in Bollywood, The Kashmir Files got unusual publicity, media coverage, and endorsement from the ruling party despite mixed reviews from the critics. The film was screened at around 600 cinemas across India which speaks a lot. Narendra Modi himself endorsed the film by stating the film as a truth that was suppressed for years.

PERFORMANCES

Coming back to my review, the motive of watching the film was not only to observe the nature and the aesthetics of the film but to judge the technical aspects that made my case for watching the film right. I feel that ‘The Kashmir Files’ was made personally for Anupam Kher who has his sentiments involved in the story. Not only is he a Kashmiri Pandit but the name of his father was also Pushkar Nath. It is like an offer of a lifetime he cannot refuse and this is why we watched a different Anupam Kher that we never observed in his past 500 films and 5 decades. Surely his best performance since ‘Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara‘.

Mithun Chakraborty also gave quite an impressive performance. At first, I was concerned about how come a Bengali actor will portray a Kashmiri as Mithun’s usual accent doesn’t change while playing any character at all. But the name of Mithun’s character is Brahma Dutt and Dutts are Bengali Kayasthas so his role in Kashmir fits. Cinematography is one of the film’s pluses.

CLOSING REMARKS

The Kashmir Files is bleak, one-dimensional, and committed to factual inaccuracies with awful script and direction leading to nowhere but encouraging hate speech by generalizing Islamophobia.

RATINGS 3/10

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