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Film Reviews

Film Review: Uunchai (2022)

STORY

Lifelong friends Amit, Om, and Javed decide to take a trek to the Everest Base Camp when their close friend Bhupen passes away.

INTRODUCTION

Uunchai is an emotional drama and a journey towards a mark where travelers seek the meaning of life. Four old friends visibly in their late 60s and 70s meeting, parting, singing, dancing, and enjoying whatever is left in their life. Uunchai is about a burning desire that one has longed to fulfill for ages. Uunchai is about learning and tolerating from a generational gap. Uunchai is about holding hands, bringing back memories, and hugs. Uunchai is about climbing. Uunchai is about lost love.

REVIEW

The biggest plus of the film is the story. To my heavy surprise, Bollywood is very limited in basing its films on friendships. And here, Uunchai talks about old-age friendships. The audience deserves to get attention through thoughtful plots.

Another plus is the ensemble casting of senior actors. The friendship quartet was Amitabh Bachchan, Anupam Kher, Boman Irani, and Danny Denzongpa. The female leads were Neena Gupta and Sarika; and Nafisa Ali in a cameo. Parineeti Chopra played an important supporting role.

I refuse to believe that the film is directed by Sooraj R. Barjatya. His filmmaking aesthetics for Uunchai are completely different from what he presented to the audience in his previous films. Maybe someone else directed Uunchai under his name or maybe he has learned with time that if he has to survive and make successful films amongst the current crop of excellent directors, then he has to change the directional techniques. I say this because Bollywood history is full of disappointing comebacks.

With such an impressive plot and fabulous casting, Uunchai could have been one of the best films of 2022. But one negative factor declined this film from achieving that purpose – length! This film is almost a three-hour film. So what to blame when the length becomes the issue? Indeed, screenwriting! It was a simple plot but the screenplay was massively stretched on the journey to Everest and then on the climbing.

Technically, stretching on the climbing was acceptable because trekking to Mount Everest for their friend was actually the core of the story. It is their journey in the middle portion of the film that bought a lot of time. Lying to Javed’s wife, then taking her on the journey to be dropped at the daughter’s house. When things do not work then consider meeting Om’s family and then drop her. And then another arc of taking a lady during the journey who turns out to be Bhupen’s lost love, Mala.

To my calculation, all these developments took 50 minutes of the film. Not saying that Sooraj Barjatya should have avoided all this but he could have shortened this journey length. Let’s say 20 minutes instead of 50 and a few more minutes from the whole climbing part of the film. And then the film picturized a lot of songs. The film at stretch could have been a 120-minute film, absolutely not 170.

The second half had a lot of plotholes and raised a lot of questions. Why would the local villagers cross the bridge when they observe that the climbers are already struggling to cross it? How did the tour guide allow Amit to continue the journey after knowing what he suffers from? Amit is given oxygen when he collapses again. I was wondering, why was he not using it while trying to reach it in the first place.

UUNCHAI MUST HAVE BEEN NON-LINEAR

I think Uunchai should have been a non-linear film. The reason is that Sooraj Barjatya was firm to stretch on the friendship but the problem is that Bhupen’s character died within half an hour. So there was no growth in such a friendship quartet and at the time of Bhupen’s death, the real impact of sentiments fall flat. It would have been an extraordinary direction of film running with two different timelines concluding over Bhupen’s death in one parallel and throwing his ashes on the base camp in the other parallel. 

CLOSING REMARKS

Uunchai sustains Rajshri Productions‘ long hold on traditional and culturally influenced family values. Here, the film focused more on friendship. I think this film is for all ages and in the development of the continuity, it emotionally relates to us somehow. You can absolutely watch this along with your family.

In a world full of stories and incidents, things with you happen for a reason. Bhupen bought the tickets for trekking but died. His friends paid their final respect and went on an emotional and spiritual journey. And during this journey, until reaching that mark, they came across a lot of things in life that taught them a lot. Had Bhupen not died perhaps Amit would never happen to speak to his wife, Om would never consider a change in business nor would he ever realized how many grudges his relatives were holding for him, Javed and his wife would have never understood their daughter’s domestic situation, Amit would have never understood the value of his books, Mala would never get the second chance, and last of all Bhupen’s friends would have never realized his obsession with Mount Everest and the girl he loved the most.

So, friends, things happen for a reason.

RATINGS: 7/10

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Film Reviews

Film Review: Runway 34 (2022)

Captain Vikrant Khanna (Ajay Devgn) is an accomplished and self-possessed pilot whose next mission is to fly Skyline Airway from Dubai to Cochin along with his First Officer Tanya Albuquerque (Rakul Preet Singh) but the aerial journey gets complicated when a cyclone hits Cochin and are diverted to Trivandrum. A miscommunication jeopardizes their landing because Trivandrum is also affected by the bad weather. And during all this, Captain Vikrant attempts to save all the lives from an aviation disaster.

Runway 34 is a thriller film also starring Amitabh Bachchan and Boman Irani. And within a film, there are two films or shall I say a film easily divided into two different parts of the continuity. The first half of the screentime is about the flight, the aerial sequence of Vikrant and Tanya; and the second half is about the courtroom drama, the inquiry about facts and findings to determine whether the pilots were at fault or not.

My observation is also divided into two and perhaps this is why Runway 34 failed at the box office but that is the other debate to look after. The first half was a remarkable aviation tale to dramatize. An interesting build-up to a flight. Ajay Devgn, the director himself, presented the character of Vikrant in a way to the audience that we realize that the captain is self-possessed, cold, confident, problem-fixer, and eideticker. And then the preparation of flying the plane. Here, I liked the editing of the film, in fact, the whole first half had the drama holding distinction in the editing. Yes, I expected a better ambiance building from the passengers due to the low-scale acting. But more than that, the first half gave us quite an intensity you really do not expect from a mainstream film from B-town. Not an expert or hold some advanced knowledge about aviation so really cannot judge the entire pilot-to-pilot conversation or the one with the air traffic control tower.

review of ‘Runway 34’.

As much as the first half peaked with excellence in most aspects, the second half lets you down. It was easily one of the worst follow-ups from an impressive first half I have watched in recent years. And I am surprised because usually, the dramatizing of courtroom sequences is mostly the one that captivates the audience. Even Hindi films from the past decade hold quite an impressive track record of courtroom dramas. And here, that should have been a piece of a delicious red velvet cake, and moreover that having the luxury of two highly impressive lengthy dialogue-speaking actors, Ajay and Amitabh, the courtroom drama failed to live up to the hype and ruined the film.

The settlement of the courtroom and the entire proceeding was boring, predictable, and built on dubious writing. Amitabh’s Narayan Vedant, the head of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) was certainly a brain teaser in the courtroom sequences but the character was not developed nor did we get a magnitude of investigation on a broad scale. Narayan’s fact-finding needed a lot of minutes. There was no heat between Vikrant and Narayan. I wanted to see the same intensity in the courtroom sequences as Ajay Devgn built in the flight sequences. Vikrant’s wife being so cool about discovering that her husband was partying with some Anjali that the whole night looked so artificial. How did the passenger, whose mother died, get Vikrant’s number? In light humor, Ajay Devgn was quite inclined to advertise smoking cigarettes throughout the film.

Acting-wise, they were all to their usual, nothing special. We have watched Amitabh giving lengthy addresses quite a lot in his recent films. Rakul perhaps gets a career boost through this film.

I have observed most of the audience on social media comparing Runway 34 to Clint Eastwood‘s Sully and Robert Zemeckis‘ Flight and declaring it copied which is utter nonsense. Runway 34 is based on the real incident that happened in 2015 when Jet Airways flight 9W 555, a Boeing 737-800, flew from Doha to Kochi but the pilot decided to divert to Trivandrum.

The viewers need to fact-check because due to the negativity, the idea of watching a certain film is taken into a negative perspective. As far as I can write about this film, Runway 34’s biggest disappointment is the second half which ruined a promising first half. The execution went wrong; therefore the film missed out on talking about a quality aviation story.

RATINGS: 6/10

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Film Reviews

Film Review: Jayeshbhai Jordaar (2022)

Jayesh lives in a traditional and conservative Gujarati household and is the son of a sarpanch. Jayesh is married to Mudra and has a nine-year-old girl, Siddhi. To give birth to a boy, Mudra has miscarried six times and is expecting a girl again. Therefore, Jayesh protects his wife and daughter by secretly running their way out.

Jayeshbhai Jordaar is a satire that raises the issue of women’s rights and gender complexity over the consequences of a pregnancy. But the film misses out on broadening the thickness of the plot. JJ started pretty impressively in the first half and then left a massive gap in writing in the second half. The film became a never-ending cat-and-mouse-chase.

As the film reflects on the social issues that I am not aware of in the Gujarati culture, a kind of superstition that the film has presented could have been managed with better care. But the problem lies in the continuity of the plot I wrote before. The director was compromised about the tone of the screenplay. At my first phase of observation looked like will settle on Jayesh protecting his family with true spirit. However, the film after the second half was pretty lost and the final thirty minutes became impossible to tolerate.

Somewhere the humor was flat and somewhere I liked the applied comedy the director reasoned for, like when Jayesh’s sister makes everyone unconscious, or the couple along with daughter faking the beatings to the elders, etc. Ranveer Singh, Boman Irani, Ratna Pathak, and even Shalini Pandey performed above average, one of the few plusses to talk about. I like how Ranveer performs this particular Gujarati role. Not an expert on the culture but this is totally different Ranveer than we usually watch. He was excellent in Gully Boy and at this scale of choices he is making at his career peak, this shows that Ranveer is serious about making his name as an actor who wants challenges.

The film deserved better writing with such a vital message. Inconsistent writing led to damages and Jayeshbhai fails to impress. The audience should watch the film for Ranveer’s performance, the rest is shattered and broken. A film that had potential is ruined by miles.

RATINGS: 3/10