Reviews

Utter tripe Such a big budget and such a big name for direction plus they roped in . Sir Anthony Hopkins as well and yet this was a total disaster.

The lead character wants to portray herself as a very strong person without emotions and yet she is crying or weeping for 90% of both the movies. Other actors are acting too ostensibly. Very wooden and devoid of any emotions. It feels that the actors do not want to be there and just get over the business quickly.

I am starting to think that these movies with big names fail because of some illegal activities, like money laundering. Maybe the movies are made this bad on purpose.

How to ruin a great movie? Ask an Indian production to remake it. Previously Amir Khan ran Memento aground by making Ghajini and now Lal Singh Chaddha remade Forrest Gump with Indian flair.

While the attempt is good, story line is solid and Amir and the supporting cast doing pretty good job, it's the nationalistic policies, the sycophancy which destroyed it. But more about it later.

First the character Lal Singh doesn't grow up at all. He goes from a young boy to a young adult to more mature man. However, between the young boy and young adult, at least 10 years pass but he and the girl (Rupa - Kareen Kapoor) stay the same age. Emergency was lifted in 1977, India won the WC cricket in 1983, Operation Blue Star and Indira's assassination happened in 1984 and demolition of Babri Masjid happened in 1992. From 1977 to 1992 it is 15 years but both the children and the mother had no change in their looks or growth. Dates are not mentioned specifically but the events included and shown can be useful to determine the time period. That was very lazy writing and sloppy directing.

Now to even bigger problem which plaguing Indian movie industry for sometime now. No matter what the topic or the movie theme is, they somehow find a way to slander non-Hindus. The news reporter who read out Indira's assassination report on the TV. He started by saying "world's largest democracy ruler", which is not incorrect but totally superfluous and then mentioned that she was shot due to revenge sought by Sikhs for the Golden Temple operation. That was way too early to utter those words as the report was made almost immediately after the assassination. That was aimed at Sikh community for whatever reasons best known to director, producer and the writers.

They also showed Ayodhya incident but only in the passing, hardly mentioning anything of worth because that was by Hindu fanatics. Then of course they shifted towards Muslims and stayed with that age-old trope almost until the end of the movie. They stopped short of mentioning Pakistan at length but kept on showing how Muslims could not be trusted and Mohammad Paaji was even shown trying to kill Lal Singh by shooting in his back while being carried away from the battle field. There was a Muslim preacher on the TV stating the common misconception found among Muslims and non-Muslims alike that when they die, there will be 72 virgins waiting for them. Then Mohmmad Paaji joins Lal Singh in the business venture, excels at it, makes a lot of money for everyone while being treated with respect and love by everyone especially Lal Singh. However, when he sees the Mumbai Attack on TV, that is when he realizes that "how wrong he was" and how people are led astray by religious fanatics.

All this is true but it had no place in this solid story. It was pointless to go so much in detail about these events. And the icing on the cake was the last bit. The sycophant gesture. A grand poster of Modi (Indian PM) was splashed across the screen, stopping at it for half a second or so.

Do the movie makers in India think that their movies will not succeed if they don't toe the line of BJP and the chest thumping which comes with the territory?

This movie is produced by Amir Khan productions. Perhaps he has to prove his love for India and the government of India in order to stay relevant.

Whatever the case, this movie was great idea but the makers are guilty of dereliction due to their biased beliefs and not staying true to the subject matter.

First of, I am a Pakistani and this movie gave me a lump in my throat. I had goose bumps watching Kapil Dev lift the world cup. Such awe inspiring story. Well done neighbours for winning the cup and making a biopic.

A solid 5 just for the story alone.

However unfortunately this superb story is ruined by short sightedness and low budget, perhaps due to cutting corners.

You should've had real life commentators play the commentators'' role. Boman Irani playing Farokh Engineer was dull and devoid of any emotion even when India was winning. The other white commentator was supposed to be Richie Benaud? Doubt that. He was mostly condescending to the Indian team and Farokh.

In reality Benaud was all praise for the Indian team. Moreover the Hindi commentators were also loud mouth just like today's TV anchors.

Childish jabs to try instigate emotions for no reason. Then there was mention of the border with Pakistanis shelling continuously and then showing a grand gesture of not firing during final. That was totally gratuitous. Please leave unnecessary references to Pakistan in your movies. Feels like you want everyone in the world to know about your quibbles with your neighbour. Forced patriotism at the best.

Moving on to set. The ads around the ground have modern feel. Not a single ad of "Prudential World Cup". The ground itself is fake. You could've had tried to get the actual ground or at least a similar ground.

Some of the cars shown are from late 80s and early 90s. People in the stadium were also not attired properly. West Indies flag shown in the movie wasn't used for the first time until 1999. Transparent beer cups came in 1990. Cars shown are also from late 80s and early 90s. Dull commentary by Farokh Engineer and Richie Benaud (if it was him, who was depicted) was condescending, which is total bull. Farokh was much more energetic and Richie was full of praise for India in reality. Hindi commentators sound like today's shouting TV anchors. The ads were all wrong in the stadium. Hardly any hat on WI fans. This great story has been ruined by cutting corners to save on the movie budget. Modern day hairstyles and hardly any hats of that era and the beer cups. There were no transparent plastic beer cups as we see today back then in the stadiums.

When you are making a biopic of such a great event, you need to spend money on sets, costumes, timelines, fashion etc.

You can't cut corners to save some bucks and in the process mess up a wonderful story.

This movie should be remade just like. Just like Justice League was made by Zack Snyder after Joss Whedon messed it up.

First of all, this movie isn't as bad as I rated it. The story is very good, amid obvious plot holes. Then there are following problems. All in all, these deliberate or unintentional "mistakes" flop the movie badly. Perhaps there was a spy who sabotaged their film. Now on to the same repeated mistakes in any Bollywood movie about Pakistan.

Not every Pakistani has a beard or wears ONLY shalwar qameez. Not every Pakistani woman is covered in burqa. Pakistan was very liberal back then. Night clubs, casinos, bars, pubs, dancing girls even Hashish was legal. We definitely not say, "Salam" or "Adab" continously. Neither we bow down or raise our hand to the forehead like Mughal style. Not everyone migrated from Lucknow. Pakistanis also don't wear saffron wrist bands which Colonel Khan is wearing. There are split units visible in buildings. Split units in 70s in Pakistan?? What?? Besides they weren't invented until 1973. This movie is based in 1971. The translations used for Urdu are pretty wrong too. We also don't refer India as Hindustan really, unless it is in some literary sense. It's always India and rarely Bharat for us. Army Headquarters are not in Karachi, they are in Rawalpindi. The spies from Pakistan are Muslim, the traitor from India is Muslim. That's such a wrong, lazy and cliched crap. Malik casually RAW chief at his home directly from Pakistan from a public phone. He in Pakistan army's uniform and no one noticed that he was calling India? Can you get lazier than that? YES, you did. CGI plane? Stop cutting corners. Then the dumb mistakes to try make the story sensational which wasn't required. Also get proper Urdu speakers. Some can't even pronounce Malik's name. It's MALIK, not Malak or something like that. I am a Pakistani. I like to watch movies. I don't care if the movie is against Pakistan or not. I see it as only a movie. An art. Especially if it is based upon some historical events. But these kinda mistakes disappoint almost every single time.

The documentary is good, very very good. Talks about real issues definitely but there are some things which bothered me. Placement of cameras. Did he use hidden cameras? Sometimes there were some cameras seen which meant there were more than one camera. People talked candidly yet at times they seemed to be aware of camera presence and yet, not look into it. Passing glances at the best. Following children around without any of their guardians. Consistency was a problem too. Towards the end, the hair would grow or become short from scene to scene. Training camp videos, that looks very dubious. How come these people allowed him and the cameras inside the training camp, even though the faces were covered in ski masks. And the ski masks, which had ISIS logo on them. Did they order it from Alibaba? Who is funding all that, this question was never asked. While the documentary has touched the right subject and has shown the reality, it appeared scripted and acted, taking away the feel of scary doc, being filmed in the heart of these war mongers.

I've given it 1 star because I can't go lower than that. My friends are raving about it, they pushed me into watching. I watched season 1, just because I was a bit intrigued about the ending but boy, I was disappointed like never before. I thought maybe just maybe it is gonna be a super twist in the end, that's why the high rating, that's why my friends' love for it. I went on until episode 6 of season 2. OK, couple of first episodes started to attract me but then it fell over flat. Winona Ryder overacts and overacts. Children did good job though. I lost it when in episode 6 of season 2, Will Buyers tells his mother that he was sorry and "he" told Will to do that, she questions him, "Who told you to do what?" Sorry Joyce, but were you sleeping through the whole thing or wait the writers were sleeping perhaps because were they still trying to ascertain about Will's condition or they were still in doubt about the monsters. Also every time there is a report of certain monster or whatever, people dismiss that as if they hadn't seen or heard anything like that before as in season 1 before that. Just plain stupid and the sad part is that our collective intellectualism and smartness is going down rapidly.

I'd start with if they had used Kyle Massey and Vandit Bhat as the main characters going forward from the 80s to 2016 then this movie would've been much better. The thin to next to nothing plot is absurd and makes you groan out loud. Russel Peters is a decent comedian and not a bad actor but in this movie he was just awful and so were the rest of the characters. This is by far the worst weed movie ever. Two young boys smoke CIA grown weed and in 1986 and then they find themselves in 2016. The first thing would happen would be a massive freak out but they seemed quite at ease with the turn of the events. And people who thought they died 30 years ago also didn't seem too surprised or shocked upon their return. Just abysmal.

I usually don't watch Bollywood masala movies. They are mostly copied in their entirety from Hollywood, Hong Kong or other cinema industries or at least bit and pieces shamelessly plagiarized. This most expensive movie coming out of India is no different. I wonder where did they spend the money because CGI looked like 80s work. Scenes changing from hot tropical climate to snow laden ground yet people running around only in summer clothes, leaping unbelievable distances even for a fantasy movie. I was pressured into watching this waste of time and money from my Indian peers. And as usual I have sworn, I am never gonna listen to them again but I know it will happen. My advice stay away from this for the sake of your own sanity.

The name "Office Christmas Party" does not do any justice with the movie. At ALL. It is about office tussle between siblings, their past jealousy, thrown in the mix is a recent divorcée who has hots for a co- worker. Then there are mandatory an Asian, an Indian and a couple of black people who are again irrelevant to the title. I usually don't write reviews. When I saw the advertisement of this movie on a bus, I was super excited. I have had my fair share of office Christmas parties so I thought "oh goody, someone finally thought of this. This will be crazy funny." With Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, T.J. Miller, Rob Corddry, Karan Soni, Fortune Femister, Jillian Bell, Kate Mckinnon and Matt Walsh, I thought this is already a super hit. Something in the same class as Old School. But…but I was so wrong. The film doesn't deal with what is actually happening at the party which it should since there is always so much material to go on but instead it shows a mean person and a good person, sigh… the old… evil and good never ending cliché after cliché goes on and on. I watched all of it and quite frankly it is just a groan out loud movie. Try again people and try to stick to the themed title of the movie instead of opening up so many fronts where you are not able to close them back.

It's an amazing movie, based upon a true story of struggle simply for life. If we take out the aspect of the sports of boxing from the film, it still is a great story of an orphan, who survived the treacherous and cavernous belly of Karachi, otherwise known as Lyari. The acting was good too and the story line was well executed. Some technical goofs left a bit of bad taste but nothing too important to take away the true enjoyment, which is "Shah". Goofs which particularly happened were three: 1. There was signboard of "Easy Load". That is a place where people top up their mobile phones. Back in Syed Hussain Shah's time of growing up, there were no mobile phones. 2. South Korea was wrongly mentioned as North Korea. 3. Instead of showing Karachi and the area, it was Punjab. People were exhaling condensed breaths in winters, which is extremely rare in Karachi. The construction place, he worked and slept, had red bricks. Karachi uses concrete blocks for construction, not bricks from the kiln. And only a true Karachite like me, would notice number 3. Other than that, kudos to people behind the whole thing.

I watched this movie despite reading some really negative reviews. The cast and the story itself were enough for me to check this flick out. While the movie is good in almost all the aspects, including acting, directing, story and somewhat location filmed at, it was marred by stereotypical clichés. There were wrong references here and there. Since the movie was shot in Morocco, depicting Afghanistan, there were bound to be some mistakes. But these were glaring mistakes. For example the use of Arabic language here there. Pashto was widely used but in Afghanistan people mostly speak Dari, which is an amalgamated form of Pashto and Persian. Some of the people's clothing was also North African style which is a far cry from Afghan style clothing. Also the accent was more of Arabic speaking person than an Afghan. Afghan accent of English closely resembles that of Iran and Pakistan. Afghans can't pronounce the letter "F", instead they pronounce letter "P" in place of it. Arabs can't pronounce letter "P", instead they use letter "B" in place of it. In the movie almost everyone was using "B" instead of "P" just like Arabs. When you are making a movie, a little research goes a long way and now you have all knowing Google on your side, then why don't you before you start shooting.

I am gonna go straight to the point. Except Ryan Reynolds dialogue, starting credits and post credit scene, there is nothing in this movie. There is no story at all. That's what happens if you give a bad ass character over to Disney. No matter how many times the "F" word is being used, it is still a FAMILY movie. OK maybe a family of children above 15. So I repeat, there is no story at all. Someone scorched his skin, he goes after him, finds him, takes revenge. Movie is over. However being said all this, the opening credits kind of warn you about the movie by stating how overly paid director was hired or there is a token comic character and an English villain. Awful, yeah, time killed indeed yeah.

Heavy weight names star in this movie but they can just so much. Great actors and all but if they don't have substance to play with, lines to deliver then the movie will be utter crap. Sean Penn, Ray Winstone, Javier Bardem and Idris Elba are great ensemble and all but again without anything they can't do nothing. The movie tried to follow the same style which is prevalent lately in these action/morally correct movies. The formula is that the antagonist has a lover and they have to be separated because of volunteer actions but involuntary consequences followed by a break of few years and then the past comes to haunt them specifically in life threatening form and then they somehow get together to survive it... Also Sean Penn's love interest is way too young. It just seems very odd besides the absurdness of the movie itself.

It is a good comedy movie. The storyline is very good and all the actors have done great job except the lead cast of Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. At some points they over acted and at some points they were meek. However since the comedy itself is pretty hilarious, I would recommend it to watch provided if you can take the acting of these two. Rob Riggle is best at what he does best. I wonder why this man doesn't get some mainstream role. He is really funny. As for the director Luke Greenfield, he has a good reputation of comedy movies director. Animal and The Girl Next Door were really good but this one is better. Again only the acting puts a setback on this otherwise very funny movie.