Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal ........

StarringJohn Abraham .... Sunny
Arshad Warsi .... Shaan
Bipasha Basu .... Rumana
Boman Irani .... Tony
Director : Vivek Agnihotri
Musician : Pritam





As the team’s captain puts it: “It is not about football”.

Yes, Vivek Agnihotri’s film ‘Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal’ is about everything else except football. It is about racism towards south Asians in Britain, and it is about the rise of the underdogs.
The director never makes an attempt to penetrate into the game. Rather, he is so obsessed with the idea of projecting racism that he pitches the entire plot of the movie on it. Not a single gora in the film is shown as a friend of the Asians of the Southall community. John Abraham’s character Sunny, who plays for a team of whites (Aston), is repeatedly warned by his dad and a Southall coach that a bitter reality awaits him. That reality strikes home when John, despite being one of the best players, is dropped from the Aston team just because of his skin colour.
Dear Mr. Agnihotri, admitted that racism exists in the UK. But you show it in extremes in your movie.
Without beating about the bush let me come to the point. ‘Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal’ is a pretty average film with just a few good sequences that come too late to save the sinking ship.
The movie does remind you of Chak De India in parts – a coach with a sordid past, a ragtag team of underdogs, ego clashes within the team, and the penultimate rise of the minnows. But ‘Goal’ fails to do even half of what ‘CDI’ did. ‘Goal’ doesn’t evoke a sense of patriotism, it doesn’t stir your blood, and it only manages to provide you with some wishy-washy entertainment.
Shaan ( Arshad Warsi ) is the captain of the Southall football club, comprising of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi players. The club is only for namesake, its field being used for parties and weddings to earn the extra buck. There is no coach. The players are pot-bellied and flat-footed. No wonder, the club hasn’t won a tournament for decades.
Now, a bigger danger looms over the club. If they don’t pay their pending lease of the last seven years, the players risk losing the club to the greedy sharks who want to make money out of turning the place into a commercial complex. Their only hope is to win the Combined Counties Football League in England and save the club through the prize money of 3 million.
Shaan finds a new coach, Tony Singh ( Boman Irani ), for the team. In turn, Tony finds a new striker Sunny ( John Abraham ) who has been dropped from an English team because of his color. But Sunny and Shaan don’t like each other.
Aah…I almost forgot. There is also Shaan’s sister Rumana ( Bipasha Basu ) who has a soft corner for Sunny and joins the team as the physiotherapist.
As the underdogs of Southall pull up their socks and take on the field with renewed vigour, the club’s fortune begins to turn around. The end is predictable. The underdogs will eventually prevail, but not without crossing many a hurdle.
‘Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal’ has flaws one too many. Firstly, the movie lacks genuine humour (except a few moments). Secondly, the racist angle is stretched beyond credibility. The angst of the South Asians towards the whites is understandable, but the director harps on it time and again, unwillingly making the coloured ones look no less racist. For instance, check out the tirade of John’s sidekick after John is dropped from an English team.
Director Vivek Agnihotri needs a lesson in subtlety. His idea of subtlety is Tony’s wife saying how beautiful different flowers look in a pot when Shaan complains about Sunny being too English to be a part of the Southall team. And how ‘subtle’ was Agnihotri’s idea of showing the face of Sunny’s dad on the stadium’s big viewer-screen so that coach Tony can recognize the old man as the same person who saved him from a racist attack many years ago.
As far as performances go, John Abraham shows slight improvement in his acting abilities. The guy with a killer smile not just displays his natural flair at football, he also manages to emote well in good many scenes. Arshad Warsi is dependable as usual. His histrionics are in place. But his frame comes across a tad too stout to make him look like a footballer.
Bipasha’s role doesn’t put any great demands on her. Boman Irani is just about okay.
‘Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal’ does have a few engrossing and emotional moments, mostly in the second half. The music is pretty forgettable. The team’s anthem “Halla Bol” only arouses embarrassment for a viewer.
However, if you are a fan of either John Abraham or football, you will manage to sit through a viewing of ‘Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal’

Saawariya

Ranbir Kapoor ....

Sonam Kapoor ....

Salman Khan .... Special appearance

Rani Mukherjee .... Special appearance

Director : Sanjay Leela Bhansali

From a bird’s eye view, the dream world of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya looks like a vague cubist painting, with houses in hues of blue and green. And it is a world where the sun doesn’t shine. Not at least in the course of the story.
Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story ‘White Nights’, ‘Saawariya’ is like a dark and surreal fable that enchants you with its visual beauty, but doesn’t touch you where it matters the most – heart. And the reason for this is that Sanjay Leela Bhansali gives more importance to creating the right ambience rather than capturing the essence of the story.
To put it briefly, the film’s beautiful form obliterates the inherent love and pathos in the story. And ‘Saawariya’ ends up as a unique study in the art of cinematography, but an average film that falls short of providing what it promised.
The anonymous town of ‘Saawariya’ is like a dream world where houses and buildings stand beside wide canals with gondolas rowing by. Ranbir Raj ( Ranbir Kapoor ) , an amateur singer, cycles in straight into a red light area and sings a song that brings some cheer to the prostitutes. That is his character. A smiling handsome lad with hair falling over his forehead, he brings smiles on the faces of those he meets. Among them is prostitute Gulab ( Rani Mukherjee ) who begins to like, even love, him in the course of the story.
But Ranbir is struck by love for a gravely dressed mysterious girl whom he meets atop a bridge. He tries to cheer up the sombre girl, but only manages to make a faint acquaintance of her. She is Sakina ( Sonam Kapoor ).
In his next meeting with Sakina, our besotted hero comes to know that she is waiting for someone, a man (Salman Khan) she loves, a man who promised to return on the night of Eid.
The story of ‘Saawariya’ is about the test of love, about the pain of unrequited feelings and about the women in waiting. Be it Ranbir’s landlady (Zohra Sehgal), be it Sakina’s blind mother or be it Sakina herself, everyone is waiting for someone.
The film could have been a cinematic masterpiece if Bhansali had focused more on developing the characters in depth rather than resorting heavily to their dramatic presentation. The silhouette of a veiled girl waiting on a bridge is appealing to the eye, but it doesn’t make your heart flinch.
Music, by Monty, could have been another strong point of the film. But there, too, is overkill. Too many songs and heavy background score dominate the story.
Among the newcomers, it is Ranbir who handles his role with confidence. Sonam, though undoubtedly gorgeous, seems ill at ease with her part. In one close-up shot just after her introduction, her face – supposed to express sadness – is completely bereft of emotion. In the second half, however, she manages to sink her teeth better into her character.
Ranbir performs much better for a debutant. He is the quintessential charming boy who keeps smiling and tripping and unexpectedly showing a gift of gab.
Salman Khan plays his usual self while Rani is partly impressive. It is Zohra Sehgal, the ‘now-stern-now-mellow’ landlady who wins your heart over. Alas, she is kept only on the margins.
Despite the flaws of ‘Saawariya’, Sanjay Leela Bhansali ought to be praised for his technical finesse and his sense of visual representation. The look of the movie will be a subject of discussions and debate for students of cinematography and art direction. And it is for this overwhelming visual appeal that I chose to give the film more than two stars. Otherwise, ‘Saawariya’ is a film with emotional moments few and far between.

Aja Nachle...

Starring

Madhuri Dixit ....

Kunal Kapoor ....

Konkona Sen Sharma ....

Vinay Pathak ....

Jugal Hansraj ....

Director : Anil Mehta

Producer : Aditya Chopra

Music Album : Aaja Nachle

‘Aaja Nachle’ is a perfect example of how good actors can sometimes save a poor movie and make it watchable, at least once. The fault partly lies with the story, which is too damn plain and predictable. The script doesn’t even attempt to go into the finer points of the story. On top of it, the man with the megaphone, the director, Anil Mehta , fails to yoke together different elements of the story to create a unified, cohesive tale that not just entertains but also touches your heart. That, precisely, is the problem with ‘Aaja Nachle’.
Above all, the movie dashes the expectations that were had of a comeback vehicle of Madhuri Dixit . Not that she is to be blamed. She does full justice to the role she was given and proves that her dancing and acting skills have not waned during all the period she stayed away from films.
It is Madhuri and other actors of the film that make you sit through this elaborate musical, and at times boring, saga called ‘Aaja Nachle’.
Dia (Madhuri Dixit) returns from the US to be with her dying dance guru in his last moments. The man dies before she makes it to Shamli, the small town where she grew up, but he leaves for her a filmed message in which he urges her to revive the defunct dance academy Ajanta, the very school where Dia learned to dance, and to live.
A girl who eloped from Shamli with a foreigner and settled in the US, Dia doesn’t enjoy good reputation among the denizens of this small town.
Her dance school Ajanta is about to be razed down by people in powerful positions – an MP called Raja saheb ( Akshaye Khanna ) and a businessman named Faroukh ( Irrfan Khan ) – who want to build a shopping mall in the place of Ajanta.
Dia intends to resurrect Ajanta and bring back the culture of dance and theatre in Shamli. But for this she would have to win over the people of the town, which by no means is an easy task.
‘Aaja Nachle’ begins with a song after which no more than a few dialogues are spoken that another song follows. It is like an early warning that helps you brace up for the film. The story thankfully rises above this musical mire as several other characters are introduced.
Imran ( Kunal Kapoor ), a local ruffian who vandalizes the sets of Dia’s show, is literally handpicked by her to enact the lead part in her play. Anokhi ( Konkona Sen Sharma ), an uncouth girl with an ever-running nose and a crush on Imran, persists to get the part of the heroine. Mohan Sharma ( Ranvir Shorey ), a tea-stall owner nursing an old, unrequited love for Dia, decides to help her revive Ajanta. Mr. Chojar ( Vinay Pathak ), a respectable government servant, and Sanjeev Mehta ( Jugal Hansraj ), an insurance agent, also join Dia’s troupe.
Honestly, it is these characters and their idiosyncrasies that make the film somewhat interesting. If only a sound script had been there in the first place, ‘Aaja Nachle’ would have turned much better. Some of the sequences are so unimaginatively conceived: for instance, the scene where Dia convinces a local MLA (Akhilendra Mishra) to endorse Ajanta as the vote issue for the coming elections. Or the scene where the wife of Mr. Chojar vents out her pent up frustration. There are more such sequences in the story that are deliberately contrived to put across a point.
To their further convenience, the writers ( Aditya Chopra and Jaideep Sahni) and the director never make even a feeble attempt to go into the finer points of the story. For example, it is never shown how Dia manages to finance the lavish theatre production that she stages at the end.
The only thing worth watching in ‘Aaja Nachle’ is performances by the star cast. Be it Darshan Jariwala as Ajanta’s teacher, or Raghuvir Yadav as the academy’s old caretaker, the actors bring to life their characters.
Notwithstanding a few hints of ageing in her face, Madhuri Dixit just about manages to carry most part of the film on her shoulders. She is still beautiful, a terrific dancer and a competent actress. There is also a slight shade of accent in her Hindi, but that unwittingly suits her character in the film.
Konkona Sen is a killer when it comes to acting. She is a complete natural. So is Kunal Kapoor. He convincingly plays the toughie who softens up after heeding the call of love.
Vinay Pathak and Ranvir Shorey are dependable as usual. Akshaye Khanna is a delightful surprise of the film. Irrfan Khan and Divya Dutta, too, get their moments at the fag end.
And last but not the least, the driving force of the film, its music, is another saving grace for ‘Aaja Nachle’. Songs like “Show Me Your Jalwa” and “Aaja Nachle” are the best of the lot. The medley of songs in the finale lifts the movie up and takes it to a crescendo.
Watch ‘Aaja Nachle’ for performances.