Every year has its share of duds and turkeys. 2024 was no different except that even the rotten ones are too drab to have any real offence value.
Sukanya Verma lists 10 of her least liked Hindi movies of the year.
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan
From my review: Clad in trendy clothes and slow motion swagger, these globetrotting, gun-toting heroes on hire highlight the merits of a hare-brained plot that's got more bullets than brains in its storytelling. It would be no exaggeration if the script reads bullets after every sentence.
Though it would be a surprise if there was any script at all.
Suffice to say the new Bade Miyan Chote Miyan is nothing like the Amitabh Bachchan-Govinda 1998 comedy of the same name starring the pitch-perfect entertainers in double roles.
Forget comic chops, you'll not find an ounce of camaraderie between Akshay Kumar and Tiger Shroff as they go about firing ammo and flexing abs at a breakneck pace to ward off Prithvi's army of clones for nearly three excruciating hours of this noisy, nonsensical drivel.
Yudhra
From my review: There are so many loopholes in this lazily scribbled plot, it could be a different movie and still as crummy.
Fully paid scholarships to major in a branch of science where students carry designer purses not backpacks to school is not nearly as mind boggling as one of its biggest pre-intervals twists that's barely addressed and never confirmed.
Kids and their doll games convey more coherence than the erratic manner Yudhra's characters are written and pitted against each other.
Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video
From my review: Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video has the eagerness of a standup comic.
It is the sort of movie that feels obliged to make a joke before a sentence, between a sentence and after a sentence. Problem is the humour is not just pedestrian, it's also plain unfunny.
Between tons of sexual innuendo and Kapil Sharma brand of slapstick gags characterised in loud caricatures, moronic behaviour, flimsy wigs and cartoonish rhythm, Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video's jarring notions of exuberance have nothing novel to offer.
Sarfira
From my review: Mission Mangal, Mission Raniganj, Mission Ram Setu, Mission Menstruation and now Mission Deccan Air, Akshay Kumar has shed so much blood, sweat and tears in rescuing, rehabilitating and restoring the nation in the past few years, no amount of amnesia in the world can wipe off the monotony of this imagery.
Once again his latest is a remake of a South Indian hit inspired by a true story fulfilling Akshay's criteria to take on a movie, preen in its heroics and colour it in his patented hue of patriotism.
Sarfira has the depth of a potato chip. Instead of the struggle gone in making a low-cost airline work or the partners flanking Veer like props not receiving due importance, Sarfira is interested in pressing our emotional nerves to the point of plugging them out.
Throughout its 155 minutes, every scene is doused in blaring background music and melodrama. Disappointment alone won't do, it must feel like a full blown catastrophe.
Do Patti
From my review: Credited for its story, screenplay and dialogues, Kanika Dhillon cannot tell her femme fatale from her feminist in her increasingly formulaic vision, split between ambiguous motives, unhinged interactions and stagy big reveals.
Always seeking an element of danger through her precarious protagonists and their unhealthy preoccupation for toxic relationships, Dhillon's women are either rebelling or recoiling.
Do Patti is a showcase of those limitations.
For all its contemporary edge and desire to address spousal abuse, Dhillon's storytelling stinks of out-dated sensibilities and their perverse ideas of reconciliation.
Dukaan
From my review: For a movie that claims to sympathise with commercial surrogacy, which has been banned in India since 2015, it sure goes overboard in painting a horrific picture.
It's like bonus points are earned every time the camera fixates on women parading their final trimester tummies in low-waist ghagras, throwing up, receiving injections, and going into labour when her water breaks and the gynaecologist's cries of 'Push kar!' cut to Pushkar in Rajasthan.
Its callous perspective and comical treatment of a sensitive matter makes a complete hash of things.
Between its graphic look at bringing a baby in the world and offensive notions about surrogacy, adoption and abortion, Dukaan delivers nothing except baloney.
Blackout
From my review: Trippy black comedies fuelled by freewheeling plots or ones that make something up as they go along make for a wacky joyride in subversion and dark humour.
But Blackout's daffy aspirations refuse to up the ante of a potentially devious premise beyond a puerile practical joke.
Blackout's mindless game of dumb charade has little excitement in its bag of pea brained tricks and stereotypical betrayals.
Murder Mubarak
From my review: It's a mela of suspects out there -- the key players, the secondary, the periphery. Trouble is not keeping up but not feeling any interest.
Murder Mubarak's sloth pace and meek comedy give the movie the feel of a drawn-out Web series. Not to forget incessant background music alternating between sitcom and grating.
Homi Adajania has a flair for edgy wit but he cannot highlight the self-inflicted damage the delusional and privileged are capable of nor the upstairs-downstairs disparity that escapes their worldview.
The Sabarmati Report
From my review: Where sensitive movies like Parzania and Firaaq attempt to depict the trauma caused by the tragedy, The Sabarmati Report, dedicated to the lives lost in the incident, spends all its time pointing fingers at one side and entirely absolving another.
For all its audacity, The Sabarmati Report is so flimsy in its execution, taking offence to it would be dignifying its existence.
All the continuity blunders on display in Vikrant Massey's changing hair and stubble only suggest this pitiable project produced by Balaji Films is a confused double agent that started out hoping to be a bold whistleblower but settled to become an appeaser for the regime in reign.
Maidaan
From my review: Underdog sports stories are as life-affirming as they are formulaic. What distinguishes the decent ones from the drags is vision.
Director Amit Ravindernath Sharma's haywire take on how an Indian football coach's commitment led his team to win gold at the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia, is mind-bogglingly devoid of one.
Dishing out more of the same on-the-nose routine, racist white players impose their might on a team freshly freed from colonial rule, rioters in Indonesia give India a hard time and Devgn dribbles from determined to die-hard to Devdas.
Channelling the martyr spirit of Bollywood heroes of yore who'd valiantly stay put even when wincing in pain, its yet another instance of the shallow, super filmi biopic.
