FILM REVIEWS

Two Weeks Notice
(Rex)
Cast: Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock
Director: Marc Lawrence
In Hollywood, no one should be allowed to make romantic comedies except Nora Ephron. She’s the only one who can pull off snappy dialogue, star chemistry and true love. The rest are clueless. They think it’s about star chemistry alone. But a good romantic comedy is about a good script. Just pairing Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock isn’t going to work. 
Sandra Bullock is a committed, feisty environmental lawyer fighting to preserve heritage buildings in New York from rich real estate developers like Hugh Grant. He’s so impressed by her activism that he hires her. Well, you know the rest. They pretend not to be interested in each other when they are actually falling in love. Grant and Bullock are watchable. Directed by Marc Lawrence, Two Weeks Notice is okay for a slow evening – or a drowsy afternoon.
Pradeep Sebastian

Ananda (Kannada)
(Kalpana)
Cast: Ananth Nag, Naveen Mayur, Rutika, Rajesh, Vanitha Vasu, Jhansi Subbaiah, Dwarkish, Umesh, Kashi, Sharan.
Director: Vara Mullapudi
This film is a welcome relief for cine-goers and has come to their rescue notwithstanding the fact that Ananda is a remake of the Telugu superhit film Anandam. Yes, this one a relief for those people who have been longing to see a good Kannada film in the theatre. 

It has usual college scenes but without all those love trappings.
It begins with a quarrelsome twosome Kiran (Naveen Mayur) and Aishwarya (Rutika) who try to outdo each other. 
This one is not the typical ‘boy falls in love with the girl’ types. But, each one tries to outsmart the other and in the process end up quarrelling. Aishwarya leaves college as her father is transferred to Ooty. She comes to the house where a girl called Deepika (Jhansi Subbaiah) lived. As Aishwarya realises that Deepika is no more, she learns that she had fallen in love with Raja (Rajesh) who is Kiran’s close friend. Raja dies in an accident. 

The film takes off from here when both Aishwarya and Kiran begin to exchange letters in the name of Deepika and Raja respectively. Aishwarya and Kiran decide to meet without realising they are not the real lovers. Raja is away and is supposed to get married to Deepika. 

Kiran and Aishwarya come face to face in Ooty which is when they come to know that they were actually exchanging love letters, though the lovers had died. Sparks of love fly between Kiran and Aishwarya but they not ecpress it. 
Does Kiran win Aishwarya? Does Aishwarya fall in love with Kiran? 
Do watch the film to find out what happens towards the end. 

Naveen Mayur has come of age. He exudes confidence in his role and shows some excitement on the screen for the youngsters of his age. Rutika is a delight to watch on the screen. She is a good find for Kannada cinema. From a quarrelsome girl to a girl smitten by love, she plays it all naturally! Rajesh and Jhansi Subbaiah do not have much to do in the film. Songs are pleasant to hear given that Rajesh Ramanath has scored the music. Ananth Nag is his usual self. Vanitha Vasu plays the sympathetic mother. Umesh and the four guys have done well to enliven the film. P K H Das’s camera work stands out.
Srikanth

Mooru Manasu Nooru Kanasu (Kannada)
(Aparna)
Cast: Prema, Harindranath, Avinash, Rajesh, Siri, Ramesh Bhat, Girija Lokesh, Mandeep Rai, Biradar 
Director: B Hanumanthu
One cannot imagine explaining the plight of the hapless viewer if he has to sit through this film. It is difficult to believe that Prema is in this film doing almost nothing. Director Hanumanthu, who is supposedly not a rank newcomer stands exposed with a poor product.
The film is about three siblings who get lost in their childhood but often bump into each other without knowing that they are related to one another. 
The girl is the eldest who lives with Avinash and his son. She grows up to become wife of her ‘father’s son’. 
Her younger brother is a struggling music singer-composer while the youngest brother is a pickpocket thief. Prema bears a child and undergoes a lot of ordeal as she loses her husband after being driven out by Avinash. A song that they used to sing during their childhood unites them. Prema looks awful. Harindranath is no great shakes. Mandeep Rai shines as the inviting pimp. Avoidable! 
SS

Bas Yun Hi (Hindi)
(Plaza, Urvashi)
Cast: Purab Kohli, Nandita Das 
Director: Rajiv Menon
‘Short and sweet’ is how the movie can be best described as. Different in every sense of the term, the movie doesn’t boast of any great star cast, except of course, Nandita Das. It doesn’t even have a plot as such. Yet, it makes us walk out of the theatre with a smile.

‘Bas Yun Hi revolves around the lives of seven happy-go-lucky friends who have their feet firmly on the ground. Each one of the characters is like a girl or boy next door, representing the youth of today’s fast paced world. They have their careers to mind during the day and all the time in the world to pub-hop in the evenings, gossiping and deriving great pleasure in pulling each other’s legs. Even as their jet-set world is thus proceeding, Aditya (Purab Kohli) decides to play a prank on Rohan, who’s engaged to Tara, ‘just for the heck of it’. He ropes in his actress friend Veda (Nandita Das) to fool Rohan. But, to his utter disbelief, one fine day Rohan and Veda declare their undying love for each other. Aditya’s world comes crashing down as he realises his love for Veda. What does he do now? Are Rohan and Veda really in love? Or, has his prank backfired? Well, it’s up to you to guess... Good teamwork by the cast and crew lends the movie a song-like quality. Above all, Nandita Das in a role that is unlike any of her earlier ones, is a pleasure to watch. We Bangaloreans also have a reason to be proud of --- the movie is shot entirely in our City! Great work Rajiv Menon, but were the songs really necessary?
Chethana Dinesh

Satta (Hindi)
(Apsara, Cauvery)
Cast: Raveena Tandon, Atul Kulkarni, Sameer Dharmadhikari, Govind Namdeo, Valbabh Vyas
Director: Madhur Bhandarkar
After years of suffering shrinking violets and simpering Sallys on screen, we get to watch a gritty, gutsy woman who revels in shattering steriotypes. She doesn’t think ambition is a dirty word and doesn’t feel the need to turn into a quivering jelly when facing a bunch of dirty, rotten scoundrels. Madhur Bandarkar’s Anuradha (Raveena Tandon) packs a punch. So does the team of talented actors Madhur has chosen from theatre circles. If you thought Bhandarkar’s Chandni Bar was raw and heart-rending, this one goes several step further. The murky world of politics here isn’t the silly, unbelievable version you usually see in Mumbai masala movies. Anuradha Chauhan, the middle-class girl who dreams big, finds herself married to a rich and powerful brat Vivek Chauhan (Sameer). Far from treating her as his equal, Vivek expects her to play the docile doormat. Anuradha refuses to play by the rules. Before sparks can fly, there’s a dramatic turn of events. 
Vivek, the budding politician, finds himself in the cooler after pulling a gun on a model-turned-bartender. 
And, Anuradha finds herself in active politics, a world mostly infested by sleezy, seedy types. She takes on the system and battles betrayal, but given Madhur’s penchant for hard-hitting realism, will she survive?
Though Raveena must be lauded for an honest performance shorn of unnecessary histronics; the man who walks away with the applause (and the awards) is director Madhur Bhandarkar for giving us yet another thinking, feeling film that is raw and racy.
Kavitha K

Kalyanaraman (Malayalam)
(Sangeet)
Cast: Dileep, Navya Nair, Kunchacko Boban, Lalu Alex, Innocent, Lal
Director: Shafi
An out and out `must-see’ comedy for Dileep fans, Kalyanar- aman’s witty dialogues help the film sail through despite an insipid storyline. On the lines of Tenkashipattanam and Meesha Madhavan which wooed the audience with clean, healthy comedy, the latest Dileep starrer tries to attract the waning interest of a bored audience now showing a slant towards comedy. 
It is therefore natural that the attention is rivetted more on the antics of Innocent and Co. and Dileep — who plays the role of Ramankutty, the wedding planner — than on the love that blooms between Ramankutty and Gowri (Navya Nair). The Thekeddath family, to which Ramankutty belongs, is in the business of organising weddings. They are adept at organising everything for a wedding, thus providing enough room for comic situations.
While preparations for one such wedding are in full swing, word comes in that the groom is not interested in the marriage, the bride being dumb. Ramankutty steps in and gets his brother to marry the rejected bride, thus unwittingly providing even the bridegroom for the wedding. In the celebrations that follow, he falls in love with the bride’s sister Gowri (Navya Nair). Just as their wedding is about to be announced, Gowri’s sister dies in an accident. 
The father painfully realises that women in the Thekeddath family don’t live long, all the men in that family having lost their spouses early in life. He is unwilling to sacrifice another daughter to the family and pleads with Ramankutty to renounce his love. However, comedies cannot end on a sad note. So love triumphs over fate in the final scene.
Veena Pradeep

Vaseegara (Tamil)
(Naga, Poornima)
Cast: Vijay, Sneha, Gayathri Jeyaram, Nasser, Suhasini
Director: Selva Bharathi
A remake of the hit Telugu film Nuve Naakku Nachavau (the Venkatesh-Arthi Agarwal starrer), is the story of a girl who is engaged to someone but falls in love with someone else. The script is a bit different from the normal romantic films and the director has treated the subject well. However, at times one can see the shades of overacting by the lead characters in trying to evoke laughter. 

This is the first time Vijay is paired opposite Sneha. The script opens up with Vijay, donning the role of an unemployed youth, arriving at the house of his father’s (Manivannan) best friend Viswanathan (Nasser), whose daughter Shweta (Sneha) is getting engaged to a US-based groom. Manivannan wants his son Vijay to be a responsible youth and seeks the help of Vishwanath in getting him employed in a good firm. Shweta develops a soft corner for Vijay after reading a letter sent to Vishwanathan by Manivannan. And, when she approaches him, Vijay, in order to keep both Vishwanathan and Manivannan’s friendship intact, spurns her overtures. Then, it is everyone’s guess what will happen in the end. 

Music by S A Rajkumar is ordinary except some of the numbers--Oru Thadavai (by Hariharan, Chinmayi) and Nenjam Oru Murai (Srinivas, Mahalakshmi), which are hummable. Cinematography by Balasubramaniam, who had apprenticed under P C Sriram is good . 
C Shivakumar