RingChen

The bad news is that I watched Woodstock Villa and Sarkar Raj in the same afternoon. The good news (at least for me) is that I lived to write this post. I’ll say one thing for Sikandar: Woodstock Villa isnt really his debut movie. Really. Its actually a three-hour long music album with bits of acting thrown in by so-called debutantes and one Arbaaz Khan who’s now an expert at doing odd bit roles, I think.

The music throughout the film is loud, garishly jing-chak and I felt like I was permanently stuck in a discotheque rather than a dark theatre. The movie is like a slumbering giant that somehow bides its time and wakes up in the last few minutes to reach a most interesting climax that Hitchcock himself would approve.

While Sikandar is so refreshingly different from the regular yuppies who debut on the big screen whether you want them to or not, I expected a more sensible film from the son of Anupam and Kirron Kher. Woodstock Villa turned out to be the exact typical, bollywood masala movie that I dread and want to stay miles away from. I watched this one just for you, Mr & Mrs Kher.

As for Sarkar Raj, I knew it was going to be a most sober movie with no light moments whatsoever even as Abhishek Bachchan stares at the camera dead panned and a loud clanging follows every piece of affecting dialogue delivered by the hero. I was not disappointed, thereby not bothered much.

All three Bachchans were deadly serious in the movie and Abhiskek went the extra mile to finally end his role in it. Sarkar’s 10-minute long monologue at the end of the movie seemed like hours to me as somehow this person and that person was behind this plot and had planned to do this, through him and to god only knows what.

The ending was so unbelievable as Ram Gopal Varma shares his thoughts with the audience when Sarkar orders his grandson back home before the curtains fell. One can guess that he plans to resurrect Abhishek Bachchan in Sarkar-Part III wherein he will play the grandson in a inimitable style unique to Bollywood. Good luck to everyone involved and especially to us, the guinea pig of an audience.