Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhaan
Directed by : Hitesh Kewalya
Imdb link -> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10309906/

My sexuality is my sexuality.. None of your sexuality. 



Kartik Singh (Ayushmann Khurrana) and Aman Tripathi (Jitendra Kumar) are in love with each other but when Aman's parents comes to know the reality of their son been a gay, they decide to get him married to a girl. It's Hitesh Kewalya's directorial debut and he does succeed in keeping the typical stereotypes away, almost to extent that there's scenes like Aman riding bike with Kartik behind like open lovers which in Indian cinema is new specially with the new law out just some years back regarding gay love no longer treated as criminal act. If only Hitesh had more of these kind of scenes rather the focus goes to the ongoing marriage of Aman's cousin sister where Goggle Tripathi (Maanvi Gagroo) is hilarious in a scene where she is taking the '7 phere' on her own with husband gone away cancelling marriage. Even Goggle's dad, Chaman Tripathi (Manu Rishi Chadha) gives some fun lighthearted sequences, but all this comes at the expense of Aman-Kartik relationship that just gets lost around. The plot of Kusum (Pankhuri Awasthy) was totally unwanted, and even the 'Kaali Gobhi' scientist angle could had been done away with. Ayushmann Khurrana is better than he was in Bala, it helps that he isn't really the main character here, at places he does ham, I liked the scene where he tries to give Aman a long lecture. In a way Ayushmann plays Raj from DDLJ, we even get the scene when Aman's dad says to Aman 'Jaa simran, jee le apni zindagi'. All this is fun but keeping the comic tone throughtout doesn't help in the serious scenes when Aman's parents (played well again by the last hit pair Gajrao Rao and Neena Gupta) try to show the typical 'what will society say'. They both get scenes that misses the point due to the tone of movie, where they complain that they can't accept the sudden change so quickly. Jitendra Kumar to me is best part of the movie, Bhumi Pednekar has a forgettable special appearance, thank god for that. Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan failed to entertain me enough, and then it never really brings out the gay relationship like I would have preferred, and I am seriously tired of 'DDLJ' train sequences used as spoofs, can you please get past it!

My Rating : 5/10 



Bhoot Part One - The Haunted Ship 
Directed by : Bhanu Pratap Singh
Imdb link -> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10463030/

Koi hai.. 


An abandoned ship called Sea Bird is found at the shores of Mumbai with no crew around. Prithvi (Vicky Kaushal) is given the job of getting it off the ground but he slowly explores the ship and learns about various haunting stories about the Sea Bird which he himself starts experiencing. The best scene is when Prithvi with torch in hand tries to inspect the deck, unfortunately we had seen that already in the teaser. It only gets repetitive after that, and also silly. Bhumi Pednekar is yet again in a special appearance that co-incidentally runs away from home to marry Prithvi, just like she does in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan. Also, another directorial debut, Bhanu Pratap Singh uses the shots of outside the ship well in narration (credit to the cinematographer) but the inside scenes gets repetitive after a while, the jump scares just keep coming and at the end when real story is revealed it only makes you groan in anger. We get a unintentional comedy scene with Professor Joshi (Ashutosh Rana) reciting mantras like he was a regular at 'bhoot bhagao' ritual, or wait maybe he is, as he did exact same thing in Raaz many many years back. On serious note, the death of Prithvi's wife and daughter, that trauma is so under-utilised to carry the movie forward. Something film like Talaash did really well. Vicky Kaushal performance is good enough to sit through this lazy writeup and being a Part1, you can only wonder if they can improve or give similar product in Part2 also.

My Rating : 4/10