Joker Reviews Sheviews :P - Page 5

What led to fallout between Akshay Kumar and Shirish Kunder?

Shirish Kunder is at it again. During the making of his debut film Jaan- E- Mann, he had managed to antagonise Salman Khan, so much so that it took all of Farah's good offices to mend fences with the moody star.

The making of Tees Maar Khan saw him cross swords with his wife's friend and benefactor Shah Rukh Khan, in a battle of egos that precipitated the infamous slapgate episode. SRK had declined the film, as did Hrithik Roshan. And now, he has managed to upset the only star who stood by him through the most turbulent of times.

Akshay Kumar, his lead actor and coproducer in Joker has evidently abandoned the ambitious film. While some claim that the actor should have been professional enough to take the project to its logical conclusion, others feel that he was way too hurt to continue his association with the film. However, a brave Farah tried to deflect critics by attributing Akshay's absence from promotional activities to "smart marketing strategy", but two recent incidents paint a different picture.

Akshay has been on TV exhorting audiences to watch a little -known film instead - Prateek Chakraborty's From Sydney With Love. If that was not enough, he has flown off to Muscat, severing whatever tenuous connection he had with the film he had once been proud to be a part of. So what gives? An insider close to the star spilled the beans. "Joker was meant to be a kids' film and that too in 3D. Akshay was really excited about it. When shooting began, Shirish assured him that though they were not shooting in the format, it will be converted to 3D during post production," said the source. However, that idea was abandoned and Shirish had his own reasoning for it.

There was also the issue of visual effects. Akshay, who had taken keen interest in the final look of the film, was keen to use his contacts in Hollywood to get one of the best teams on board. "It was while dubbing for Transformers that he was introduced to the special effects team and wanted Joker to benefit from his resources," says the source. But Shirish - who in his wife Farah's words is "stubborn...and self destructive," refused to comply.

Even then Akshay decided to play along. Till the film was ready for final edit. The fissures ran too deep. "Akshay wanted some changes in the final edit. Shirish, who is an editor himself, does not like being told what to do. That's when Akshay began to distance himself from the film," says the source. It did not help that Shirish had introduced the item song by Chitrangda, who many feel is in poor taste and incongruous.

Sources say the star feels slighted by Shirish and Farah. "He has never really tomtomed about the many little things he has done for them - not even the massive discount he got them on the sprawling penthouse they recently bought and moved into. Or turning a generous blind eye to the many budgeting issues that came up while they handled production," says a friend of Akshay. But when Shirish continued to dig in his heels, he had had enough. Farah, who has so far borne the brunt of her husband's eccentricities, could do little to salvage the situation, other than appeal to SRK to do a promo for her film and take the 'aliens' to the homes of her friends for photo ops.

But Akshay's absence- after just a handful of TV interviews - and Sonakshi's cold shouldering - after she attended a few cursory events - has obviously affected the film.

Says trade analyst Amod Mehra, "When a producer/hero of the film disowns the film, it sends out wrong signals. Akshay has shifted his focus to his next home-production- OMG: Oh My God. Whatever interest exhibitors had in the film has died down. UTV has not even prevailed upon the exhibitors or demand a minimum number of shows. It is clear that even the producers are not too interested."

Girish Wankhade, Deputy GMCorporate Communications and Public Relations, Cinemax India Ltd, said, "Joker had great prospects because the hit Rowdy Rathore lead pair is in the film. But there is hardly any promotional buzz."

Anand Vishal, Head of Operations of Fun Republic compared Joker to Akshay's last hit. "The interest is not on the same level," he admitted.

A source from a leading multiplex in western suburbs (on request of anonymity) gave us some numbers, "We sold only 500 tickets by Thursday evening. For Akshay's last film Rowdy Rathore, we had sold about 5000 tickets by this time."

But both Wankhede and Vishal were hopeful. "There have been films which had poor promotion, but went on to do good business. I think Joker will work on word of mouth, if the content is good enough.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/What-led-to-fallout-between-Akshay-Kumar-and-Shirish-Kunder/articleshow/16047231.cms

Rating: 2 stars (Two stars)

Star cast: Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Shreyas Talpade, Minissha Lamba, Vindu Dara Singh, Asrani, Chitrangda Singh (item song), Darshan Jariwala.

What's Good: The direction; the music; the cinematography; some puns.

What's Bad: The predictable storyline.

Loo Break: None.

Watch or Not?: It's a timepass watch but not really engrossing.

User Rating :

As bland as the title of the film may sound, Joker does not disappoint.

In a bit of an out-of-world way, the small village of Pagalpur is overlooked when India's map is being charted during independence. After the inmates of the mental asylum in the village break loose, all the other inhabitants flee the place.

Surrounded by his crackling machines, Agastya (Akshay Kumar) is a scientist in the US searching for signs of life beyond the earth. When he has nothing more than static to show his research sponsors, Agastya has a month to hope that ET or his brethren show him proof of their existence. When he finds out that his father is seriously ill, he abandons his work and goes back to Paglapur with this girlfriend Diva (Sonakshi Sinha).

The current inhabitants of Paglapur make one hell of a fruit basket. There's Agastya's brother (Shreyas Talpade) who speaks only in a strange tongue, his cross-eyed father (Darshan Jariwala), a loud friend (Vindu Dara Singh), a teacher (Asrani) who thinks that WW2 is still on and many others. Agastya finds out that his father was faking illness but decides to stay back and help the villagers out of their misery. Since Paglapur is not on the map of India, they don't belong to any state, have no electricity, roads or water supply. Since the tiny crackpot village has nothing to offer, even the ministers Agastya approaches for help pass the buck to the next state.

At last Agastya comes up with a plan: to create crop circles in Paglapur and sell it to the media and the world as alien doing. Soon his plan brings reporters and scientists in hordes to the village and things are starting to look up with lots of song and dance. But Agastya's competitor Simon Goeback (get it?) (Alexx ONell) puts a spanner in the works when he arrives in Paglapur and calls the whole thing a hoax.

This other-worldly mess plays out in the rest of the movie.

Joker Review: Script Analysis

Shirish Kunder's premise for Joker is too simplistic. Obviously, logic takes a backseat but it's the predictability that is the real downer. The dialogues are alright. Some of the puns like Simon Goeback, the tongue-in-cheek timing of the Ayega song etc. are well written. The reason behind the title of the film Joker is well thought of.

Why Agastya decides to stay back is not convincingly done. While scientists from all over the world ascertain the crop circles have an alien hand, how does Simon blow their lid in less than 5 seconds? Why do the armed forces stand at the perimeter of the forest where the aliens appear instead of hiding inside the forest? And why the heck did they open fire on them? Looks like Jadoo took all the logic away in his spaceship.

Joker Review: Star Performances

Akshay Kumar does a good job but nothing extraordinary as Agastya. Sonakshi Sinha mostly clings on to Akki's arm as his girlfriend Diva. Shreyas Talpade is very good as the brother and manages to convey all his emotions with just a handful of gibberish words that he has to mouth throughout the movie. Vindu Dara Singh's act is annoying. Thankfully Minissha Lamba gets very little time for hamming as a press reporter. Darshan Jariwala and Asrani are good as Agastya's father and nut job of a teacher respectively.

Joker Review: Direction, Editing & Music

There's not much that director Shirish Kunder could do to the script, but he does a good job. His editing is alright. Gaurav Dagaonkar and G. V. Prakash Kumar's songs are enjoyable. Shirish's background score goes well with the scenes. Sudeep Chatterjee and Anay Goswami's cinematography is very nice. The colours keep the movie quite cheerful. Visual effects are well done.

Joker Review: The Last Word

Joker is an amusing but predictable fare. Nothing out-of-this-world.

Joker Trailer

There isn't a single line in Shirish Kunder's Joker that actually works, leaving us with a film that, while commendably brisk in a 100-minute package, refuses to get going at all, writes Raja Sen

"Don't fly our jokes."

Early on in Joker, one of the many oddballs populating the film, one who literally translates Hindi into English -- as if we've never seen that before -- indignantly says this while subtitling the words "Humaara mazaak mat udaao."

Director Shirish Kunder, perhaps in obeisance to legendary comic Asrani [ Images ] being the one mouthing the line, appears to take it as gospel. He fills the film with gags flatter than a glass of day-old cola, jokes that obediently never even attempt to leave the ground.

So what happens if a film -- one ostensibly in the guise of a comedy -- doesn't try too hard? The humour here isn't grating, overdone, outrageous, offensive, excruciating, unwatchable. This, then, may just be an approach that could be called a step forward in an Akshay Kumar [ Images ] comedy if only the aforementioned humour wasn't also nonexistent. There isn't a single line in Kunder's film that actually works, leaving us with a film that, while commendably brisk in a 100-minute package, refuses to get going at all.

In a Swades [ Images ]-via-Priyadarshan setup, NASA [ Images ] scientist Kumar comes back to his hometown, Paglapur, a cartographically ignored village of nutjobs, the only mildly amusing caricature among whom is a thoroughly desi yokel who believes himself to be a British Lord.

In a desperate bid to secure water for his village, Kumar engineers his crew into making crop circles hoping to attract attention.

Spotlight and skepticism both arrive, and the film goes through predictable paces while not proving either clever or sincere enough to engage. It's gaon-boys versus aliens, and it never once delights.

Kumar deserves credit for earnestly keeping a straight face through most of this schlock, with a role most muddied and unheroic.

His girl Sonakshi Sinha [ Images ] has even more of a nothing role, her face lighting up with exultant joy every time she gets an actual line of dialogue. Occasionally, in sequences where she has nothing to say, she looks seductively towards the screen in particular and bites her lip, as if seducing the poor cinematographer.

Shreyas Talpade [ Images ] makes gobbledygook sound like a language, making us wish better filmmakers hunted him out more often.

Kunder casts an incompetent actress as an incompetent news anchor, but that really isn't how to make stunt casting work.

Does Joker hold up, then, as a children's film? Not a chance. It's clean, sure, bereft of swearing or innuendo (yet with a sultry item song) but it's also daft. The aliens aren't anything to write home about. The central conceit of the film is one of deceit, and -- after long and bewildering sections where tanks charge towards a forest, firing indiscriminately through frenzied photographers and villagers, and where Kumar suddenly understands Talpade's most inadequate sign-language -- Akshay eventually comes off as a rude jerk.

Or maybe I'm just annoyed he made this movie possible.

Rediff Rating:🤣