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Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara!movie review

Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara Movie Review - Duaon Mein Nahin Badduaon Mein Yaad Rakhna...

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(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters)

Milan Luthria's tongue-twister of a movie "Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara!" is a hark back to the gangster films of the 1980s, the ones with mafia dons, their tempestuous love lives and all the complications that came with it.

But director Luthria and writer Rajat Arora are apparently convinced that they've come up with something original and clever. Their smugness shows on screen and gets on your nerves. For a gangster film, "Mumbai Dobaara" has just about three action scenes and even in the most crucial action sequence, the characters are busy delivering long-drawn-out homilies on loyalty and friendship. That is what this film is, really – all talk and no action.

And as for the talk itself, Arora's dialogue has all the creativity of the quotes that appear on Facebook feeds. They are meant to be profound. But in the film, each character talks and talks and talks some more, until you want to hit the mute button – but there isn't one.

Akshay Kumar plays the dreaded gangster Shoaib who orchestrates cricket matches in a Middle Eastern country. Shoaib flirts with his friend's wives, wears dark glasses all the time and keeps repeating how he intends to rule Mumbai. (What that ruling may involve, we are never told).

An attempt on his life by a rival brings Shoaib to Mumbai in a quest for vengeance. But apart from a few token attempts to look for the enemy, Shoaib seems to have forgotten his mission. You would think a man who wants to rule Mumbai and runs a gangster squad can easily track his enemies. Instead, Shoaib busies himself in the pursuit of Jasmine (Sonakshi Sinha), a wide-eyed and nave actress.

What Shoaib doesn't know is that Jasmine is in love with Aslam (Imran Khan), one of his own henchmen. Director Luthria takes a lot of time to set up the love triangle and then rushes its resolution in the last 20 minutes.

Writer Arora seems to have been busy working on clever lines that every character spouts in the film, ones that compare friendship to tyres, love to groundnuts and almonds and people to milk and cottage cheese.

Mediocre acting makes it worse. Akshay Kumar doesn't even pretend to act – he saunters on to the screen and delivers dialogue with extreme nonchalance.

Imran Khan achieves new lows in his acting career – almost competing with Prateik Babbar in "Issaq". He wiggles his eyebrows furiously, widens his eyes and tries hard to play the part of a menacing gangster but fails. Sonakshi Sinha tries to look coy, flutters her eyelashes, but her role doesn't require her to do more.

"Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara!" is an exasperating movie experience that doesn't deliver any of the action it promises. Stay far away from this one.

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Critics Reviews

Milan Luthria's Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara is a complete drag, unintentionally comical and painfully verbose unlike the prequel which hit quite a few right notes, notes Sukanya Verma

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It all starts twelve years later when two teenagers who look nothing like Imran Khan and Pitobash Tripathy grow up to be just them. It's the 1980s, you see, a period when it was perfectly normal to be born as Baby Guddu and grow up to become Rishi Kapoor (Nagina, anyone?).

So if the intention is to recreate to the improbable sensibilities of that superficial space, Milan Luthria's Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara is appropriately iffy. It's also a complete drag, unintentionally comical and painfully verbose unlike the prequel which hit quite a few right notes with its slick take on the anti-hero against the half-hearted immorality of the 1970s.

Rivalry makes way for romance in the follow-up but for a film set against the mafia, the predominant action is the yak yak coming out of Akshay Kumar's mouth. Though the actor, saddled with an absurd script against a gaudy set in a jaded love triangle, is a treat though conveying an extravagant personality and remorseless menace as the underworld kingpin, Shoaib.

As the ultra glamorous style bhai in over-sized glasses and pointed collars/retro suits, AK smokes incessantly to the point the cautionary sign begins to seem like a permanent watermark against Ayananaka Bose's bright but banal looking frames.

Unfortunately, despite's AK's glossy and gritty efforts to hold this 160 minutes of predictability, there's a spent vibe to OUATIMD. That 'designed for wolf-whistles' tone of Rajat Aroraa's dialoguebaazi tries too hard. The exchange, on many occasions, feels stilted and stuffy. Nobody talks in this film. Every one states. (No wonder one of the most impressive moments in the film is when Akshay simply walks in and out of a police station without anybody noticing.)

Eventually this silly tribute to Salim-Javed and Kader Khan -- Machchar jiska khoon peeta hai ussi ke haathon marta hai -- gets flimsier than the wig on Mahesh Manjrekar's ballooned skull.

It doesn't help that the only other agenda of OUATIMD besides Akshay Kumar and his book of quotations is a romance triangle involving his subordinate (Imran Khan) and an aspiring actress (Sonakshi Sinha).

What primarily worked in the first one is the challenge and conflict Emraan Hashmi's defiant personality provided to Ajay Devgn's supremacy.

But the sorely miscast Imran Khan fumbles in a role, which neither builds him up as a resilient Romeo nor showcases his spirit as a daring David up against the proverbial Goliath. For a seemingly significant member of an international criminal's gang, he's shown spending way too much time safeguarding his friend's romantic life. No amount of facial hair can wipe off the vanilla in Imran's essence.

As for his chemistry with Sonakshi, the less said the better. Not because it's that bad but because there isn't any. In comparison, the comfort level between her and AK (her co-star of Rowdy Rathore, Joker) provides some amusement.

What doesn't is her moronic logic of rejecting someone because he's a criminal and embracing another criminal to rescue her from the first one or that never-never-ending sequence in the hospital. It's disappointing to see her squander in Luthria's silly cash-in sequel so quickly after one of her best works (Lootera).

When not seeped in implausibilities (and by that I don't just mean Imran Khan single-handedly taking on a man the size of two Rami Reddys), Luthria's OUATIMD is a crammed fare that wastes the lovely Sonali Bendre in a three-scenes role till it reaches its flat climax.

In one scene, a character remarks how courage doesn't need legs to move ahead. Perhaps. But for a movie to get anywhere it needs to have more substance than the vacuous cigarette smoke coming out of Akshay Kumar's mouth.

Rediff Rating:

Director: Milan Luthria

The Indian Express rating: *1/2

What did you expect from the sequel of Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai which came out in 2010? Given that its director and writer are the same, I knew that the clunkily-titled-and-spelt Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara! would tread the same territory: gangsters- muscle-flexing-in-Mumbai-which-used-to-be-Bombay, non-stop rat-a-tat of '70s style dialogue-baazi, loud background music, and a plot riddled with predictabilities from beginning to end.

What I wasn't prepared for was just how similar it would be, despite the change in leads (Ajay Devgn and Emran Hashmi have been replaced by Akshay Kumar and Imran Khan, and instead of Kangna Ranaut, there is Sonakshi Sinha), and after a point, just how listless it would turn out to be.

Hashmi's brash I want-to-take-over-everything Shoaib is played by Akshay Kumar in the new film. The character, fleshed out with nods to the dreaded Dawood (those distinctive dark glasses, and a penchant for cricket and betting) is first seen lording it over in what we presume is Dubai. Shoaib is ruthless and ambitious, and master of all he surveys, but 'Bambai' calls to him because an underling (Manjrekar) who has dared to challenge him has to be set straight.

Once in Bombay, he whistles up his faithful. One of them is Aslam (Khan), whom Shoaib had taken over when he (Aslam) and his best friend Dedh Tang (Tripathy) were youngsters. But before the script turns its attention to these 'bhais' duking it out in Dongri (or wherever it is that they hang out in large numbers), it comes up with a romantic distraction for both the main gents. The spirited Jasmine (Sinha) is new to Bombay, and a wannabe heroine. She is also more nave than any young woman has the right to be.

Unless, of course, she belongs to a film like this where logic is made to bow before masala and melodrama. Sinha does her by now all-too-familiar 'susheel'-sassy-sexy act, and swings like a magnet between Shoaib and Aslam, and here's where I have a quibble. Any self-respecting goody-two-shoes heroine like Jasmine locked into what used to be such a Hindi cinema staple—the triangle-- should make her interest clear. Why confuse us? You should see this wench making up to Shoaib, and then screaming: 'Par maine tumhe uss nazar se kabhi dekha nahin', or words to that effect. Really? Then what was she doing batting her eyelids at him? And she's a near-avuncular pal to Aslam before she gets all dewy all of a sudden. Such complexity in a lead actress of a movie like this is most unfair.

I missed Ajay Devgn and Emran Hashmi of the original, who made credible 'bhais', and carried off those rhyming dialogues. Akshay Kumar lacks menace and quickens only when those glasses are off his face, which doesn't happen too often in the film . And his delivery is a drone, crackling strictly in a couple of moments. Imran is too clean-cut to be a goon, especially one that's meant to be grimy. Nice to see Sonali Bendre back, though, even if in a cameo: as Shoaib's wife/consort, she is looking weathered, and more interesting .

After all the shoot-outs and bang-bangs are over, you are left with a film which leaves you with so little new that you wonder if there's any juice left in this style of retro gangsta flick. Or are we heading for a third-time-in-Mumbai-Tibara?

shubhra.gupta@ex