Cheeni Kum: Review

Executive summary :-)

• "Cheeni Kum - A sugar free romance", that's what the movie adverts want you to believe. It's not. It's full of sugar coated dialogues and oh-so-irritatingly-sweet-if-I-were-a-diabetic-I-would-die kind of scenes.
• 5 out of the 7 truly funny scenes are shown in the movie trailers. You won't be missing much, trust me!
• Amitabh and Tabu share absolutely no on-screen chemistry. Every frame they share seems artificial. How can you have a romance without a sizzling chemistry between the leads?
• Amitabh is getting too repetitive with his loud monologues. You know, where he spurts out a long lecture, pausing in the end, almost cueing the audience for an applause. I'm sick of them. The movie starts off with one of those, "Khaana banaana duniya ki sabsi badi kala hai..." -- you've probably seen it in the adverts.
• The excruciatingly irritating kid, called "Sexy" in the movie will make you want to pull your hair out. Or stab her to death (in my case). I usually don't like the stupid kids that are there just for adding the cute element to the movie. And to voice heavily philosophical dialogues sugar-coated by their ostensible innocence and irritating lisp. For example, Ta Ra Rum Pum, Kucch Kucch Hota Hai, (insert any Karan Johar/Aditya Chopra/Yash Raj movie here)
• The movie is bloody long. In Bollywood, there is no excuse for making a three hour boring movie without songs.
  
• Delhi is NOT situated between Qutub Minar and India Gate.
  
• The plot had a lot of potential. The starcast was amazing. But surprisingly, the movie was a total fuck-up!

I had been waiting for Cheeni Kum, only to get disappointed. I'm sure people will still queue up to watch it, but atleast you'll end up lowering your expectations.

Zapak: How lame can you get?

Verbatim from an eDM (that's an electronic direct mailer for all your non-marketing and non-advertising folks, aka SPAM) by Zapak.com which landed up in my inbox today:

World's No. 1 Casual Game -- ZUMA

It's time to do the unthinkable
Beat the Sun God himself! Shoot the magical balls and stop the deadly chain from reaching the golden skull. Be quick, be smart. You gotta fight with your brains.
[...]
It's time to get tribal!
[...]

Hmmm, casual games. Never heard of those before. From the Wikipedia entry:

The term casual game is used to refer to a category of electronic or computer games targeted at a mass audience. Casual games usually have a few simple rules and an engaging game design, making it easy for a new player to begin playing the game in just minutes.

Right. And I get the beat the Sun God himself?! Whoa! Awesome! I'm just dying to do that. Especially with graphics like this:

And talk about "magic balls" and the "deadly chain". Preposterous. Sexually offending!

I just hope some random Surya Devtaa Bhakt Samiti finds this offensive and files a suit in some Rajasthan or Ghaziabad court against Zapak. At least the rest of us will be saved from having to go "tribal"!