From the dingy, dark, drinking holes in Chandni Bar to the spotlit world of high fashion in quite an arc for filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, who makes another faintly exploitative movie exposing some more dirt under the complexity that is Mumbai.

Fashion is the ex-video distributor’s 8th movie as director. Priyanka Chopra is Meghna Mathur, the small town girl who dreams of becoming a supermodel in the big, bad metropolis. With the help of a few friends she has a spectacular rise to success and an equally explosive fall before she realizes a few home truths about herself and the strength of her small town values.

If this sounds like a fairly conventional parable, it is. The plot is far less complex than the director’s earlier efforts like Page 3 or Traffic Signal. Meghna’s success in the glittering world of fashion comes far too easily, considering the struggles most aspiring models go through to make it and how many fail. It feels that her quick rise is just a setup for the troubles that come after, and even these seem forced. The way Meghna’s character is developed early in the movie, she seems like a pretty sensible, level-headed girl and it is not quite clear how she could fall prey to drinking and diva-like behavior in such a short time.

Kangana Ranaut is supermodel Shonali Gujral, whom Meghna deposes as the queen bee of the catwalk. She emotes well, though her diction still needs work, but she is danger of being typecast as the boozing out-of-control prima donna( previous roles in Woh Lamhe, Gangster and Metro all had her alcoholically impaired and she seems to have become the go-to girl for characters like these).

Priyanka Chopra as Meghna gives a heartfelt performance, showing that in the hands of a good director she is capable of competent work. She has the looks and figure to pull off the character of a supermodel, though in real life she probably would have been asked to lose 10 pounds. But all her earnestness cannot lift this movie from being a superficial look at what must be a cutthroat industry, full of scheming and politicking. People are just too nice to be real. Meghna gets an unbelievable amount of support from designers, talent agents and fellow models, something even I, with my limited knowledge of this industry found hard to swallow.

It is as if the filmmaker, having tasted commercial success, has added a glossy patina to what used to be gritty and raw moviemaking. Madhur Bhandarkar makes a cameo in the movie, gently mocking his tendency to capitalize on the pain and the hurt that lingers just under the surface of so much of Mumbai’s successes. And in a nod to how well the formula is working, Karan Johar shows up too.

I would rate Fashion as watchable, at least for those of us with limited knowledge of this environment. Unlike Chandni Bar and Page 3, expect it to fade from your memory quickly, though.

Fashion

Directed by Madhur Bhandarkar

*ring – Priyanka Chopra, Raj Babbar, Kangana Ranaut

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.

On paper it looks like such a slam dunk; Yash Raj Films, a top quality production house with access to the biggest talents in Bollywood, and Disney Films, an animation giant, collaborating to make a cutting-edge animated movie entirely produced in India. On screen, the result is pretty sad.

Created at the Tata Elxsi’s Visual Computing Lab in Bangalore, Roadside Romeo is the story of a resourceful dog who manages to survive and thrive in the mean streets of Mumbai after being abandoned by his affluent owners. Saif Ali Khan gives voice to the lead character and Kareena Kapoor is his glamorous amour, Laila.

Trailer of Roadside Romeo( much better than the movie)

As a parent of two, I have suffered through several humdrum animated movies aimed at kids and as such my expectations were not very high to start with. But Romeo is a particularly pathetic effort.

For one, this is a movie very confused about who its target audience is. One might make the assumption that it is the small fry, but then you have the item numbers! Imagine nude but anatomically neutral dogs doing sexy moves – it is a truly creepy sight. Then there is the heavy emphasis on Bambaiyya slang for most of the movie’s humor quota – not only is it completely lost in translation, but I suspect it is a caricature even to people in India. Though Javed Jaffrey as Charlie Anna with Karunanidhi looks and a heavy “Madrasi” accent is one of the bright spots in the movie,  the humor is lost to someone who is reading the subtitles to make sense of the movie.

This would have been a small obstacle if the movie had other redeeming qualities, but the script falls short – there are several moments which I can only describe by the radio term “dead air”- nothing happens for several frames. It is a shortcoming inexcusable in an animated movie, where the pace is supposed to be frenetic.

The story is also all over the place – is it about Romeo’s survival skills? It about his romance? Is it an action movie involving gangsters? Roadside Romeo uses every cinematic cliche associated with Bollywood, and just like the rest of Yash Raj Films have been doing lately, falls flat on its face.

Saif and Kareena ham it up, but it can’t save the movie. Having big names behind the microphone is a Hollywood tradition, but even here that can’t guarantee box-office success( witness the fate of “Bee Movie”, voiced by Jerry Seinfeld.)

In the end, Roadside Romeo falls victim to the same malaise that has been plaguing both Disney and Yash Raj Films – it is out of touch with the times, making movies using a formula that needs to be retired pronto. Hopefully its failure does not discourage the nascent animation efforts in India; there are wonderful stories waiting to be told and creative storytellers who can tell them – all that is required is the courage to break the mould.