New releases

Cheap and chic
Fashion
Fashion, an ultra-close look at the fashion industry, is a mix of the strange and the familiar: That8217;s what happens when you pick your film out from the headlines. It8217;s Madhur Bhandarkar8217;s forte, and with his latest, he8217;s got the mix8212; the glamour and the dark underbelly, the highs and the lows8212; just right. Enough to titillate, not to alienate, making it very watchable.
Telling his story through a starry-eyed small-town beauty queen is a clever stroke8212;he makes it a strong hook for a million girls like Meghna Mathur Priyanka Chopra, all of who want to head to Mumbai to become, as the character says, supermodels. But again, like in Bhandarkar8217;s others, the semblance of a plot is just an excuse to string together a series of scenes to show what People like Us think happens to People like Them. The director kowtows to public perception, adding just the right amount of masala to whet appetites.
Models smoke, drink and sleep their way up. The only successful designers are gay. Coke is the ultimate accessory of the beautiful people, and that8217;s not something that comes out of a bottle. But Fashion is a more sophisticated film than, say, Page 38212;the director is no longer shocked at salaciousness and sleaze, and that matter-of-factness of the taking is what makes the film so seductive.
Little about his film is new or unknown, but Bhandarkar is not here to give us fresh takes. He wants to give us a bird8217;s eye-view, or in this case, a fly on the wall, of cat fights in the green room, bitter rivalries, behind-the-scenes chaos in frenetic fashion shows. Leggy models sashaying on the ramp are daily fodder for our TV screens. Despite the disclaimer, Gitanjali Nagpal8217;s ravaged face is clearly the inspiration for Kangana8217;s self-destructive character. The wardrobe malfunction8212;the bustier that fell off, exposing the model8217;s torso, which ran endlessly on 24-hour news channels8212; is in the movie too. And the blonde designer who will sit only in the front row, boyfriend in tow, can only be, okay, we8217;re not telling.
Cleavage is king here, so should we say queen, given the profusion of gay people in this movie, all of whom are 8216;oh-so-creative8217;. Followed by a procession of never-ending legs, tight midriffs and toned butts. Bhandarkar adds a few individual quirks to his stereotypes, so that a limp-wrist designer becomes Samir Soni, a hard-headed celebrity handler becomes Kitu Gidwani, a millionaire playboy preying upon ambitious young girls becomes Arbaaz Khan. The super-attractive trio that holds it together is topped by Priyanka, with the criminally short-changed Kangana Ranaut and the vivacious first-timer Mugdha Godse, kept firmly below.
Priyanka8217;s heavyweight presence makes sure that much of the focus is on her, and she8217;s good, but bland. Who knows what the movie would have been like if Kangana8217;s character had been given more play8212;I would take the edgy Kangana any day over the surface-smart but ultimately prissy Priyanka.
It could also have done with being shorter. Like its characters, it gets played out in long loops. Fashion is interesting, without being particularly insightful.

Return of the slack
Golmaal Returns
THE Golmaal gang is back. This time around, they are running around Goa, trying to be as silly as the last time, but they can8217;t quite hack it. It8217;s hard to be foolish and funny at the same time.
The first Golmaal wasn8217;t scintillating, and this follow-up suffers from what most sequels do: the male leads, barring one, are the same, but it8217;s not even the same-old, same-old. You8217;ve seen the gags before, and the lines are risqueacute; some are in plain bad taste, without being smart.
Kareena Kapoor, who8217;s supposed to be the star of this show, turns out to be a big factor in this flick being the way it is8212;there8217;s nothing particularly new about a suspicious wife keeping tabs on her husband, and there8217;s nothing particularly new in the way Kareena plays it: Because it8217;s a Balaji production, she8217;s called Ekta, and all she seems to do is to watch soppy 8216;saas bahu8217; serials which come from the stable. And her spouse, played by Ajay Devgan, matches her step by step: He can8217;t muster up enough enthusiasm to give anything novel to his role, other than show off his size-zero waist, just like his heroine8217;s. Only, unlike her, he doesn8217;t bare it all the time.
The rest struggle to rise above the script. Arshad Warsi, playing a hysterical cop, laughs like a hyena. Vrajesh Hirjee does some bungee jumping in a kiddie plastic pool. Celina Jaitley, Amrita Arora and Anjana Sukhani could be interchangeable. Only Shreyas Talpade, sliding in and out of a slippery character called Anthony Gonsalves, creates some mirth. As well as Tusshar Kapoor, who plays dumb here, with a great deal of expression. Not much else happens. What else can you expect from a movie which has lines like 8216;shaque, what the f8212;-8217;.
Shucks.