SnoReptilePlenty
Memorable, crazy movie
Griff Lees
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
Ezmae Chang
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
miraliemail
I fully agree and share the same thoughts of review made by "shwethaursss".I like it better, because it is told without any stardom and filmy glitter. Love its, most raw form very close to the real life. Its simple, entertaining and engages the audience into self-reflection of their own life.I truly like to Thank everyone who contributed in making this film, and I am sure the entire crew is proud to be part of this project.Well done!...This reminds me of very famous Mirza Ghalib Ghazal: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naFVEyPdYdM""'Na tha kuch to khuda tha, kuch na hota to khuda hota, duboya mujh ko hone ne, na hota main to kya hota'"This poetry is very deep and philosophical; one of its interpretation can be ... Coming to being (as human with its ego & desires) lead to my misery; until then it was just fine because there existed nothing except God, and it would be OK again when all that existed disappears because then there will be nothing again except God.
shwethaursss
Rating: 3/5In a tweet: One of the best low-budget films of recent times. Bengaloored is a film with a lot of substance. Though anchored in Bengalooru, it is a film about life and change. I have already seen it twice! This is one of the films which you can see again and again and try to understand it and get richer nuances and ideas from the film. Undoubltedly, this is going to be one of the most memorable films of the year. In fact, but for a few of its flaws, I am tempted to put this film in my list of top 10 films. Believe me, it has got its foot in the door in my list of top 10 films.Let me be honest. I may be biased. I am biased towards good cinema. I hate movies which are flimsy and have earned crores purely on marketing and hype. This film in contrast is a well- made film. The fact that it has got a release is in fact a wonder. PVR cinemas should be complimented for promoting good cinema. Imagine a terrible movie like Raavan (the most boring movie of the year definitely) hogs all the theater spaces because of sheer star power! Enough rants, let me come to the film.The film is a sort of coming of age movie. We have the hero returning to Bengalooru (interestingly the name is not mentioned in the movie at all!) where all his friends and family have disappeared. He is a novelist searching for an end for his novel. His quest for the answer provides us some answers to life. Or, even if there is no real answer to the question, the question itself leads to more questions, and maybe the question itself is the answer.According to me this will be a cult classic. With a little bit of word of mouth publicity or some guerilla marketing, this movie is a sure fire sleeper hit! (On a side note -- imagine a crap movie like Paranormal Activity goes on to make millions thanks to some fantastic hype! I do not know why good films cannot create that buzz and hype.) Wish reviewers like Khalid Mohamed, Mayank Shekar, Rajeev Masand and Anupama Chopra created a positive buzz about the film to encourage a young, new film maker.This film is a fresh look at life. What is life today? Has it changed? How has it changed? Is life really worth it? Are poetry, art, music worth it? What motivates a person to live and love? What is love? How can one be happy? Who is a happy person?The music by Vasu Dixit of Swarathma (Indian fusion band) is absolutely delightful. I loved the Kannada song, Elli hogi Shivanayana. Well, here is a taste of it:Ellhogali Shivanayana --Click to watch and enjoy!Unfortunately, I do not follow Kannada too well, but still I enjoyed the song. All the other songs too are good -- I think some of them are in Hindi and some in English! Rangmahal is a nice Hindi folk song based on Sant Kabir Das's composition. (Ouch -- I am still to understand it!) After listening to just the promos on You Tube -- I wanted to rush and get the CD! Yes, the music is superb!On the acting front, Swaroop Kanchi (the writer-director) is mind-blowing. All the others are quite adequate. Swaroop's direction is really interesting. He is the writer and editor of the film too, so he has really controlled the film too well.On the negative side, the film is a bit slow in parts. I personally did not like the open ending of the film.I think Swaroop Kanchi is a fantastic film maker. Sadly, I think he has not got his due. I am really looking forward to more wonderful films from this brilliant and sensitive director.Will I watch it again? Honestly, I can watch this film, again and again and again! Loved the film! If you love life, you cannot but love this film!
sashank_kini-1
Babbu is a bestselling novelist who has returned from France to his hometown Bangalore, only to find it evolved. All his friends seem too busy, his father has remarried and his best pal has become an ascetic. Also, his inspiration turns out to be a sourpuss, cranky and irascible old man. Babbu now focuses on his love life, and falls head over heels for Radha, his classmate in school. To him, Radha seems to be the most 'beautiful thing in the world' (she's not, by the way). And now Babbu has to rediscover his life and the meaning of existence… Blah… Blah… Blah… The movie, in one word, is horrible. It's so watery and verbose, with incessant rambling on life, love, parenthood etc. I remember 'Wake Up Sid', which had a very seamless progression in its story. This on the other hand, is highly predictable and not to forget preachy. Babbu has been in Bangalore for a month without getting anywhere. Now shouldn't that frustrate him? When he meets Radha after such a long time, shouldn't he have a childish rapture in him? Shouldn't he feel so excited to meet a known person after such a long time? What was required from Harish Raj was a charismatic sense of innocence. Instead, we have predictable and boring silences. And to top the misery, we have the terrible accents. Both the main characters speak so affectedly, they make no emotional contact with each other, forget about the audience.Babbu lives in his ancestral home; the inside of the house looks anything but ancestral. In fact, it looks as if he is living in a tiny flat in Bombay. Anyway his house is messy, and there are some close-up shots of ashtray, half-eaten toast with jam smeared on it etc, just to give the film an off-beat feel. This is tolerable, but why have such extreme close-up shots of the actors? It's so distracting and hilarious, since they don't even display the required confidence. Such shots suit extremely talented actors, who can actually emote fully their character's desires.The most perfunctorily handled situation is Babbu's relation with his father. It starts off with a 'Taxi Driver'-like sequence with Babbu rehearsing with a balloon about what he's going to tell his father. Then he calls his father a b----rd, not one but twice or thrice in the course of the film, which is very coarse and made me dislike the protagonist even more. Then there is the usual bickering about the father not being there with the son in his childhood, not knowing the son's friends boo…hoo…hoo. The father tells him in the beginning that he has only two months to live, and this scene itself is so tackily portrayed by both the actors, it reminded me of the disastrous breast-cancer line from the movie "The Room".Coming to the step-mom now, she tells Babbu in one scene that she suspects her husband might be cheating on her, which is so unnecessary and out of the blue, I sniggered at the stupidity. The step-mom's acting itself was wooden and ineffectual. Also, some of the dialogues, especially with the step-mom couldn't be heard because of the poor audio.The scenes with the tree are weird to the extreme, not to forget silly. Swaroop Kanchi plays the ascetic, apart from being the co-producer, editor, director and scriptwriter. To show he is abstemious and leads a simple, frugal life, he keeps smiling. When Babbu meets him, I was shocked to hear the words 'a----le', 'b-----d' etc being spoken so convivially by Babbu without any reproach from Siddharth.The ending of the film is so obvious; I knew it would rain and everything would be clear. The same thing happened in WUS but it was made with such finesse that the final scene became the cherry on the cake. Here, the scene is like adding lemon to karela juice, making it even more bitter and hopeless. Also, I was surprised by the turnout of the relationship between Babbu and Radha. Radha surely seems to be a wanton lady in the movie, and it's even more laughable that she wasn't able to emphasize with Babbu. So poorly handled.Another complaint with the film is the scene where Babbu is informed his house is to be demolished for developmental purpose. I mean are you kidding me? It was so brief for a scene of such importance. Also, the old people's reunion in the end was disturbing, since the woman had said in an earlier scene that her husband had just passed away a month before.What this film requires is a complete overhaul in the script. At which point did the protagonist actually get Bengaloored? I don't remember a single scene where the actor actually accepts the new Bangalore. That's where the main problem lies. The actor never actually has a problem with the new Bangalore, and the title therefore is deceiving. For this effort, however, I'll go with 2 out of 10 and double thumbs down for Bengaloored. I was certainly not Bengaloored in any way.
