With 2024 coming to a close with a not-so-great bang (I mean Baby John), my count of movies reviewed on the big screen and OTT platforms this year has hit 45 and it’s been a mix of good, bad, but mostly average films. Here is my list of five of the best and five of the worst Bollywood releases I have watched this year. And, no, box-office numbers have nothing to do with this list.
BEST 5
Merry Christmas
Sriram Raghavan’s tale of love and loss was a slow-burn thriller that draws you in and keeps you hooked. The unlikely pair of Vijay Sethupathi and Katrina Kaif actually made it work. He spoke little but said a lot through his eyes as Albert. She did a great job of playing the effervescent Maria who has an underlying tinge of sadness. The film took time building up, with beautiful exterior and interior shots, dropping hints along the way for eagle-eyed audiences to pick up, and came to a satisfactory climax.
LSD 2
Love, Sex and Dhoka have been replaced with Like, Share and Download in Dibakar Banerjee’s sharp critique of a society hooked to their screens. While the format isn’t new — there are three different but interconnected short stories — the film taps perfectly into this generation’s relationship in the time of the internet and with the internet. The film, with great performances led by Swastika Mukherjee and Abhinav Singh, touches upon social ills like exploitation and bullying across three platforms — reality TV, social media and virtual reality. LSD 2 might not have the shock factor of Love, Sex Aur Dhoka, but it is just as impactful.
Stree 2
Stree 2’s premise hits a little closer to home, with Vicky (Rajkummar Rao, who seemed unstoppable this year till a film in our list of worst happened) and his merry band of bumbling ghostbusters — Jana (Abhishek Banerjee), Bittu (Aparshakti Khurrana) and Rudra (Pankaj Tripathi) — of Chanderi, along with Shraddha Kapoor’s unnamed witch, having to contend with a headless menace abducting women who have dared to break out of traditional patriarchal roles. As expected, the film has scares and laughs in spades, which come often and effectively. Pop culture references are slipped in perfectly, and apart from a climax which is hit by the Marvel-syndrome, it is an absolute blast.
Do Aur Do Pyaar
A refreshing take on marriage and relationships, Do Aur Do Pyaar — directed by Shirsha Guha Thakurta and starring Vidya Balan, Pratik Gandhi, Sendhil Ramamurthy and Ileana D’Cruz — was a story about regular people, doing regular things and hence immensely identifiable. A story about a long-married couple played by Balan and Gandhi, who fall out of love, fall in love with other people and fall back in love with each other. It walks the line between comedy and dramedy with aplomb and the best thing about it is none of the partners in their extra-marital affairs are painted as villains and there is a refreshing lack of judgement or preaching.
All We Imagine As Light
Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix-winning film is a beautiful tale of loneliness, intimacy, belonging and female friendships. Set in a rainwashed Mumbai tinged with blue, the film captures the loneliness of anonymity in a city bustling with people, among whom are the three protagonists — Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha) and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam). The film not only explores how women’s wants, needs and ownerships are narratives controlled by patriarchal notions, it shows how sometimes all one needs is friendship to ease life’s burdens even if it doesn’t solve all the problems.
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WORST 5
Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya
This film about how a perfect female specimen is programmed to like and do everything a man, we mean ‘admin’, wants, is unfortunately not a satire. It is in all earnestness about a man who falls in love with a sexy robot who is programmed to, er, cook and clean, never disagree, be great in bed, smoke without coughing, not be scared of very fast bike rides and switch off when he finds her annoying. Kriti Sanon does the robot well, I mean all she had to do was look sexy, blank and smile when needed. Shahid Kapoor has oodles of charm but even he can’t pull this character off without looking creepy.
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan
Hobbs and Shaw of Bollywood Rocky (Tiger Shroff) and Freddy (Akshay Kumar) are not. Their age-related banter is stilted, unfunny, gets old very soon and their chemistry is non-existent. Their mission — taking back a stolen super-weapon created by India — involves so many ludicrous plot points that it is difficult to comprehend what exactly is unfolding on screen. The one thing it does have in dollops is action set-pieces with enough explosions to rival Michael Bay. But clearly, explosions on screen don’t translate into a dhamakedaar film.
Bad Newz
The only good news about Bad Newz was Vicky Kaushal, incandescent as West Delhi munda Akhil Chaddha. An interesting and original premise (the only thing that is original) where a woman gets pregnant with twins from two different fellas devolves into a one-upmanship between the said two men to prove to the woman who will be a more capable father. And yes, the film, which should be about the woman whose right it is to choose everything to do with the children, pushes the woman to the sideline. Tripti Dimrii is not bad but Ammy Virk is as forgettable as everything else about the film. Thank god for Kaushal and his well-hidden epic dance skills.
Ulajh
Who better to play a nepo baby than Janhvi Kapoor, and here she plays the diplomat daughter of a well-known diplomat who gets appointed as the youngest ever deputy high commissioner to the UK. She is introduced as an intelligent, fast-thinking, smart and decisive foreign service official but through the rest of the film makes one questionable choice after the other that lands the whole country in trouble! Despite good turns by Gulshan Devaiah and Roshan Mathew, the film is undone by its very amateurish plot.
Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video
Even Rajkummar Rao couldn’t save this tedious film, which forgoes funny and goes straight to tacky. This film by Raaj Shandilya is about Rao and Tripti Dimrii’s honeymoon video getting stolen and their wild goose chase to recover it. The jokes are crass and don’t land, Dimrii is sidelined when she should have been at the centre of the plot given the premise, and Rao has done the same small town boy role aplenty. The nail in the coffin is the Stree reference which is superficial and unnecessary, just like the film.