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Star cast: Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Imran Khan, Sonali Bendre
Director: Milan Luthria
What’s Good: It’s yet again a Once Upon… story where every line is a punch line and retro look is fantastic with its aroma of nostalgia!
What’s Bad: There’s melodrama, overdrama and too much drama.
Loo break: A few!
Watch or Not?: Milan Luthria’s OUATIMD lacks the effervescence and naturalness of its prequel. The vibrancy of the script is diluted with hard-to-believe romance, minimal story; the film falters due to lack of action and the calamity that OUATIM reflected in abundance. This one isn’t really a dull bore but fails to spark off the enigma of the former edition! Crime thrillers and love dramas shouldn’t be mingled, it results in an insipid broth like this.
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Starting off from where Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai had ended,the film begins with Shoaib picking up a local urchin to build for himself a loyalist at crime becoming his Godfather. 12 years later, Shoaib is the biggest gangster of Bombay who handles in all the way from an Arab Nation (Presumably Dubai).
Ditched by a man who plots to kill him, he makes a trip back to the city in order to eradicate his opponent.
Meanwhile he and the urchin he had adopted fall in love with a budding actress, which indeed results in the strife that initiates between them – a war as to who will win the girl.
This isn’t another love triangle of ordinary people. There is a gangster in love here and the story fierce-s itself with the love, passion and obsession of its characters to win, along with the police on the hunt for the man who rules Dongri.
Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai Dobaara! Review: Script Analysis
There are very few euphoric moments in the film partly because of its lazy writing that is carried out rather shakily, and rest because it doesn’t meet the standards set by its colossal predecessor. I can almost count the number of times I felt that ecstatic high inside me during the film. There are dialogues put in which make no sense and some are actually offensive to your gray cells without being remotely entertaining.
The film’s first part has a few good moments but nothing that the trailer hadn’t shown you. A few brilliant action scenes in the first half are done fabulously. There is a scene where Akshay and Imran leap off from one terrace to another, and that is perhaps the only place where the film shows some panache of what it had attempted on.
The romantic angle was overtly done and somehow doesn’t have the required blaze. The chemistry between Sonakshi and her actors is not fabricated neatly and somehow it comes across as a shock when she declares her love for one and rejects the other! The screenplay had barely given any tender moments or delicate minutes of love and hence romance obsession seems quite out of the blue.
The film fails to be a proper crime thriller or a love saga as it dismally flops at both doing absolutely no justice to either.
Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai Dobaara! Review: Star Performances
Akshay Kumar is so sleazy that he will crack you up with his dialogue delivery. It is outright hilarious. The actor fails to add depth in his character and couldn’t infuse charisma or persona in a role that Emraan Hashmi had immortalized. This Shoaib can at best manage to be a mock don but his over the top acting is such a flop show!
Sonakshi Sinha goes wrong every time she is in a commercial film. One can be rest assured that her performance in Lootera is a fluke or a mere shadow of director’s flawless cinematic abilities that he could extract such a wonderful performance from her. In this film, she is a chatterbox replete with idioticity which the director frames as naiveness. She shrieks as if possessed in the climax scene as bombards all her good, if she had done any.
Imran Khan is plain flat with nill emotions in his dialogues. His trying-too-hard-to-be-suave act will leave you yawning and doesn’t help in furthering the impression we have of him-his inherent inability to act. He could have done so much with the role but alas he painstakingly wastes every bit of it.
There is only one solid scene that the director gave to actress Sonali Bendre and she was brilliant in it. She was the only one who delivered her role in a compelling and convincing manner. In few minutes, she added depth to her character and managed to convey the emotional wreckage Shoaib’s love had caused her!
The supporting cast is needless and have nothing substantial to do. Mahesh Manjrekar’s buffonery was a pain in the literal sense of the word.
Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai Dobaara! Review: Direction, Editing and Music
Milan Luthria has given fabulous films before and this one feels stark and abrupt given his wonderful repertoire of fantastic films. His don shows off, has no charisma, his story lacks charm, the romance is not beautiful enough and fails to strike a chord and you will end up laughing at moments in the film’s most nailbiting moments. There is no simple way to present the fact but here it is – the film is a fiasco of sorts. Lesser than Himmatwala but nevertheless a damp squib that is the last thing expected from Luthria and Balaji. Rajat Aroraa’s dialogues felt labored and did not have the ease in its throw!
Pritam’s music ain’t extraordinary and the editing could have been better. But it is the script, the direction and the acting that dooms it all for them!
Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai Dobaara! Review: The Last Word
Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara screams to Bollywood to do away with its ridiculous trend of Dobaara films simply coz this time the Dobaara was painful on its audience. I am going with a generous 2/5 for its novel concept which was built flimsily. I was left flabbergasted at how audaciously the film spends so much energy flaunting nothing that they give its real theme a miss! It is hard to point out whom to blame, but the bottom line doesn’t change – you can easily miss this one and save yourself a headache.
Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai Dobaara! Trailer
Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai Dobaara! releases on 15th Augast, 2013.
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