Lajja

I happened to catch Lajja the other night and I must say it was pretty entertaining.

Although the individual stories were engaging, they didn't fit with the overall story arc, making it seem unbelievable. How many female hating incidents can a woman possibly come across whilst she's on the run from her own abusive husband?

Having said that, Manisha, Madhuri and Rekha all put in solid performances and Mahima, Ajay Devgun and Anil Kapoor did well in their brief roles. Jackie was over the top but did have a certain menace about him. And of course Johnny Lever was excellent as one half of an inept private investigation team.

The worrying fact coming from this film is the fact that a lot of the themes explored in this film are very much real. The Mahima/Anil portion dealt with dowry and how the poor are often held ransom by the grooms family should they wish to get their daughter married in to a respectable family. In Rekha's portion we saw how villagers saw the birth of a baby girl as a burden rather than a blessing and watched in horror as the father tried to drown his daughter in milk, luckily Rekha came in to save the day. And of course the overall story of Manisha and Jackie and domestic abuse was highlighted even though the ending was very lame.

A decent film with some fine acting a lot better than some of the crap being churned out at the moment.

2.5 out of 5

Yuvraaj

Subhash Ghai, Anil Kapoor, Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif and Mithun Chakrobathy were all involved in Yuvraaj. So how can a film with so many big names be so bad? Yuvraaj was so bad I'm not even going to review it, but it makes me wonder, how the hell could these guys actually think that this film was worth making?

Anil Kapoor has a habit of signing dodgy films but it's Salman Khan I fear for. With the exception of Partner he has been pretty awful in most of his films. I swear he's either pissed or high because his performances seem to get worse and worse. In the films Partner, Mujshe Shaadi Karoge and Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya he played the same role albeit with a different name. SRK gets slagged off for his cheesy Raj persona but Salman should be slapped over the head with a wet fish for his annoying acting in these films. Salman is releasing two mega budget flicks this year, Veer and Wanted, I hope for his sake they do well otherwise he needs to be removed from the 3 Khans of Bollywood group and be replaced with Kader Khan or even Fardeen Khan!