Under normal circumstances, you'd think that when three of the four people credited with having written Queen join hands again, the film they'll make will be fun and clever. When they've been entrusted with a big budget and lavish settings, you'd expect a film that's fabulous. Shaandaar proves that these assumptions are wildly off-base. It turns out that the message that prefaced episodes of The X-Files were bang on the money: Trust no one.
Cynics (like yours truly) might have figured from the trailers of Shaandaar that it wouldn't be quite as quirky asQueen, but director Vikas Bahl's new film is a surprise. No one who has seen Queen could have anticipated such a drastic drop in storytelling and directorial skills. After all, Shaandaar is something of a reunion for the Queen team. It has Bahl as director. The story has been written by Bahl and Chaitally Parmar (part of Queen's writing team too), with dialogues by Anvita Dutt, who co-wrote the dialogues for Queen. Yet, Shaandaar is exactly the opposite of its title. It's sloppily written, lazily directed and completely without insight. Trust no one indeed. Read More >>
