Movie Review: Bombay Talkies..tells pretty average stories

Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar and Karan Johar – each of those names alone set expectations of high quality cinema. Now when those names come together in a singular presentation which is a supposed tribute to 100 years of Indian cinema, that’s epic stuff right? Almost, like a tale of The Avengers, of sorts, coming together to be greater than the sum of their parts and blowing the audience away with heart wrenching and heart warming plots. Well, not quite….

The truth of the matter is that there’s no tribute. The only ‘tribute’ you will find in this movie is the start and the end of the film (so don’t leave the hall after the ‘the end’ message). Other than that, I think its just a coincidence and the tribute angle almost seems forced.  What you really get to see is the off-beat indulgences of 4 really talented directors, that you won’t necessarily connect with. Some of it does shine out but as an overall package, it definitely lacks lustre

I don’t really want to give away who does what so I am gonna be a little cryptic now – one of them takes a known issue and gives it familiar treatment that was pretty disappointing (clearly expected more from that one), another takes a decent topic and develops it well till he/she falls back on the stereotypical stuff to tell an ordinary story, the third takes the simplest of settings to give a subtle message in a beautiful manner, while the fourth tells an interesting story but misses the moral (in my opinion). For your benefit I have changed the order of the stories as well)

As you can see, not too many shining stars in that description. Its not really bad though but its nothing of the ‘blow you away’ variety which you would be forgiven to expect in such a scenario. Writing is also strictly okay which is surprising given who all was in the ranks. The little music there is, is fairly tolerable; of course one never tires of the old bollywood classics that play in some of the sequences. In terms of acting, it’s a solid cast of characters and it mostly delivers – Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vineet Kumar Singh, Saqib Saleem and young Naman Jain particularly stand out

There you have it – think of it as Dus Kahaaniyan brought down to 4 off beat stories without looking for meaning or message and forget that it’s a tribute of any kind and Bombay Talkies ends up being a decent, normal watch – don’t go with high expectations