Review: Vicky Donor [126/365]

Movies are a wonderful thing.
They entertain you. And then they also make you introspect. They can touch a chord in your heart and if that chord is a raw one, then you'll end up in deep thought.
Vicky Donor is one of those movies which will touch you. This movie touched a very personal chord in our hearts.

source: Wiki

We managed to watch the movie in a theater that was half empty and half filled with men with overflowing testosterone, who hooted and whistled every time the heroine appeared onscreen.

Vicky Donor is produced by John Abraham, and if you haven't figured it already from the movie posters, is about sperm donors, infertility and a funny yet serious look at the stigma surrounding it.

Ayushmann (Vicky Arora) is the only son of his widowed mom who runs a beauty parlor. The movie revolves around how a reluctant Vicky is convinced to become a sperm donor to supplement his family income and gradually is able to afford all the luxuries that his family desires. Everyone makes a ton of money. Enter Ashima Roy (Yami Gautam), a bank employee and they find themselves falling in love with each other and marry inspite of the fact that Ashima is a 'Bong' and Vicky is a 'Punjabi'. A short honeymoon and one intense love making scene later, they realize that she is infertile and cannot conceive. Meanwhile, Vicky still hasn't told his wife that he was a sperm donor and all hell breaks loose when she does find out. He is arrested on suspicion of black money and she walks out of his home.

The movie cannot be the greatest movie I've seen by any stretch of imagination. It is very mediocre and Dr Baldev Chadha's (Annu Kapoor) obsession with the word 'sperm' can make you squirm after the 15th time. He seems to have a sperm souvenir of every possible kind - as a paper weight, stress buster, in the car, on the desk and every poster in his clinic. How many doctors do you know carry around a souvenir of their specialty everywhere and in everything they carry. I am not a huge fan of Punjabi Hindi, so the fact that almost the entire movie is in Punjabi Hindi is a little distracting.
The jokes appear contrived and very dry. There is only so much 'bong' and 'punjabi' jokes that you can take, you see.
Ayushmann is intense and quite convincing at times, but for a debut, he did a pretty decent job.Yami is eye candy and very into the character and redeemed the movie towards the end. No item numbers, thankfully.
The supporting cast is wonderfully fresh and actually does an incredible job. 

Now, for the pertinent question- Would I recommend this movie?
Maybe, with the following disclaimer:
Don't go into the theater expecting fireworks, because this has none.
No John Abraham. So that rules out any eye candy for the women. And gay men. 

This is a time-pass movie.
One that you would go to watch when you don't get a ticket for the Avengers or if you don't have anything else more meaningful to do.

My Rating: 7

What does the ratings mean?
0-4  : Not worth your presence in the same zip code as the TV/Theater.
5-7  : Err... the movie is pretty, but it's definitely missing something. A storyline, that is.
8-10: 'Drop-the-dishes, stop-the-sex, jaw-dropping, that-is-incredible' 2 hours of movie experience

GuestSpeak: Presidential Comedy

The Hindu dated 5^th May 2012 carried a very curious cartoon in its Editorial Page today. The Cartoon featured an elite art camp with our dear leaders both from let right and everywhere in between teasing their right brain. They were trying out impressions of a statue that was wrapped up in a white cloth. So what significance would this cartoon draw, none! Had it not been given the caption “The president”. The cartoon vividly describes the nation’s political debauch!

source: The Hindu

We live in a very dangerous political environment. Before us lies the reality of a politics that is quintessentially ‘spine-less’ in nature, where decision making means compromising everything to maintain power and policy making is preserving the interests of the politicians and never that of the nation. I don’t know whether there can be a better mockery of democracy than the present selection criteria and methodology of the election of a president in India. Our selection process is baseless, bountiful of covertness and a mockery of the enterprise of democracy.

Our political parties place a puppet in the ultimate chair of power in India, every time carefully selecting the most non-responsive, least active person to command our armed forces. There have been exceptions and in the initial years this method has produced some of the finest leaders in India’s history but the times are different now. Then there was a sense of nation willingness and patriotism was abundant in supply, we just won independence, we just achieved freedom remember? Some of the finest men who were instrumental in our struggle for freedom later took to the helm of India and all were just fine, But as India progressed it stated to forget it’s on past and ‘moved on’ and in the hurry to be a world power it has forgot its value and it’s rulers has succumbed to the ill effects of power.

We live In the times of coalition reality where public good takes a back seat and the ensuring that the coalition remains a coalition is considered the first priority in today’s politics. To please each one they do something slanderous and our presidential election is no different. I believe that we should follow the way presidential elections go in US where the people have a higher role to play. Its time our presidential elections stop happening in the citadels of power and come down to the ‘amm aadmi’. The revival of Indian politics would take time and a whole lot of will power; I doubt that there is any sign of such a drastic change in the foreseeable future for now. India has been forever the flag bearer for democracy and in order to remain like that we need to act urgently to resolve any institutions that could possibly be driving it away.

Written for 'Hold the Thought, Get the Point' by our guest blogger Rupertt Wind.

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