Khaali Peeli

“Can a new film which is a deliberate hark-back to the masala movies of the 70s and 80s, be worth your time? Only if it is smart and self-aware, and never forgets to send itself up, that’s when. Khaali Peeli does an adequate job of assembling the ingredients, and when it remembers to stay light on its feet, it’s fun, but slackens in other parts… Khaali Peeli knows that it needs to refresh the tropes it is up against, and manages to do so only some of the time in its two-hour duration.”

Rating: 2 stars | Full review

“There needs to come a point where two kinds of mainstream Hindi films are declared relics and locked away in the museum of geological history: the loud Delhi-family comedy and the pulpy 70s-Bollywood ode. The former is obnoxious noise, doomed from the moment you hear names like Sunny and Pappi followed by Bhangra sound cues. But it’s the latter that really gets my goat these days… You see movie-obsessed characters and hamming sidekicks, and you experience storylines that feature evil pimps, good-hearted prostitutes, incompetent cops and heroic taxi drivers…  The style is basically a copout to justify a crippling lack of imagination… If Bollywood were a costume ball, Khaali Peeli is the guy who comes dressed as Sholay’s Thakur in white jeans instead of a crisp kurta. It tries very hard to be cool – with all the old tropes and stereotypes and the criss-crossing narrative.”

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“Khaali peeli? Absolutely. There is no rhyme or reason… The concerted no-brakes act does not quite come off because the screenplay keeps driving the audience around the bend… Khaali Peeli is not only colour blind, it is tone deaf too. While the backdrop is a blur, the soundscape is an assault on the ears.”

Rating: 1.5 stars | Full review

“By the end of Khaali Peeli, I had survived so many flashbacks and had so little fun, the only thing that still made sense is its title… It’s the sort of baloney that recycles every done-to-death stereotype of the masala genre in the most lacklustre manner, be it the clichéd firing of bullet by the baddie, camera focusing on shocked expressions of the leads while third party intervention ensures all’s well that ends well or how the hero and heroine always find a costume friendly revelry as refuge to escape the villain’s sidekicks. These tricks are so outdated; it’s embarrassing to watch.”

Rating: 1 star | Full review