"MEN NOT ALLOWED”!

"MEN NOT ALLOWED”!

Last year, director Karan Razdan came up with the first Hindi commercial film about lesbians - ' Girlfriend '. During the same time Shrey Srivastava, director of Insaaf (Sanjay Suri, Dino Morea) started working on 'Men Not allowed' based on a similar theme. Circa June 2005 and this should be yet another successive skin flick for Payal Rohatgi beginning with ' Mazaa Mazaa', 'Chetna' and ' Ek Se Mera Kya Hoga '. A Shri Vardan Pictures production, MNA has Tina Majumdar playing the role of other lead heroine who, along with Payal, shuts down all doors on men! Composer Sanjeev Srivastava and lyricist Shaheen Iqbal handle the musical score.
“Men Not Allowed” is a movie based on two girls who have been deceived, tortured by men. They both live with hatred for men in their life. Tanya (Payal Rohatgi) is the daughter of a business tycoon Karan Sharma. She has lost her mother when she was a kid and grew up in high society where she has seen many man woman relationship. Her father Karan is a womanizer and has not been a caring father to Tanya. She runs an advertising agency with her father. She is in love with Shekhar (Aryan Vaid) and her marriage with him is declared. Tanya finds Shekhar in bed with some other girl and her world is completely shattered. She decides never to marry and engrosses herself in her world.

Tanya then meets Urmila (Tina Majumdar) who is an aspiring model. Urmila gets selected for an Ad campaign for Tanya's agency but she is unable to perform. Tanya probes into Urmila, where Urmila tells Tanya about her dark past. Urmila's father was a drug peddler who was arrested and later died in the prison. Her mother was drug addict and she also had died in the hospital. She was then handed over to her uncle who tried to molest her and then sent her to an orphanage. Her life in orphanage was no less than hell and she developed a hatred for men.
Tanya consoles Urmila and has sympathy for her. She helps her to come out of the emotional trauma and helps her become a celebrity. Tanya and Urmila become friends and they start sharing beautiful moments together. Vikram (Tarun Arora) is a celebrity and a top model. He is ambitious and wants to marry Tanya. Karan is against the relationship of Urmila and Tanya. He tells Vikram to make Urmila fall in love with him only then Tanya would out of jealousy marry Vikram.
Tanya and Urmila both get married and separated from each other but both their marriages are based on revenge and compromise and don't work out. Realizing each other's importance they dump their husbands and then live happily together. Together in a life where “MEN NOT ALLOWED”!

Red - The Dark Side Movie Review

Red - The Dark Side Movie Review

When the promos of RED started being aired on television, it didn't take much time to be hooked on to them. There was enough intrigue being built over the weeks and smart mixing of songs, talkie portions, teasers and promotional videos ensured that as a viewer you were left guessing about what the film was all about - in a positive way! Something which truly works for a film of this genre since for any thriller-suspense drama to work, especially shot in a noir format, it is imperative that there is not much revealed about the basic plot of the film.

As the film came closer to release, one thing was for sure. Either the film would be quite good and turn out to be one shocker in itself, or it would be one of those run-of-the-mill cinema that has been packed in a different way and sold in a glitzy manner. There was no middle road expected out of RED.

Sadly, what one gets to see is the film that belongs to the latter variety i.e. utterly lukewarm and hardly exciting. No Vikram Bhatt, expectations are much higher from you, one of the rare film makers who has worked on variety of genres over the years, and RED is certainly not your calling card after a series of box office failures.

A thriller in the offering, RED is about Neel Oberoi [Aftab Shivdasani], a billionaire and Anahita [Celina Jaitley]. But no, it is not about their meeting together and love blossoming. They meet in rare circumstances. It so happens that Neel meets with a massive accident and now requires a 'dil' for himself. As luck (or the lack of it) would have been, Anahita's husband dies and his heart comes to Neel's rescue.

With Anahita's hubby's heart in him, it was quite obvious for Neel to search for her and soon fall in lust (let's call it love) with her. A powerful mix of lust and some Himesh Reshammiya tunes later, Neel realizes that world is not as black & white as it seemed. It was Red - a color that brought with it jealousy, deceit, hatred and obsession in as much dose as love.

Dark secrets start tumbling out of the closet and Neel is informed by Anahita [and that's the key word - informed!] that her best friend Ria [Amrita Arora] was responsible for the death of her husband. Mad in lust and engrossed in love, Neel is now ready to take to crime himself. Anything for a romp on the bed and wipe away the tears of his lady-love, you know!

But is the truth really about what he knows? Or is there a bigger game out there? Is Anahita as innocent as she sounds while Ria as evil as she is made out to be?

Even reading through a basic storyline like this makes you guess right away where the film is heading. And why not? After all such scripts have been beaten to death in not just dozens of films but even Doordarshan detective serials that used to be aired more than a decade back. So how could a subject like RED would have been made an interesting cinematic experience? By giving it a different narrative!

This is what Vikram Bhatt do and succeeds to an extent as well. Telling a story in a noir format, he brings the audience at the edge of the seat in the very first few minutes of the film. A dark drama follows and you look forward to the turn of the events on the screen. Excellent cinematography and the color shades used for filming RED only makes you curious about the proceedings as it just about seems that Bhatt is back to his vintage touch - something that was prevalent in films like RAAZ, KASOOR and GHULAM where he didn't take much time in coming to the point.

Sadly, the basic plot is such that only a novice won't understand what is happening in the film. And you only end up pitying Neel for being used as a pawn all along. If only the twist in the tale would have been kept closer to the heart and there were further turns in the story, RED may just have b