Khel Khel Mein

A Spanish movie Perfect Strangers has been remade in multiple languages, and now comes another remake in Hindi. With zero expectations, Stree 2 released on same day and already knowing the story, I skipped this one in theaters. Having watched it now, I can say I made the right choice.

A group of close friends meets for a wedding and decides to play a game: they must surrender their mobile phones, unlocked, on the table for the night. Any messages, emails, or calls they receive must be read out loud, revealing a Pandora's box of everyone's secrets.

The novelty of the story is lost, as it's such a well-known premise. What remains is the execution. Credit to the makers for attempting to Indianize the content and make it more relatable, but there are many loopholes that can't be overlooked. Strangely, in this version, everyone seems to have an extramarital affair, and the makers couldn't think of any other secret to make things interesting.

Akshay Kumar leads this ensemble cast. He fits the role and delivers a convincing performance. Amusingly, the filmmakers keep reminding us that Akshay is playing his age, offering random justifications to ensure no one questions it. Vaani Kapoor, as his wife, is decent. Taapsee Pannu gets the most interesting character, and she delivers for the most part. Ammy Virk, Aditya Seal, and Pragya Jaiswal are strictly okay, while Fardeen Khan struggles the most, barely managing to perform, reminding us that a famous surname can help revive a career.

The songs are below average and only add to the runtime. The climax is highly clichéd and underwhelming. The group of supposed friends lacks chemistry, making it hard to connect with them. Visually, the film is appealing with its gloss and glamour. The movie touches on important themes like sexual acceptance, but that's as far as it goes. In the end, it feels like the Hindi saying "Raat gayi, baat gayi" - no one seems to care about what transpired by the time the film ends.

Overall, it's a below-average movie with a beautiful cast and good production design. There are a few funny dialogues to make you chuckle, and since it's on OTT with a short runtime, it can be watched on a lazy afternoon.

#pranureviews #KhelKhelMein #KhelKhelMeinReview.

Finally something sensible and well made movie. The best part about the movie was the moment there was a drop in excitement. Something else comes up and makes it more interesting it's not just one closed room drama. Continue was good casting was perfect. In the storyline made sense interconnections and changing times all presented very well. It reminded me of some previous movies like table number 11 and Chitkabrey. Notl connections were low, but this movie is about to pick up again. It's in Number but for sure going to be big on OTT. Me so one time we met can be seen again with a different friends anytime.

Finally, something good to watch, with just the right mix of tension and humor.

I'm not usually a fan of Indian multi-starrer movies, as they often rely on cheap, vulgar jokes. However, this one was different, the blend, the mixture, the cocktail of elements came together perfectly.

That said, mixing friends with family can often lead to disaster, and the movie revolves around these messy situations, but with plenty of laughs along the way.

Akshay Kumar delivers a solid performance with his signature comic timing, after a series of flops.

This movie is a must-watch for the guys, but a word of advice: watch it alone. And if your significant other has seen it too, maybe clean your phone just in case they get any bright ideas!

This movie struggles to find its identity, failing to be a comedy, a thriller, or even a character study. It's simply all over the place.

As a comedy, it falls flat, delivering hardly any laughs. The jokes are juvenile, and the humor is almost non-existent. The plot is painfully predictable-if I asked ChatGPT to write a script based on the trailer, it would likely produce something just as unoriginal and unfunny.

Akshay Kumar and Ammy Virk manage to squeeze out a few laughs in the 2+ hour runtime, but the rest of the cast seems lost. They fail to grasp the comedic tone, playing their roles without any real flair. Fardeen Khan, in particular, is out of his depth, exposing his limited acting range and feeling out of place throughout the film.

The movie also suffers from a lack of internal consistency. For example, Fardeen Khan's character is supposedly a School PT teacher, yet he shows up to a wedding in Jaipur driving an open Jeep Wrangler. It's details like this that further disconnect the audience from the story.

In the end, this film fails to deliver on any front, leaving viewers questioning what it was even trying to achieve.

First things first. According to Wikipedia, this is the TWENTY-FOURTH international remake of the Italian Perfetti sconosciuti (Perfect Strangers) - comfortably securing that film's status as the most remade one in history.

This fact is even more remarkable when considering that the Italian original is not some Mussolini-era relic, but a 2016 production - meaning that so far, it saw an average of 3 remakes every single year since release, even if all were in different countries. (And surprisingly, the USA has NOT yet been one of those.) To make things even MORE fun, India apparently already saw THREE films before this one which didn't fully remake Perfetti sconosciuti, but nevertheless had taken enough from it to be considered similar/outright rip-offs (Loudspeaker, 1001 Nunakal (Lies) and 12th Man, if you are counting.)

And yet, the XKCD comic about millions of people being born->coming of age->entering the internet every day without knowing what "everyone" before them thought was common knowledge is true. I had no knowledge of either the Italian original or all the other remakes it had until well after seeing the international screening of this film. Outside of this context, I would say it's a fairly good, perhaps even slightly underrated film. For one thing, the first and best song of the film, Hauli Hauli, is a banger, and I don't think either the original or the other direct remakes of it have anything which matches that.

Admittedly, the opening rather drags as everyone is en route to their relative's/friend's wedding and their conversations are mostly set-up that'll take a while to pay off. Once everyone is finally seated, though, the film both offers competent pacing and good performances and more importantly, it is a lot more mature than you might expect from the premise.

Now, I don't know how much of that maturity might be "borrowed" from the original (the way Speak No Evil remake had obviously taken it caustic mockery of modern status preconceptions from the original) and what had been invented by the screenwriters from scratch, but either way, it works and (to this outsider, at least) seems organic to modern Indian context rather than crudely grafted onto it.

And unlike too many other dramedies like it, the ending feels like the right combination of bittersweet, with the proper acknowledgement of how everyone had been changed by the experience. In all, a pretty good effort.