Mimi

An In Mimi, a firangi couple (Evelyn Edwards, Aidan Whytock) peg a dancer in Rajasthan as the ideal candidate to surrogate mother a child for them. They reckon she would be perfect because she dances well, is athletic and looks like a goddess in front of the locals (D-uh! The dancer is Kriti Sanon; the last surrogate candidate they saw was a toothless old woman).

Like anything that becomes vogue in India, surrogate practices are — deepest, sincerest apologies for the pun — a very fertile industry. The rates are one-third of other countries and, when not satisfied, the couples sponsoring the child can pack their bags and leave.

Did I forget to say spoiler alert?

Oops...though not so much. Couples paying for surrogacy services often run away when there is a problem with the pregnancy, or, possibly, when they don’t like the product, says the doctor who handles Mimi’s case.

Also, the trailer kind of gives it away. In fact, the trailer gives away everything!

Predictable Mimi’s saving grace is its acting performances while Jungle Cruise, despite a lack of chemistry between its leads, would have been far more fun to watch on the big screen

Mimi is an adaptation of the Marathi film Mala Aai Vhhaychy! So, I guess it isn’t entirely the remake’s fault if the story isn’t particularly imaginative.

Twists and turns in the narrative are predictable right until the climax, and the characters often react in the ficklest, most childish ways. By the post-intermission half, the story just turns stupid.

Mimi, who has dreams of making it in Bollywood, wants to make enough money to break it in showbiz. Her biggest concern is how bearing a child would affect her figure. “Did having a child ruin Shilpa Shetty’s figure?” the doctor answers, speaking in a language Mimi — and probably most star-struck Indians — would understand.

Eventually, of course, she would love her child; we see it in scenes, but it’s not convincingly played out by writers Laxman Utekar (also the director) and Rohan Shankar. And if one didn’t read A.R. Rahman’s name in the credits, they’d almost never know the songs were from the maestro.

The lacks are plenty — especially the intermission highpoint, climatic arguments and the shoehorned message of adopting orphans in the end (yes, that also, unexpectedly, happens) — but there are three saving graces: Kriti Sanon, who has improved much as an actress; Pankaj Tripathi, who is the star of the show; and the supporting cast, Sai Tamhankar, Manoj Pahwa and Supriya Pathak, who make the mundane bearable. Make that bearable by the smallest of margins.

Mimi, rated suitable for ages 13+, is streaming now on the No. 1 spot on Netflix

Jungle Cruise

Promptly after an action sequence in London where a doctor, Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt), and her “too aristocratic” — and visibly gay — brother (Jack Whitehall) escape with a priceless artefact that can lead them to the fabled tree of life which can cure all diseases, a captain of a rickety steamboat takes tourists on a cruise.

“If you look to the left of the boat, you’ll see some very playful toucans,” he tells the disinterested tourists. “They’re playing their favourite game of beak wrestling. The only drawback is only ‘two can’ play.

“The rocks you see here in the river are sandstone”, he says turning. “But some people just take them for granite.” The crowd doesn’t flinch. “It’s one of my boulder attractions,” he quips.

As the highlight of the tour, he goes: “Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the eighth wonder of the world,” he says, building toward the climax as the boat passes behind a makeshift waterfall. “…the backside of water!”…which, as the joke goes, is the same as the front side.

The crowd couldn’t take the bad comedy any longer. “Please make him stop,” says a girl to her parents.

Jungle Cruise the movie is based on Jungle Cruise the theme park ride at Disneyland. Puns made by the skipper are part of the tour.

In the film, the skipper is played by Dwayne Johnson, clearly one of the major attractions of this cinematic ride. You’d have to forgive Jungle Cruise if it reeks of a mix between the Humphrey Bogart- and Katherine Hepburn-starrer The African Queen (1951) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). Cruise has been in development since the first Pirates of the Caribbean smashed the box-office.

Nearly 20 years and some recasting later (it originally had Tom Hanks and then Tim Allen), Jungle Cruise puts the weight of the adventure on Johnson and Blunt. Although fairly well-acted by the cast (the film also has Édgar Ramírez, Jesse Plemons and Paul Giamatti in bit parts), there is little to no chemistry between the two main leads. This is one of the big shortfalls for an enterprise costing about 200 million dollars.

One other shortfall: directorially, it is an almost okay job by Jaume Collet-Serra, whose style is gobbled up by the gargantuan task of keeping the film Disney-ish (Collet-Serra is the helmer of the engrossing shark-attack film The Shallows, and the fairly good Liam Neeson action-thrillers Run All Night, Non-Stop).

The screenplay by Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa (from a story by John Norville, Josh Goldstein, Ficarra and Requa) adds every workable adventure cliché into the plot. They’re quite enjoyable, if you’re into the Indiana Jones genre (the genre had been there before Indy, but it’s a benchmark).

Another major highpoint: a proper, rousing, adventure-themed background score by the great James Newton Howard (Google him if you don’t know who he is).

Delayed for over a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s a pity that Jungle Cruise — like so many other big screen-worthy films — is out simultaneously on digital and cinemas. The adventure would have been grand, and a little more enjoyable, on a 50-foot cinema screen.

Streaming on Disney+, Jungle Cruise is rated PG-13, although it can easily be PG or G rated

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 8th, 2021