Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 228

Turning Red Review – Adorkable!

“A very enterprising, mildly annoying young lady” a character hilariously sums up Meilin, the 13-year-old protagonist of 2022 animated film ‘Turning Red’. This film is so freaking cute… maybe it’s going to be difficult to write an objective review!

Domee Shi who made the adorable award-winning animated short ‘Bao’, has directed this film and co-written the story with Julia Cho and Sarah Streitcher. This women led production is fuzzily heavy on fun female friendships and girl-power.

Plot overview – ‘Straight A’ student Meilin does everything her mom wants, but that changes when she wakes up one day to find herself transformed into a red panda. The beast has an intriguing mythological origin and shows up every time the host is overpowered by emotions, so if Meilin calms down, she turns back into her human self. With the support of her best-friends, she is able to channel the red panda in fun ways behind her family’s back. But what happens when the strict overbearing mom finds out?

First things first – the animation is colorful and catchy, a blend of the classic Pixar art style along with elements of Japanese anime. The big-eyed characters, bright clothes and sunny backgrounds help set an uplifting tone throughout the film. The teddy-bear like red Panda is definitely the show-stopper. Just like all the kids in the story fall in love with the animal side of Meilin, viewers with soft-corners for furry beings would be melting.

Domee Shi and team subtly and humorously explore dynamics between dominating parents and pliant children – how pushing one to excel in everything can lead to eventual estrangement. It starts with teens compartmentalizing their lives, a different version at home, and another at school. Meilin is an over-achiever, who gets 100/100 on math, plays the flute like a pro, speaks French, helps her mom run their family temple after school… but she is also a regular teen with a bunch of goofy/dorky girlfriends (Abby is the cutest btw) and they all love dancing, singing, listening to boy-bands and crushing on the cute ones. The ‘overachieving’ bit is going to be relatable to very few viewers, but haven’t we all had a teen version of ourselves our parents were completely clueless about? So the ‘Panda’ is really a metaphor for our ‘inner true selves’.

I loved the fact this the story was set in 2002, a pre-social media era, when friends would swap their favorite CDs, have actual conversations instead of browsing their phones while sitting next to each other. And yet, ‘Turning Red’ isn’t stuck in some time-capsule, it feels fresh and contemporary, even with all the Asian mythological and cultural quirks that the makers weave into the tale.

It’s a well-paced film, where the tempo never dips and things keep happening. The climax isn’t as emotional as most Disney films tend to be, but things do get a little heavy on the heart. Instead of a idealistic ending, there’s a more realistic closure to Meilin’s adventures as her new transfiguring self. There’s definitely scope for a sequel, or a prequel, or an entire spin-off series!

It’s a 8/10 from me. The film is streaming on Disney Hotstar Premium.

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Ep 59 – 9 Must-Watch Animated Films From IMDB Top 100

Eighth Grade Review – Awkward And Engaging

There are too many middle-school and high-school themed films out there exploring or simply displaying bullying. In an interesting change, the 2018 movie ‘Eighth Grade’ written and directed by Bo Burnham doesn’t really have blatant bullying, yet manages to make adult viewers wonder – “is middle-school so hard?”.

Plot overview – Kayla Day has no friends and is the ‘quietest kid’ in her class, so she takes to YouTube to express herself, where she pretends to have a great social life. But with eighth-grade coming to an end, she hopes to re-invent herself in real life.

Elsie Fisher plays the introverted teen Kayla with painful perfection, a believable regular middle-grader, with puberty written all over her. She is nothing like the model-like teen protagonists we are used to seeing onscreen and THANK the makers for that. Josh Hamilton who plays Kayla’s dad is a flag-bearer for all the single-dads out there in the world, who do their best to be friends to their teens, but the generation gap makes it uncomfortably difficult. The dad-daughter relationship would definitely hit a chord with many.

‘Eighth Grade’ is an exceedingly real representation of the anxieties, angst, self-loathing, isolation introverted teens face, it’s the kind of representation a lot of kids would relate to, but ironically, it has an ‘R’ rating due to some sexual content. The authenticity of the movie is a double-edged sword, while some may like the near frustrating experiences of the protagonist, others might find it tedious or boring.

Since Kayla has zero friends, the film cleverly uses her YouTube videos to carry the narration forward, it also makes for a fun juxtaposition – on video she might be giving tips about how to come out of one’s comfort zone, but in reality, she is unable to take her own advice. The background score is also an important element of the plot, a character in itself, to reflect Kayla’s feelings. The ambient music in-fact is a character in itself, drumming up to the emotions of moment.

Through the film, I felt a little underwhelmed, not in the ‘oh this movie is disappointing’ kind of way, but more like ‘this feels excruciatingly reel and is almost embarrassing to watch in parts’. It has an air of a docu-drama and the climax is a fitting closure to Kayla’s middle-school days.

It’s a 7/10 from me. The film is available to stream on Netflix.

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Ep 71 – Before The Coffee Gets Cold – Book Review

Zikora Review – Could’ve Been Longer

‘Zikora’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a short-story that starts off with the titular protagonist struggling to give birth. She is in excruciating pain, but is constantly informed she has ‘made no progress’, although it feels like she will die from the effort. The first few pages set in the maternity ward reminded me of the famous British trilogy ‘Call The Midwife’, which was about birth, blood, pain and shit (both literal & metaphorical).

Zikora is a 39-year-old lawyer living in America, who had the perfect boyfriend, until she announced her pregnancy. So she only has her cold-strict Nigerian mother for support during delivery. In flashbacks, the author explains both the strained mother-daughter relationship and Zikora’s failed affair with the handsome-cool Kwame, the father of her child. There’s also a strong glimpses of the difference between the Nigerian and American way of life, so we get a brief slice of two very different cultures.

Adichie weaves smooth sentences, full of nostalgia, memories, love, loathing and regret. However, I had very mixed feeling about Zikora’s character. If her age hadn’t been explicitly mentioned in the story, most readers would assume her to be in her late 20s and not 30s. There’s a childish defiance in her character, perhaps even an innocent desperation in some of her acts. Since the tale is told in first person, there’s also the element of an unreliable narrator, everything is seen through the one-sided lens of the narrator. We don’t know the other side of the story.

The author should’ve perhaps into a novella sized book, because her attempt to pack in two parallel relationship trajectories in a short-story results in an abrupt unsatisfactory climax. It’s a 3/5 from me.

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Ep 71 – Before The Coffee Gets Cold – Book Review

In Your Heart Review – Mindless Rehash

The first episode of the 2022 series ‘In Your Heart’ looks like such blatant rip-off of the famous 2016 Chinese web-series ‘Addicted Heroine’, it causes second-hand embarrassment to viewers. It’s like a bad, lazy, unimaginative re-hashed script written by some bored fan-writer. Only a few details are shuffled here and there, so it’s a story of two boys living in a poor neighborhood, getting into a bullying incident, having a few pointless friends and finally acknowledging their feelings for each other after some conflict.

Directed by Lin Yun Ming, the 8 episodes long series stars Hu Bo Wen and Hu Shi Wen in the lead roles as childhood best-friends. While the actors do their job sincerely enough, the chaotic production ruins viewing experience. The evidently low-budget isn’t even a problem, but the lack of script (it’s hard to believe the series is based on a web novel) along with random supporting characters whose sub-plots are left unfinished, make it for an annoying watch.

The climactic episode was abrupt, filled with unnecessary aggression, a forced conflict and a disappointing ending. Unless you are fans of the actors or have nothing better to watch, it’s best to skip “In Your Heart”. It’s a 3/10 from me.

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Ep 69 – The Dangers of Smoking In Bed Review

Before The Coffee Gets Cold – Book Review

Who would you want to meet if you could go back in time?

Japanese author Toshikazu Kawaguchi explores this emotionally charged question in the novel ‘Before The Coffee Goes Cold’. We take a spoiler-free look at the novel in the latest podcast episode of ‘Abstract AF’ and tell you if this is something you would like to spend your time on.

Ptolemy’s Gate Review: A Satisfactory Conclusion

By Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)

Phew! Where does one start with ‘Ptolemy’s Gate’, the conclusion to Jonathan Stroud’s ‘Bartimaeus’ trilogy? What started off as a fun, shallow but witty/funny series, gets layered, emotional and very engrossing by the third book.

You need to have read the first two books to appreciate and understand the third installment of this fantasy series. Some crucial characters and sub-plots that are introduced in the first two books gain more significance in the finale. Stroud’s language is a lot more vivid this time and readers can notice a maturity in his writing, right from the first few pages. It’s so great to see a writer’s growth, it infuses a sense of joy within you while reading.

As a history buff, I LOVE how ‘Part 1′ in the book starts with a flashback chapter set in Alexandria (125 BC). There’s an assassination attempt on a young royal, complete with daggers, poisonous darts and what not. It’s a thrilling beginning and readers finally get an intriguing look at Bartimaeus’ relationship with Ptolemy, one of his older masters, whose guise the Djinni prefers taking whenever he is summoned on earth. So through the book, we keep getting these flashback chapters that are richly written, taking you back in time. The primary plot unfolds in present-day London, where Bartimaeus’ master John Mandrake/Nathaniel is a big Minister and even part of the Prime Minister’s council. Unfortunately, our favorite sarcastic Djinni’s powers are dangerously deteriorating due to his constant enslavement under Mandrake, who refuses to give him a break.

The highlight of this finale was Bartimaeus’ equation with Ptolemy, even though those chapters aren’t too many. A lot of readers would’ve happily lapped up an entire novel centered around just these two characters. In-fact every major character apart from Nathaniel sees strong growth, especially Kitty. The feisty human-girl is no longer a minion of ‘The Resistance’, and even though she is a fugitive functioning under an alibi, Kitty is determined more than ever to take on those in power in whatever little capacity she can. So Stroud continues with the theme of class-struggle and things gets more exciting because an unimaginable force of villains are at work in book three.

Readers also get a slight change in scene in the last book as a major character goes to Prague on a mission, and even though it doesn’t seem too different than the gloomy London, it still makes for a fun change. Nathanial continues to be the boorish bratty magician, but Stroud slowly tries to redeem his negative shades and it felt a little contrived. Regardless, Nathaniel might finally manage to worm his way into the hearts of some readers.

Stroud gives fans a fantastic finale and I was completely satisfied and happy for having picked up this trilogy. It’s a 5/5 for the final book!

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Ep 64 – Why ‘Diary of a Bad Year’ Was Bad Reading Experience

The Agony House Review – Haunting In The Time of WiFi

What would you do if you spend all your money on a house that turns out to be haunted? With not one but two ghosts, a malevolent male one constantly trying to kill you and a feminine one who smells like lilies and is keen on fighting off the evil other evil one.

Author Cherie Priest takes the good old ‘haunted house’ trope and gives it a refreshingly contemporary young-adult fiction touch in her book ‘The Agony House’, that’s interspersed with comic-book pages deftly drawn by Tara O’Connor. The protagonist is teen Denise Farber, who moves to a big-crumbling house with her mother & step-dad. The plan is to fix the place up and turn it into a bed and breakfast, but some sinister presence in the house keeps disrupting the repair-work. Strange sounds, smells, sharp nails popping up at places they shouldn’t be and mini-catastrophes causing physical harm to the Farber family makes Denise suspect there might be a sinister phantom at work, someone who doesn’t want them there.

I loved the ‘story within story’ plot device the Cherie Priest uses in this book. Denise finds an old unpublished comic-book in a chimney of her house and is positive that the manuscript holds clues to unravel the mystery of who’s bothering her family. So comic-book pages about a woman-detective who constantly rescues her boyfriend are inserted throughout the novel. The artwork is fun, I would have liked to see more of them and was quite disappointed that there were so few of them.

Apart from the positive girl-power theme, Cherie Priest also explores racial-differences in her story – Denise’s new neighborhood is dominated by modest African-American families who don’t take too kindly to white families buying homes in their area. Some of the characters are well-spun, even though they don’t get a lot of space. My favorite is the too eager ‘ghost-buster’ teen Terry, who just annoying and pushy, but his incorrigible spirit to spot spirits and communicate with them is hilarious.

As far as the horror element is concerned, ‘The Agony House’ isn’t nearly as scary or tormenting as the title suggests. Instead, it’s more about a bunch of teens turning into rookie investigators to find out secrets of the haunted house. They do a pretty great job, thanks to some free wi-fi and lots of google-searching. The climax could have been better, it’s too weak against the rest of the story I think a younger audience (12-16 year olds) would love the book.

It’s a 4/5 from me.

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Ep 68: Should You Read The ‘Bartimaeus’ Trilogy? Listen In!

Semantic Error – Quick Review

After a bunch of Korean mini-series romances that were too fluffy and vanilla (read boring), ‘Semantic Error’ turned out to be surprisingly entertaining and well-directed.

Adapted from a popular web-novel of the same name, the story is a fun campus drama starring Park Seo Ham and Park Jae Chan in the lead roles. Jae Chan play ‘straight As’ student Chu Sang Woo, who is exceptionally serious and meticulous about his work. So when is put on a group assignment where everybody dumps all the work on him, he lets the professors know nobody pitched in, causing the rest of the group to fail. Popular student Jang Jae Young’s plans to study further gets disrupted due to losing a credit, so he decides to torment Chu Sang Woo. But as the two work on developing a game together, they interact more and more and they begin falling for each other. Pretty standard territory as far as the ‘enemies to lovers’ genre is concerned yet fun.

Unlike the violent and disturbing school/college bullying many K-dramas have, Jae Young doesn’t resort to mean tactics to get back at Sang Woo. He devices rather harmless schemes to annoy the boy who ruined his academic calendar – like wearing the color (red) Sang Woo hates, or buying all his favorite coffee from a vending machine to deprive him from his daily caffeine kick. All his petty antics make for some good comic-relief.

Visually the series is A+, the production team has done a fantastic job in matching the theme of the story, unlike the soft peachy tones of Korean romances in the genre, ‘Semantic Error’ has a lot of bright contrasting tones and neon lights. Both the lead actors aren’t just exceptionally good-looking but also have great chemistry. Chu Sang Woo’s character growth from a cold Robot-like nerd to a softie crushing on his senior was jarring, but Park Jae Chan manages to make it believable – he switches from a ‘death stare’ to a ‘love-struck’ look with a lot of ease. Park Seo Ham is equally good as the stylish, flamboyant student, who is well aware of his talents and attractiveness.

Eight episodes long, with 23-minutes in each, ‘Semantic Error’ does not waste time on secondary characters, keeping a razor sharp focus on Sang Woo and Jae Young. There’s no ridiculous misunderstandings, people speak their mind and the series is largely free from non-sensical/exaggerated elements. It looked like the climax was going to be a predictable emotional mess, with some soppy grandeur, but instead we get an upbeat and cozy ending that leaves you satisfied. It’s a pretty good pick for the light-romantic genre.

It’s a 7/10 from me.

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The Batman Is Not ‘Too Dark’, Not For Comic Book Fans

Home Team Review – Watch It For The Kids

Can we skip to the good part? (if an Instagram reel song did not pop up in your head, you are to be envied). Look, if you’ve seen the trailer for the 2022 film, you already know it’s a regular underdog comedy movie to watch with family or friends on the weekend.

Directed by Charles & Daniel Kinnane, the story follows popular football coach Sean Payton, who gets suspended for a year due to a scandal. With no job to get to, he tries to connect with his estranged son and ends up coaching the boy’s 6th grade football team. Kevin James plays a stocky Payton, while Taylor Lautner is a rather haggard looking school coach Troy Lambert, who convinces Payton to help train his boys.

For foreign viewers (like me) who know nothing about the real former Saints coach Sean Payton, it’s best to treat it like any other fictional work of entertainment. And if the makers were trying to redeem the coach’s image, they don’t do a very good job because it’s the child actors who make “Home Team” entertaining. They are a fun bunch and outshine the very forgettable performances by the adult cast. The portrayal of the kids is relatable and warm – they don’t care about winning matches and just want to have a good time when they play.

While adults might not be impressed by the school level humour and tropes, young viewers (especially preteens) might love it. The friendship & support between the boys was the best part about this film. I loved a scene where the whole football team goes to cheer their friend to serenade his crush outside her home. All the boys stand together with paper lanterns, clapping & humming along with their little buddy. I’ve already seen that song-scene at least thrice.

The climax is light-hearted, happy,believable and celebrates team spirit more than anything. So yeah, this is a fun even if forgettable film. Watch it for the kids in it.

It’s a 6/10 from me.

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Ep 66: The Fame Game Review (A Netflix Series)

Gangubai Kathiawadi – Alia Breathes Life To Bhansali’s Oeuvre

Overwhelming.

If there is one word that describes my experience of watching this film, it’s ‘overwhelming’. The last film of Bhansali’s that I saw in the theatre was Padmavat. I love the characteristic Bhansali grandeur, but even for a loyal fan like me, it was all getting too much. The disproportionate emphasis on clothes, exaggerated dance sequences, and larger-than-life sets were somehow taking attention away from the craft.

And just when I was ready to let go of my fascination with the director, came Gangubai Kathiawadi

The film loosely based on the life of Mumbai’s famous sex worker who went by the same first name is nothing like the oeuvre of this 59-year-old filmmaker. This film doesn’t bask in the glimmer of affluent lead characters but showcases the squalor of prostitution hubs. The opening scene is grisly, and the first few minutes disturbing. Even the scene where Alia is locked up in a dark room is so unlike Bhansali, with the plaster peeling off walls and a lone bulb lighting up its dingy interiors. It was hard to believe that it was made by the same Bhansali who is known for his colour coordinated sets, even to convey tragedy (remember Aishwarya’s running sequence in Devdas).

Just as I was trying to adjust to this broad shift in SLB’s directorial sense, the movie drops a stunning sequence with women holding candles after a power outage. Signature Bhansali shot.

Many of my friends complained that the movie is unnecessarily long but I feel that it’s the pauses, the reactions, the sighs, the heaves that make a Bhansali film what it is. There is a scene where Aalia visits her love interest at his shop and asks him to accompany her for a drive; the entire sequence is through gestures, like a game of charades, unnecessary for many but beautiful for me. I know no one talks like that in real life, but SLB’s characters do, be it Aishwarya-Salman in Aankhon ki gustakhiyan, Aishwarya-Sharukh in Devdas, or Priyanka-Ranveer in Bajirao. It’s a trope oft used by the director and I enjoy it thoroughly.

Another place where this film scores full points is the dialogues. There is the haplessness of brothel dwellers that is portrayed with sympathetic sensitivity, then there is hopelessness of love weaved through couplet like exchanges and then there are the weighty lines thrown around with such gravitas by a feisty Alia that it made me want to hoot. Prakash Kapadia and Utkarshini Vashishtha deserve all the credit and some more for scripting lines that gave me goosebumps.

And now to the hotly debated question- was Alia the right choice for the film? Before I had seen it, I was not very sure. I felt she was young and far too inexperienced to carry the weight of such a role, but boy my opinion changed 15 minutes into the film. Alia is such a mature actor, way beyond her years. She can be dainty, she can be fiery, she can be romantic and she can vengeful, all of which she was through this film. Would Tabu or Aishwarya had been a better fit for the role? Maybe! But other than the fact that Alia doesn’t age all through the film, she has yet again outdone herself.

If you have ever liked Bhansali in the past, and in fact even if you are an ardent critic, you must give it a watch.

Munish Rathore

Munish is a full-time journalist,
part-time dreamer and an aspiring writer. In
his free time he can be seen curled up in front
of the TV bawling over the latest tear-jerker.

instagram.com/munishrathore/