Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 280

Love, Guaranteed – Review

“I wanna sue Love Guaranteed”

“The dating website?”

“I have gone on 986 dates and not one of them has provided me love!”

“You have been on 986 dates with human women?”

That’s how the conversation starts between the lead pair in the trailer for “Love, Guaranteed” a new Netflix film that’s supposed to be a chick flick. The plot is pretty interesting – Nick (Damon Wayans Jr.) hires lawyer Susan (Rachael Leigh Cook) to sue a site for fraud because they guarantee one would find love via them, provided they go on at least 1000 dates. Classic ‘gotcha’ case.

Here’s the deal – just watch the trailer and that is pretty much the entire film. The 2 minute 46 seconds teaser gives you a fair idea of what is going to happen. You know that Nick is going to fall in love with the laywer and that the lawsuit will hit a hiccup. I decided to watch it anyway, hoping it would be fun, but all I got was – cliched, boring, sappy, silly stuff.

While Damon Wayans is quite charming and sweet as Nick, his charm cannot compensate for the blandness of Racheal Leigh Cook, who plays the ‘do-gooder’ lawyer. There is very little chemistry between the two. And there was this super fake, forced idiotic little scene in the middle of the film where Nick and Susan end up baby-sitting a kid who is supposed to be a nightmare. The makers have probably never dealt with kids.

Despite being only 90 minutes long, including credits, ‘Love, Guaranteed’ was a drag, with caricatured characters and predictable twists. It was barely funny and had very little romance. Okay, well, it did get a few little laughs from me, but they were too few. I could’ve done without watching this one and husband cursed me for wasting his time. If you still want to watch it, you always have the fast-forward button to help you skip the slower bits.

A Borrowed Book

I borrowed a copy of ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’ by Charles Mackesy from a friend. It’s a quick 10 minute read and is filled with age-old wisdom and often heard quotes from pretty much everywhere – poets, philosophers, preachers, plays, films, love-songs and what not.

For a 10 minute book, it’s quite expensive and am glad I could just borrow it. However, it’s a pretty cute book for adults who want to read something to distract themselves or draw some inspiration when they are feeling down. The book is a reminder that life’s not all bad.

“Sometimes, just getting up and carrying on is brave and magnificent” – this was one of the nicest quotes in the book.

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There is so much deep meaning packed in that little line, it made me think of all of us who might be struggling to find the will to wake up and carry on with a day we don’t look forward to. Almost every page is peppered with such wisdom – to be kind, to not be ashamed in seeking help, to not compare ourselves, to love without judging and to not be too hard on ourselves. That pretty much sums up the book.

I expected there to be more story in the book since the hardback looked quite big, but was disappointed with how soon it was all over. There are just a lot of random thought-provoking quotes ping-ponged between the four characters in the book, with nothing really happening. It was like watching a self-help group take a walk along the woods, where the members are all close friends and each of them keeps saying something nice or motivating to the other.

While I wasn’t blown away by the book or the illustrations in it, reading it served as a nice little distraction. Definitely brings a smile on the reader’s face.

P.S. You can find me on  Facebook, GoodReads and Instagram 

Shifting During A Pandemic

For the first time in months, I haven’t written anything for two consecutive days. The only person I would like to pin the blame on – my flat owner. Thanks to them, we are looking for a new place.

Two months ago, our flat lease was close to expiring. When we asked our owner about renewing the rental contract, they demanded a whopping 25% raise on the rent. WHAT THE FUCK.

I don’t have a regular job, the husband wasn’t going to get his annual raise, everybody else in the world was getting either fired or taking a pay-cut or living in anticipation of the same. Amidst all of this, our flat owner wanted us to pay an extra twenty-five-fucking-per-cent. If a pandemic wasn’t plaguing our streets, we would have never considered renewing our contract and would have looked for a new place.

Let me give you some context. The flat we live in is a 2BHK – it has two bedrooms with attached bathrooms, three balconies, a decent sized hall and a very poorly made kitchen. Except for the lights, fans and one broken shelf, the flat did not come with any furniture or appliances. We had to buy everything. Everything. Husband had picked the flat when we were both working in different states. I was supposed to be moving to the same city soon and he had told his current flat-owner that he needed to look to a bigger house because the wife was going to join him.

Let me tell you something – NEVER PICK A FLAT BASED ON ITS PHOTOS. It looked fine to me in pictures, but once we moved in, we realized how poorly designed it was. In Husband’s defense – he didn’t really have the time to look too closely.

Here is what infuriated us the most when the flat owner decided to ask us for an obnoxious extra 25% – the owner is a doctor. It’s not a random rich person who could’ve been ill-informed about the economical hardships most people were facing due to Covid-19. I mean a lot of people do live in their own bubbles, don’t they? We tried to reason with them on keeping the rent the same and after a lot of convincing, they finally settled for a 10% increase and refused to budge. At that point, there was a pretty strict lockdown in our city, with Sunday curfews and other restrictions. House-hunting at such a time would have been a giant pain in the ass. So we sucked up and renewed our lease, but only for 6 months, with a 10% increase.

Now things have relaxed a lot in our city and we gave our flat owner a 30-day notice on the first of this month (September 2020). This meant scouting for new places. So our weekend was burned up in browsing flats and then then going to see them for real. In-fact we saw two really good places, that we bigger, better furnished and the caveat – even cheaper than our current house! The building we live in right now is just a random stand-alone building in a nice area, but with no other facilities, except for a security guard at the entrance. The two flats we really liked were in gated communities with a swimming pool, gym, tennis courts and all the other fancy things that gated communities come with.

All of that still doesn’t change the fact that house-hunting is a pain in the ass. And that just thinking about packing everything and moving again is giving a LOT of anxiety. I mean it’s 4 am in my part of the world and all I can think of is – shifting. And ranting about shifting.

“I think just my kitchen stuff will take up a whole truck!!” I had frantically messaged my close friends last week when I went into my kitchen to get some water.

And my bookshelf! It is a fragile wood shelf that could easily get damaged the moving guys are not careful. The last time we moved, the packers damaged the book-shelf’s glass, but since it was all insured, they replaced the glass and it was as good as new. So these things do happen, it’s not like I am worrying for nothing. I think I am going to try and sleep and not think about the boxes and the trucks.

Enter – Into Poetry. Exit Reader

Ugh, I feel so terrible as I begin to write the review of a “poetry” book I just finished reading. I picked the kindle book because the cover looked really nice and it was free for me. Perks of being a Kindle Unlimited member. Anyway, it’s called ‘Enter’ by Anshika Sharma and Mahesh Mali and the “poems” in the book are basically quotes.

Call me old school, but as someone who loves to read & write poetry, I don’t think 15 words make a poem. Heck, that sentence was longer than some of the “poems” in the book. I am not exaggerating and here’s proof. Following is a screenshot of a “poem” from the book.

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Now you know why I keep putting the word poem in double quotes every time. Literally half the page was empty after that poem. I was misled by the cover.

Perhaps this is what they call ‘insta poetry’ these days. Just not my cup of tea. I’ve never read Rupi Kaur, but am starkly aware of her popularity. So I am pretty sure that there are a lot of people who perhaps would appreciate the quick four liners in this book. I don’t fall in that category.

If you know some good poetry books, please suggest some. Also, you can find me on  Facebook, GoodReads and Instagram 

All Together Now – Review

The new Netflix film ‘All Together Now’ starts with an overtly enthusiastic teen Amber Appleton teaching English to a bunch of Korean ladies. The energy seemed very fake and forced right off the bat.

Amber might be an optimistic, happy teen, but unknown to all her friends, she is homeless and spending the nights in a bus with her mom. The story follows her financial and personal struggles as her widowed mother fails to keep things together and veers towards her abusive ex-boyfriend.

I felt the first twenty minutes of the film was very superficial and cheery, despite the seriously strained circumstances the protagonist is in. Everything is conveniently perfect despite the dire poverty the family faces, at least in the first-half. However, fortunately things finally start to feel more genuine towards the middle of the film. A series of unfortunate incidents and an unexpected tragedy makes life exceptionally hard for Amber. While she is shown to be doing great in school and in her two part-time jobs, Amber refuses to take help from anybody, despite being pushed to the point where she would have to drop out of school.

While I did not find the pace of the film to be a problem, I felt like there was something lacking in the story-telling and direction. The cast, especially Auli’i Cravalho who plays Amber, lacks the charm to carry the entire film on her shoulders, since it’s her who gets the maximum screen-time. In-fact nobody in the cast stands out in this film and you can’t really blame them, since they get too much space in this 90 minute film.

To the credit of the makers – the climax was satisfactory, even if a little predictable. Some of the music in the film was quite good. All in all, ‘All Together Now’ is a forgettable little flick, but if you are in mood for a high-school movie with a financially struggling teen, you can give this one a go. It’s good for some weekend distraction and might even get your water-works on, so keep some tissues handy. It’s a 6/10 for me.

Kor’Thank: Barbarian Valley Girl

This weird little book is just what I needed after reading the fifteen fucking hundred pages long ‘A Suitable Boy’. Sorry for the ‘F’ bomb, but after reading Kent Wayne’s novel ‘Kor’ Thank: Barbarian Valley Girl’, I feel like it’s pretty fucking okay to drop some profanities now and then. Damn, I did it again.

Okay, I will start off the book review in earnest now. The author and I follow each other on WordPress and that’s how I learnt about ‘Kor’Thank’ and decided to get it on my kindle. He sort of warned me about how the book is “silly and vulgar”, but by then I was already laughing out loud at the pages and enjoying it.

The plot is pretty fucking crazy. A barbarian king called Kor’Thank from an alternate universe switches body with a vicious cheerleader Holly and things get chaotic. Contrary to my expectations, I actually liked reading Holly the cheerleader’s adventure as the king, more than Kor’s new life as a teen bitch on earth.

There are three protagonists as far as I am concerned –

Holly, who is pure evil. Evil enough to brain-damage the cheer-leading captain to become the Queen Bee herself. Imagine what such a girl would do when she ends up in the body of a King?! Chongha Peter Lee, a supposed genius, who hates Holly and is planning to get back at her for something she did to his dog. (Trying to keep it spoiler free, so I am not going to say what she did to the dog) Kor’Thank is the battle loving King of a people called the ‘Indashi’, who is nothing like Ms Holly. Peter Lee and his friend Eun become his guide to modern earth.

After Kor and Holly switch both bodies, the rest of the plot is spent on their novel experiences and their quest to get back to their own worlds. There is a nice unexpected little twist thrown in, which I am not going to reveal, but let’s just say that the twist makes it quite a fanatical tale for Holly the impostor King. There’s a lot of battles and blood during her reign. Peter Lee and Kor on the other side have a massive monster on their hands.

Here is the deal – I have never read anything like it! Never. Pretty sure there must be a lot of body swapping, multi-dimensional novels with a lot of profanity thrown in the mix, but for me, this was new territory. I couldn’t understand some bits, possibly because they were American pop-culture references that I couldn’t catch.

But I will be honest, the most fun I had was reading all the profane phrases the author concocts. Sample some of these – “Scram, cunt-sludge”; “Bring it on, dick-sniffers”; “Too late, Fuckgobble”. Well, there’s a lot more vulgarity in the book and it was such a riot to read! If you get offended by such language, the book is so not for you.

The author probably had a lot of fun writing this one, because it sure as hell comes across on the pages. There are some action sequences in the second-half that were written in a very arresting manner and were an absolute delight to imagine. The climax however was a little tame in comparison of the rest of the tale and could’ve been more dramatic.

If you want to read some crazy multi-dimensional material and don’t mind an overdose of psychedelics and teen demons, this is just the book you must pick. It’s a solid 4/5 for me. In the author’s words – It’s a High-School Absurdical.

Link to the author’s website – https://dirtyscifibuddha.com/

5 Centimeters per Second

The Japanese animated film ‘5 Centimeters per Second’ came way back in 2007 and is directed by Makoto Shinkai. The story tracks the relationships of Takaki Tono from his school years to when he is a working adult.

It has a very slow start, with a good chunk of the first few minutes spent in second-hand dialogue through wistful letters between the school going Takaki Tono and his friend Akari Shinohara. Both kids become exceptionally close due to their mutual frail health and social isolation at school. But Akari has to move away to a different school and the two keep in touch through letters, since it’s the early 90s.

The movie is divided into three parts, the second bit focuses on Takaki’s high-school life and a girl’s unrequited crush on him. While the third half was just fucking random, where we have an adult Takaki slogging away at work to keep his mind off a recent break-up.

As far as the animation is concerned, while it’s not as top-notch as some of its other Japanese counterparts, it’s pretty good. The colours and weather changes, especially the snow is animated beautifully. I like how the beginning of a harsh winter is used to signify the slow demise Takaki’s first love.

The movie is meant to be a serious film exploring relationships, but there wasn’t any emotional high-point in the story. The first part felt a little too intense for a friendship between two kids who are not even in high-school. Which is fine, I know how as children we are capable of feeling like Romeo and Juliet when were think we are in love. But it’s hard to take it too seriously.

It was the second part which was very relatable, it focuses on Kanae Sumida, a girl who is seriously infatuated with the reclusive Takaki but cannot get herself to confess her feelings. Haven’t we all been there before? Makoto Shinkai artfully brings about the teenage despair of having a fierce one-sided crush. I loved this segment of the film.

Things however fall apart in the third half. We are not told much about Makoto’s break-up or girlfriend. After making us invested in his character, the viewers are short-changed with a half-assed climax. It’s rushed, contrived and makes you wondering “what the fuck?!”.

The overall mood of “5 Centimeters per Second” is somber, it doesn’t have any fun moments at all. I think that kind of sucks the life out of this tale, because it’s not like the young protagonists are suffering from depression or any life-threatening disease, so why make the plot so serious without any reason? Most of the action takes place late in the evening, so there are a lot of dark tints that add to the oppressive tone.

The ending was extremely disappointing for me as a viewer, after so much build-up, we get nothing. Absolutely nothing. Also, you need a lot of patience and optimism to sit through this. I don’t think I would give it more than a 6/10.

The Babysitter – Review

Netflix dropped the trailer to “The Babysitter: Killer Queen” last week and it was so silly that I loved it! Because silly horror comedies are my weakness. The best kind of distraction on a dull weekend night. There was just a little problem – I hadn’t seen the first film.

If you are wondering why I hadn’t seen it already – I actually did try watching it two years back with a fellow-horror movie enthusiast, but we lost interest in the first 10 minutes because a lot of other stuff was happening at that point of time. This time around, I saw the film with the husband.

“I am not drunk enough to watch this film,” he complained mid-movie, while I laughed at some scene that he didn’t find mildly funny. The big problem with ‘The Babysitter’ is that there are a lot of pop-culture references that non-movie enthusiasts won’t understand. There was a scene with the lot of star-trek references that were completely lost on me too. At the cost of being ‘nerdy cool’, the makers alienate a lot of regular movie fans and bore them.

The plot is pretty simple – 12-year-old Cole is the only boy in his class who still has a babysitter; a very hot one at that. One night, he learns that she is a part of a cult that makes human sacrifices and finds himself fighting for his life in his own home. It’s like ‘Home Alone’ meets ‘Evil Dead’, although there are no ghosts or ghouls. Just a boy trying to save himself from a bunch of psychotic teens baying for his blood.

There are quite some gory slasher scenes that horror fans would enjoy screaming to. Not the scared kind of screaming, more like “ew, ew, ew” kind of gasps. The cast is very good-looking and all actors do their part well. Some of the stuff is insanely stupid and you know that the makers deliberately tried to do spoof like scenes to draw some laughs.

Despite having a short runtime of 90 minutes, ‘The Babysitter’ would have benefited from some snipping. I think they take too long to come to the whole horror bit, so the set-up to the conflict could have been shorter. Instead, the killing sequences could have been elongated a little to heighten the drama and horror a little. Most of the kill scenes are over too quickly. Some sappy romantic scenes get more screen time than they deserve.

Judah Lewis who plays the 12-year-old hero is definitely the saving grace of this film. He is adorable as the shy, starry-eyed nerd who has the hots for his gorgeous babysitter. While the movie is mediocre and probably didn’t need a sequel, Judah Lewis definitely deserved a second-shot. I hope the next one is more fun and the makers have learnt from their past mistakes.

Book Versus Series

I’ve already written about how I enjoyed reading the super-long ‘A Suitable Boy’. After finishing the novel, I binge-watched the BBC series based on the book and am dropping 10 differences between the book and series.

Lata, one of the central characters in the book was described to be dark. It’s something that really catches your attention because there are some snide remarks made about her skin colour in the very first few pages, like how the colour pink doesn’t really suit her. Her mother fears that she would have ‘black grandchildren’. However, in Mira Nair’s adaptation, the actor playing Lata is quite light-skinned, in fact, she is fairer than most of the other cast. It was unfortunate that Nair did not cast a darker actor to play the role, considering how Lata is said to be very attractive despite the colour of her skin.Since the actor playing Lata in the series is ‘fair’ (for the lack of a better word), obviously all the mean remarks about her skin colour do not make it to the adaptation either. Almost each time the actor appeared on the screen I would think “too fair”.Which brings me to another related disparity — her elder sister Savita is said to be fairer in the book and even more lovely to look at. That’s not the case in the series.Pran, the English professor who Savita is married to, was said to be very thin and sickly in the book. In the series, the actor looks stocky and is rather well built.I remember how there was some sort of “beauty and the beast” kind of comparison between Pran and Savita in the book. Savita is said to be light-skinned and beautiful, while Pran is dark and not very attractive. But the actors playing the roles don’t look mismatched at all.Lata’s best friend Malati was a disappointment, she was not as charming and quick-witted. Also, while Malati was said to have a better sense of dress than Lata, in the series, she is quite frumpy and Lata is dressed a lot smartly than her at all times.One of the most fun scenes in the book, the one where Maan, Pran’s younger brother is shown to go quite wild on the day of holi is given a major twist. While in the book, Maan goes to Pran’s house with his friend to play holi; in the series the holi celebrations takes place entirely at their father’s residence, who is also the state revenue minister.In the book, Maan harasses a senior professor by drowning him in water at Pran’s place on Holi day. In the series he humiliates the Home Minister instead — by drowning him in a water fountain. The incident leads to further rivalry between the two ministers.This might seem like a very minor detail, but what struck me right when I saw the trailer was that Lata constantly wears sleeveless blouses with her sarees. There is a scene where Mrs Mehra, her mother lovingly looks at her as she gets dressed to go out. But Seth’s conservative Mrs Mehra would have never approved of a skin-baring top, a little ‘too modern’ for the 1950s. In the book she was scandalized when her daughter-in-law wears a sleeveless blouse for a party.A lot of characters don’t make it to the series, which is understandable, because there would have been no time to do any justice to their arc. But one character who was undeservedly chopped off was that of Imtiaz Khan. While in the book, Maan’s best-friend Firoz has a twin brother Imtiaz, in the series, Firoz has no twin.

I originally made this post for Medium, where I’ve listed 50 differences. You can head to the site for the full list. Here’s the link to the post –

50 Ways in Which The BBC Series ‘A Suitable Boy’ Was Different from the Book

Coffees and Street Art

I had cold-coffee at a cafe for the first time since March this year. A friend of mine was in town and we decided to catch up, covered in our face-masks of-course. Our chairs in the cafe were so far apart that we couldn’t even fit in the selfie frame. Although, later we did get up and take one for keepsake.

It was nice to be beyond the 1km radius of my house, in familiar streets that would have been bustling with people otherwise.

“I could have never imagined this lane could be so empty on a Friday,” my friend exclaimed. We were at one of the ‘most happening’ areas in the city, but it wore a forlorn look.

“I know right, it’s crazy,” I nodded in agreement.

“Let’s go for a walk. I have not been out at all,” my friend said after were done with our coffee.

So we walked along what used to be a busy street, dotted with graffiti, empty cafes and a deserted metro station. On a normal day, it would have been filled with people trying to pose with the wall art for their instagram feeds. On the bright side, we didn’t have to wait for anybody to clear from the view to take pictures. I made my friend pose with ‘Love, Loss, Lockdown’, my debut fiction book for the gram.

We continued to walk after a very brief photo session. None of the usual street hawkers were around to bug us. Not even those random salesmen that pester you to sign up for some shit. A book store that is very popular with the locals was surprisingly closed. On our part, we tried to keep a good distance from the people that were also walking on the same side of the street. It wasn’t very hard. There were so few of them.