No Josh at all!

I had been to Josh… This was a movie i watched after a long gap. And i should tell you it was a horrible experience watching this movie. I cannot afford to write much on this movie. But i had few expectations and i was disappointed in every way. Let me put up the review in the form of my expectations and the results.

1. Music: I had heard only one song "tantaane tannantaane" on tv and youtube. This song was like seeing a small part of the tiger and imagining the whole of its part. I had high expectations on the whole movie. Mainly on other songs, as i had not heard other songs. I thought Vardhan (music director) might have worked wonders in his first movie. But his creativity is limited to this one single song. This was the main disappointment. All the songs except – tantaane fail to impress. The orchestration is quite ok and new. But the tunes are very plain. Background music was quite good at many places. But visuals were not upto the background score! Josh is a youth film (as the director claims!), and the director should know how much the music is important here. But music is the biggest let down of the movie.

2. Lyrics: Except tantaane song, all other songs lyrics are waste i feel. That russian dancer stage song had such worst lyrics. I could not understand anything.

3. Camera work: I am a fan of Pathaje's camera work. He has tried to do many innovative things like using high contrast, glows, stills in between the scenes of the songs. But this goes in vain since the locales are not so good. Except for the song tantaane had good locations. Pathaje has tried his best to show the best in the limited locations given.

4. Direction: The director has failed to extract the full potential from the newcomers. And that is his biggest failure. He has failed to make proper use of good technical aspects like – background music, camera work. And that shows his all round failure.

5. Screenplay: My god! Who wrote the screenplay for this movie? My friends can create such stories in half an hour. The screenplay is defective i can say. Somewhere i felt the concept towards the end was very good. But the director is nowhere clear about what he wants to show. Only the last 30 mins of the movie is somewhat good. Other than that, everything is like a circus. We can easily make out how well the director has got inspired from many non-kannada south Indian movies like boys, autograph etc. That NCC scene inspired from autograph, that napkin scene – inspired from a malayalam movie (i dont remember the name, but my friend had explained this scene to me once). 

6. Too many irritating factors: The jokes – half are good, and half are very bad. The whole sequence of "thu thu thu" scene was an example for the bad sense of humour of the director and screenplay writer. Many of the jokes are of S. Narayan level. One more irritating aspect was the character called ROBO. Why was he so unnecessarily placed inside the movie? What was the need? To give him a chance? Let him go to reality shows and not in movies!  There are more irritating things rather than things which please us. 

I went to this movie after reading the good newspaper reviews. But are the newspaper reviews really reliable is what i am feeling now! I could easily make out that Shiva Mani has failed in delivering a youthful movie. He has failed to become a youth mentally. His youthful mindset is at least some 5-10 years older than the present generation. 

I can say totally a waste movie there. I appreciate the attitude of SV Babu in supporting newcomers. But we cannot support such movies for the sheer requirement of supporting newcomers. 

Added later: forgot to mention. Why did Vardhan choose to spoil that good song "jotheyali jothe jotheyali"? When the song started, i thought the remix would be good. But really bad. That whole sequence was as if inspired by the premaloka college day sequence. But Premaloka college day song is memorable even after 25 years. But this song is waste.