 Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, ba-da-ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, ba-da-boom, bing-bing, boom, ba-da-bomb, bing-cross-bees, boom-boom. Hey, welcome back to our stupid reaction to the It's Up! Corbin! I'm Rick! And you can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Twitter! Mo Gamble. Sorry, I keep saying Mo Gamble. Mo Gamble. Mo Gamble. Mo Gamble. Mo. Mo. Mo. Mo. Not ma. Mo. Not ma. Mo. Anyways, we already reviewed that if you haven't seen that one. Yeah. Today we review, we're doing a movie review. We are reviewing the 2016 Hindi film, Dear Zindagi. Dear Life. Which means, yeah, Dear Life. Yeah. Which is probably one of the first words I learned just by watching films, is Zindagi. Zindagi. Probably. They use it all the time. All the time. All the time. That and Dil. Yeah. Those are the two biggest words used constantly. But they said directed and written by Gowri. Yeah, Gowri. Shindi, forgive me if I'm mispronouncing your name. Yes. Starring basically Alia Bhatt and Shah Rukh Khan. Yep. And then a couple other people basically. But if you haven't watched it, go watch it. Come back. There's going to be 104 of you. It came out in 2016. That's just how we'd like to do things. Yep. But Rick, your initial thoughts, please. What do dear Zindagi and Ragu have in common? I'm not a big fan of either one. Look what you bought. Yeah. It worked. It worked. That was funny. Yeah. So I can explain why. There's some things in it that I liked. The story was fine. The biggest gripe I have with it. Obviously runtime was too long. But that can't be a gripe with an Indian film because we know why they make them that long. I felt like the characters themselves were okay. They weren't particularly fleshed out or deeply meaningful to me. The biggest problem I had was and the believability factor, which for me is the number one thing. There were so many continuity errors, I got angry. So it was unforgivable to me the level of both prop and lighting continuity errors that were shockingly lazy. But even if those were not there as a whole, it just kind of left me with... I felt like it could have been so much more than it was because I think the story itself has great potential. But it just didn't flow my boat. I agree with you. It was a big disappointment to me. I was very disappointed. I had been looking forward to this film. That being said, my favorite parts were probably the scenes between Shahrukh and Aliyah. It took way too long for Shahrukh to get involved into the film. Way too long. My wife even said, she was like, this is taking a while to get going, isn't it? Yeah. The whole first 45 minutes didn't need to be there. Yeah, 100%. We'll talk about them, but them together in their scenes were my favorite parts. Agreed. I think they had good chemistry together. I think the writing was probably the most believable in those parts. It just shows you the difference between when someone like an Aliyah who is still a young actor but was young with this as well as this five years ago and before Razi, where you can see huge growth between this and Razi. Obviously Gully Boy. You can see what happens when a young actor is working with a seasoned veteran because her best parts were when she was working with us. Except for she had a good moment, though I was distracted by the continuity errors, her meltdown at the dinner. That was a nice moment. And she never did anything. There was never anything bad. I think the biggest issues, and we'll get into all of it, but my biggest issues were actually writing and directing. It was shocking for this being the same director and writer of English. At first I thought about my problems with English-Venglish, exact same things. Remember my problems with English-Venglish, even though I enjoyed the film as a whole? Very different film. So you can forgive a lot more in that kind of film than you can in this film, which is trying to be a lot more serious and obviously a very serious subject matter. I obviously love that part of the whole story of the mental health and dealing with that and it's not just a clinically depressed person that needs therapy and all these different issues that go into it. I enjoyed that part as well, but this is a very different film and that had Shri Devi carrying it with her loveability and all that. But my issues I had with English-Venglish were the believability and dialogue, same exact thing in terms of not with Shri Devi, but with everyone else in that film. I remember especially the classroom people, which you liked. But I literally hated every single scene within that. I know you did. And that was almost identical to some of the issues I had in this because all the writing, I can almost equate it to how we thought about Venom. It was a miracle that I enjoyed that film because of how amateur the writing was. It's hard to make scenes with terrible writing, even when you have great actors like Michelle Williams and Tom Hardy. But they did it. It was bad writing. And a lot of it just seemed like this is what the script says and the director was like, I want you to do this. I could clearly tell the director was telling her and when she was going through something in her apartment, I do this. Pretend like you're just antsy. And I'm like, these are clear director notes that were given to every actor because even an actor who is fantastic in daily crimes and made in heaven was made like her dialogue was almost cringy at times. And I know that actress is a phenomenal actress. It's not her. And so it fell into those categories with Ali as well. It's just that the dialogue was so almost amateur. It's what it felt like. Which is a shame because I love the overall story of more people need to go to therapy and not just for, you know, if they're clinically depressed or if somebody's cheating on them. People have different mental health needs and everybody needs somebody to talk to. And she had abandonment issues and all that. And so all of that could have been like something that you could have really gripped to in the film but like the way it was delivered because of the dialogue even with the parents. Like she had this big outburst of parents and the mom was like, no man, she's gone. Can't do anything now. And I know these actors in those scenes are like veterans. Right. And so it's like it was a clear writing and directing choices that this director made that it's just I didn't understand. Like it didn't seem natural most of the time, right? Correct. It didn't seem like natural. Outside of when basically for the most part when SRK and Aliyah were in their therapy sessions and best parts of the film. By far the best parts of the film and there were aspects of what Aliyah was dealing with with her friends that I was having a hard time caring about because so much of what she was dealing with in the beginning even when we find out later the scar she's dealing with and the trauma she has in childhood there were a lot of things she was dealing with that the way it was written and the way that it was directed I found her to be a bit of a spoiled brat and annoying sometimes. And I didn't want to feel that way about her because I felt like I can tell from the way the story's going that's not what you're wanting from us. You're wanting us to see her going from relationship to relationship because of the reasons you find out later in therapy but it seemed to be disconnected. I think what they were trying to do is basically like showing that mental health is not this thing that you can just pinpoint. Obviously she lashed out at a lot of her friends just randomly and I think that's one of the things that they were trying to show like mental health can affect people to do those random things but I agree I don't think it was done very well in terms of writing and making a clear pattern. And we understand that the difference in the way mental health has been presented in American cinema versus Indian cinema is very different throughout history. I mean one fool over the cuckoo's nest was 1970 and that was brutally honest about the problems that can happen in the mental health world. So addressing mental health issues in America has been going on for a very very long time. It even happened with who's afraid of Virginia Woolf which is about alcoholism but it's a mental health thing. And this was probably something I'm sure many of you may be commenting that this was somewhat groundbreaking for its subject matter and that's great and that's what I mean by the fact that the story itself had great potential. And when it comes to the believability factor I'm not going to do it. I'll do an afterthought. If you want to see it on my channel I'll do an afterthought about this. Where I go into some of the detail about the things. They were like this and I'll show you the pictures on my afterthought. There were lighting problems with continuity where it's obviously a two camera setup. Not two cameras at the same time. It means they do one POV over Alia's shoulder and one POV over the mom's shoulder. And the lighting is definitively different. There was one time with SRK and her where it's over his shoulder looking at her and the lighting has full bright light coming on her and then none of it is falling on SRK. They go over her shoulder and his hair is brightly lit. His shoulder is brightly lit. And when they go back and forth between the two the lighting has completely changed on him. Another one that was just astonishing. I've been paying attention to it a lot. I just flat out said, I grabbed my head and said you've got to be kidding me. When she's at the boyfriend, the singer's house and they're drinking wine, they're walking from where they were behind the thing with their glasses of wine and they sit on the chair and she sits on his lap to talk. They set both of their wine glasses down on the counter in the kitchen. He sits down, she gets on his lap, he crosses his leg and they immediately cut to her talking mid-sentence and he's holding his wine glass. It just magically went from the kitchen counter to his hand. I noticed some of those as well. It happened on magnets on the refrigerator. It happened so much that I could only chalk it up to the fact that nobody there. Forget having a continuity person. If you have experience on set, even if you're a background person you're going to pick up on those things and they were either rushing or they just didn't care. And that's frustrated. But I do want to talk about some of the stuff I did enjoy and that's mainly Shah Rukh Khan and Alia with them together. Even though I did have issues with some of the stuff Alia did earlier in the film but I think I'm going to chalk most of that up to writing because she did redeem herself many, many times in the scenes with Shah Rukh Khan and at the end, I thought she had a fantastic breakdown. I wish the last 25 minutes was the movie. Yeah, it goes to show you when you have a seasoned writer and director like Zoya directing somebody like Alia and what a great performance she can give. And we've seen it in Razzi and I thought she did a fantastic job and I thought she did a fantastic job in Highway. Yeah. But like when you have a veteran director and writer as opposed to somebody who's this is only her second film. Yeah. We love English for English. One of my favorite films. It's on my favorite list of all time. But yeah, you can definitely tell that but her scenes with Shah Rukh Khan I think are very, very strong. It was almost like I don't know if they took inspiration from Goodwill Hunting a little bit with just that relationship. I'm not saying that's what they're doing but I think you had a little essence of that. A little bit. In it. But I thought they had really good chemistry together. I loved, I'm hoping these are the kind of roles Shah Rukh Khan is going to start gravitating to. I know, I like it a lot. More character driven, more subtle. He's not the leading man in this in terms of he doesn't get the girl in the end even though that was a great kind of thing at the end where they were like she was like, I like you. Yeah, apparently a very common thing. But I said I like you too. In other words, if I wasn't your therapist I'd go out with you. But I loved and I was waiting because I knew we were going to get there because it was obvious that there was some chemistry. I loved that throughout even though his style of therapy was very non-traditional. I didn't feel like he at any time crossed lines with her and I appreciated that and her affectations and feelings for him made complete sense. I loved. It's the best part of the film. If all of the writing and everything had been that last scene, her last session where SRK says to her this is good for us to communicate this and then she gives him a hug and there's that sense of man, I don't you wish but he's mature enough to recognize this is a nice young girl. Thank God it's a character that's like I'm not going to take advantage of my position of authority over her. My position she has for me is normal for her to have let this be something she can build her life on and move on from and be a good experience and me not pervert it in my position of power. That's probably my favorite thing to take away from this even though I didn't like the movie. I'm hoping he does more of these style of roles because obviously I don't know if you were but like if you did a film and I know on Yarkasha I adore Shahrukh Khan but if he got to work with Shahrukh Khan and give him his dialogue because that's one of I think I think what you say it in every single tank one of I think his strongest points as a director is his dialogue writing capabilities and making everything so natural and believable so if you had and I don't know if he ever will because obviously we know Shahrukh Khan is very conscious of his audience I just because I know we've heard it in interviews and we have and Yarkasha wants to work with Shahrukh Khan. If for some chance not to SRK's ears sir I so understand, respect and appreciate your love for your fans and recognize you are where you are because of the fans I also believe that the fans who love you for who you are and not just what they get from you are going to want to watch you spread your thespianatic wings and if you were to work on something that's outside of the purview of what you're normally doing I think yet yeah you're going to abandon some folks but I think that the diehards that love you are going to love watching you be the best version of you you can be and I think that would be satisfying to you because you're an intelligent man he's a good actor too and you're a good actor and to see you partner and do something outside of the realm of what you're known for that is edgy and that's a perfect combo I would love to see him push to that place love to see that yeah and we know he did in the beginning and in other more villainous roles but I'm talking more modern stuff he looks great with a beard thank you thank everybody looks great with a beard Alia like I said even though in the beginnings there was some stuff that I'm going to chalk up to mostly writing but there were some times that I was like this is not the normal Alia I'm used to seeing but many times especially towards the back end when it was Wusha Wukong or the very end she showed how talented of it yeah she has enough as annoying as the first 45 minutes were and I wasn't really enjoying watching what was going on there wasn't anything she was doing where I was upset with her approach or her process in any way it was just the writing you can't deny the fact that there's just it's like when we saw Gully Boy but that was much better the raw talent inside of the young woman was so cool and I'm really I've said it before and I'll say it again the older she gets and the more varied her choices become I can't wait to see some of her work obviously her next with Sanjay I completely trust that man to bring out the performance of her obviously he's done it with her head Ranveer he's done it with the pika I have utmost confidence that that man and his writing especially can bring out a great performance and we had a place in her career now that she wasn't in this and I may be wrong but my suspicion was B that at this time in her life director says jump she says how high whereas now a director says something and she feels any sense of question about it and justification for it she'll say why would I do that when I could do this and she'll put in her two cents worth I can't imagine she would I mean she started her own production house now so she wants creative control content she wants and when she's a big enough star now she can do whatever she wants but like I said I loved the scenes between them to favorite part it could have been just 45 minutes of just them in their sessions and I think it would have been cut everything except their sessions and I make it a 45 minute short a 23 minute short it would be great if it had just been a short film with their sessions this would have been I think you could honestly cut out everything literally just under the sessions and we would have picked up on what because that was not only the best performances that was the best writing part so I want to talk about the even though some of the songs weren't my taste in terms of like the beginning and break up with them but it was very poppy didn't mean they were bad my favorite was definitely the one we reacted to towards the end I thought that was really nice the score behind everything I thought was nice and it's sometimes very subtle at times it got a little too melodramatic but I can only think of two times that the music what I mean by that is when music gets really K3G when music gets really big in the back because they're trying to bring out that emotion behind it it only happened I think twice but overall I thought Amit Trivedi did a really nice job with his composition of the film but other than that I didn't really think anything else much of any of the other actors outside of Trubber Khan and Aliya even the lovely actors from Maze of the Fortune and I think just a lot of her dialogue was just like I wish you had better dialogue it's night and day between made in heaven and this when you have a good writer Zoya again it pained me to watch them try to be drunk yeah it was we've said what we needed to say yeah we really did in case you're wondering from an Italian's point of view what are you going to do with that now, donate it I'm not going to throw it away if you want it you can have it this needs to go to somebody who would eat it because I won't donate it to a homeless shelter somebody will and somebody should be happy but nothing anyways what should be the next Shabra Khan and the next Aliya Bach film that we watch just in general I guess what should be more of this Shabra Khan yeah let us know more from this side of Shabra Khan Damalov