Himmatwala Movie Reviews

It isn’t difficult to tell that intellectually this film will appeal best only to five-year-olds and true B-Grade film buffs. After all, this film has a song called 'Bum Pe Laath', which has wedding guests kicking the heroine and her goons in the ass to the tune of the Birdie song. There is a reason that the ’80s were considered to be the worst decade in the history of Hindi films. The Kader Khan 'jism ki imaarat mein faulad ke iraade' type of metaphors

Hark back to taaki taaki and tap dance to tathaiyya as the (r)awful 80s are re-awakened from their garish grave and served re-heated; as old wine in an old bottle. Vintage? Not truly. Just as we thought Jeetendra's white shoes and coloured wigs were laid to rest in filmi museums, Sajid Khan dips into his cookie jar of movies, masti and 'naus-talgia' for yet another peek into the petty-past. Got himmat? After years, Ravi aka Himmatwala, a big-city street-fighter

Couple of weeks back, my neighbour and I were chatting about upcoming Bollywood films and he completely dismissed the probability of watching Sajid Khan’s Himmatwala. His six-year-old daughter overheard this and at once protested, ‘But I want to watch it and I will whether you like it or not.’ Few days later, I watched a television interview where the audacious filmmaker notes, ‘My films appeal to kids between the age of five to ten.’

Whatever Sajid Khan does in the first half, he undoes with alarming alacrity in the second. HIMMATWALA, begins with a bang, literally, with Sonakshi Sinha dancing to Thank God It's Friday composed to a distinct 80s rhythm. It is quickly followed by a caged-bout, which introduces Ravi (Himmatwala, Ajay Devgn). This fight is introduced by Sajid's lucky mascot, Chunkey Pandey. You cozy yourself in the chair, expecting to be entertained

More than a tribute to the original, Sajid Khan's remake of the 1983 Himmatwala seems like a convenient ploy to unashamedly resort to the formula of the 80s potboiler, which would have otherwise seemed like blatant banalities in contemporary context. So you have a Himmatwala hero (Ajay Devgn) who returns to his village after years to avenge the death of his father. The villain is your archetypal scheming zamindar (Mahesh Manjrekar)

If you were expecting a smart remake of the hit that spurred a trend of tacky entertainers, you will feel cheated as director Sajid Khan seems to have got carried away by his reverence for K. Raghavendra Rao’s Himmatwala. He neither looks at the 1983 melodrama from the prism of 2013 nor does he try to improve upon the tawdriness we associate with the era. It is not a spoof on the era either. Apart from a couple of sharp remarks

Thank God it’s Friday is the opening sequence / song for Himmatwala. Eighties was the disco era. Point noted. Next is a fight sequence where Ajay Devgn fights a big and beefy Russian guy. There are giant cut outs of Madonna from Lucky girl and Sylvester Stallone from Rocky 2 above the ring. This is the early eighties. Point noted. Sajid Khan spends a lot of time and effort to establish that Himmatwala is based in the ’80s. But he doesn’t spend enough

It’s as Sajid Khan promised. The old Himmatwala is back with new gloss and ancient this-one’s-for-you-mom revenge melodrama. But Sajid can’t quite decide whether he’s making a parody, a tribute or a remake. Ravi (Ajay Devgn), a street fighter, returns to his village, Ramnagar, to find his sister Padma (Leena Jumani) and mother (Zarina Wahab) in a pitiable condition. He vows to take revenge against village terror and sarpanch, Sher Singh

That Sajid Khan makes brainless entertainers is common knowledge, but the fact that he could remake an old movie (Jeetendra and Sridevi starrer 'Himmatwala') and then turn it into a brainless entertainer is an art not many possess. Be it 1980s or 2013, Sajid comes up with what he knows best, a feather-brained comedy. Ravi (Ajay Devgn) is a street fighter who one day comes to Ramnagar, a small hamlet where the word of their sarpanch Sher Singh

HIMMATWALA was THE film that gave an impetus to the trend of remaking South Indian films in the 1980s. Post this film, there was a sea of remakes, with Jeetendra, Sridevi, Kader Khan, Shakti Kapoor and Asrani featuring in almost every remake...It's easy to remake a successful film, but the responsibility that Sajid Khan carries on his shoulders cannot be assessed in mere words. Right from the masala quotient to Ajay and Tamannah matching steps

Revisiting the past isn't always a good idea. Especially when it comes to remaking an almost forgotten 80's film that didn't really break any new ground, apart from giving us one of the most colorful songs in the history of Indian cinema and making a super star out of Sridevi. If those were the benchmarks Sajid Khan (who claims to have watched the film 36 times!) is set out to achieve, he should have dropped the idea and gone on to make another Housefull

At the end of two excruciating hours, the questions I had carried into the theatre remained unanswered. Why remake Himmatwala, which wasn't exactly scintillating cinema in the first place? What were the studios, producers, directors and stars thinking? And last, but not, as they say, the least, when, oh when will Bollywood's blind love affair with the 80s masala movies get over? The Himmatwala of 1983, itself a remake of a Telugu blockbuster

Director Sajid Khan may lack the courage to take risks but he is a very optimistic man indeed. He believes what worked in 1983 will click in 2013 too. Come to think of it, he might actually be right. Sad! Having been at the receiving end of the mindless excesses of the loud and laboured comedies that he specializes in, we know exactly what to expect from his latest foray into the terrain of tastelessness – zilch. And that is such a huge advantage

Due credit first, to Sajid Khan for honesty. Note how the posters describe Himmatwala as A Sajid Khan Entertainer. Nowhere do they specify it is a 'film'. Entertainment, unlike film, is a variable asset, Sajid would perhaps argue. One personâ??s entertainment can be another's headache. A review of Himmatwala is redundant. If you hate Sajid's brand of entertainment you won't waste time over analysis, chances are you wonâ??t read the review anyway

Fashioned exactly on the same story as its 1983 saga, the story is typical of that era. Wronged mother, Savitri raises her son, Ravi to be strong enough to avenge the brutalities they have faced. Added with a Shakespearean sprinkle of Romeo and Juliet, enemies Ravi and Rekha fall for each other giving the film a love angle. You must have surely chanced upon Jeetendra and Sridevi’s Himmatwala! This is way worse given its 2013

At the end of a long monologue in “Himmatwala”, where Ajay Devgn rattles off the same sentence in five different languages, he turns to the camera and asks “mazaa nahi aaya na?” (That wasn’t fun, was it?) It’s almost as if director Sajid Khan knew what a bad film he was making, but went ahead and made it anyway. What they say about the past being viewed through rose-tinted glasses must be true, because if this is what our films were 30 years ago

To each his own. But you don’t really have to subject yourself to this monstrous assault on the senses, even if you are blessed with loads of himmat.

I expected Himmatwala to be predictable, not only because I have faint memories of the older film, but because it follows such a template. I also expected it to be annoying, and it doesn’t disappoint on both scores. But I didn’t think it would be so dull.

Review: There is a huge audience for masala entertainers in our country. Box Office numbers have proved that time and again. But even the......

More than anything, Himmatwala is a reminder of why the ’80s are considered the worst decade in Hindi cinema. The film is an excruciating experience. It begins with a close-up of a disco ball, and it’s downhill from there. I have very little memory of the original 1983 blockbuster, but this remake is so painful that I longed for Sridevi, Jeetendra and his trademark white shoes. Director and co-writer Sajid Khan isn’t spoofing the ’80s

It must take a special kind of skill to remake a mediocre film like 1983's 'Himmatwala' without even marginally improving on it. Director Sajid Khan's pot pourri of excessive melodrama, puerile humor, cartoonish action, and garish songs plods on for two-and-a-half hours with little concern for your bladder or your mental health. The all-new 'Himmatwala' has many of the same problems that plagued the earlier film, and a few new ones of its own

Such woes, it’s one of those — a retread which the publicity blast had made you wait for with utter dread. Padmalaya Studios’ 1983 pots-and-pans pourri has been concocted for no express purpose but to make mega-bucks. Now, you may ask, “So what? That’s show business, after all.” Agreed, commerce is of prime importance. But those still stalwart enough to crave a shred of sense and sensibility, competent filmmaking and vulgarity-free entertainment

Such woes, it’s one of those — a retread which the publicity blast had made you wait for with utter dread. Padmalaya Studios’ 1983 pots-and-pans pourri has been concocted for no express purpose but to make mega-bucks. Now, you may ask, “So what? That’s show business, after all.” Agreed, commerce is of prime importance. But those still stalwart enough to crave a shred of sense and sensibility, competent filmmaking and vulgarity-free entertainment

The movie opens with a disco song featuring Sonakshi Sinha that goes: “Thank God, it’s Friday!”Not this Friday, believe me.

Black and white. Shower on. Curtains drawn. Bare back. Sinister music. Curtains part. Enter hand silhouette. Comes down rapidly. Victim down. Liquid trickles down drain. Match cut with eye close-up of dead. Yes, the famous scene from Psycho. Just that in Sajid Khan’s latest “entertainer”, the bare back is not of Janet Leigh but Mahesh Manjrekar. There’s no knife but danda. In place of blood, it’s soap bubble. And there’s a line summing up

Even though somewhere on the poster it says “the 80s are back”, the real tagline of Himmatwala is “A Sajid Khan Entertainer”. It seems even Khan has relented that his piece of work does not deserve to be called a film. Here is his secret, coded message of what to expect in Himmatwala and what he means by when he says he will “entertain”. E is for Earnings. Sajid Khan doesn’t make movies (and no, despite his insistence he doesn’t make entertainers