OTT: Dhanush's tangled love story, a charming comedy & disaster films

Aanand L Rai became a sought-after director after his R Madhavan and Kangana Ranaut starrer 2011 Tanu Weds Manu set in small-town India became a sleeper hit. The director, who claims to come from a “middle-class background” (and is a big fan of Sai Paranjype and Hrishikesh Mukherjee), is most comfortable in this milieu. He is also drawn to love stories (and seems to love Raj Kapoor films) and the woman, who has a strong identity of her own, (unlike Raj Kapoor’s films) is confused and caught in the horns of a dilemma about whom she should choose as a life partner.

Girls should also differentiate, who is boyfriend material and who is the kind you marry. (Remember Manmarziyan, a film that Rai produced?). In Haseen Dillruba, it was the almost-diabolic love of a husband and the crazy stalker kind of love of a boy for a girl in his 2013 directorial Raanjhanaa (which drew a lot of flak for Rai however with even his lead actor Abhay Deol admitting that the film’s message was regressive). But Rai went on to become a successful director and signed up with the badshah of Bollywood for flop Zero. However, significantly, Rai’s worth as a director has not dropped as he has a biopic of chess champ Vishwanath Anand under his belt with many actors vying to play the grandmaster.

Rai is now back with yet another film, Atrangi Re, which according to the director is again brimming with “full of love”. In an interview, he has said it is a pure and complicated love story (though people and not love is complicated, he said) and is very “layered”. Atrangi Re, which will start streaming from Friday on Disney+Hotstar, is about a tale of a twisted (another innovative way to make a love story, yawn!) and complex love triangle between three characters — Rinku (Sara Ali Khan), Vishnu (Dhanush) and Sajjad (Akshay Kumar. (here we go again!)

From the trailers, you glean that the tough-talking Rinku is forcibly married to Vishnu but her heart and mind belong elsewhere. A much-older Sajjad playing a magician also streams into her life dazzling her with his grand lines. But interestingly, Rai, who seems to tap into south stars for his films, as he did with Madhavan in his successful Tanu Weds Manu, is working with the talented Dhanush for the second time. The director said in an interview to a daily that the ‘Karnan’ national award winning star has always been first on his wish list to play a character in his films if he happened to fit the role.

Atrange Re ostensibly belongs to Dhanush, he said, calling the South hero one of the “finest actors” he has ever worked with and is always an asset for the director to tell a story with him. Let’s see if this south Indian luck charms works in Atrangi Re as well.

Also read: OTT: Madhavan’s ‘Decoupled’ is breezy; actor holds sexist comedy together

Is the world coming to an end?

Not the kind of films you may want to see on a Christmas weekend. But Netflix has two disaster movies lined up – one is Don’t Look Up, which is a black comedy with a great star cast – Leonardo de Caprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep. It is about two mid-western astronomers who discover a comet on course to hit planet earth and cause humankind to go extinct – but find it difficult to convince anyone to take their situation seriously.

Don’t Look Up is meant to be “a very angry, deeply anguished comedy freak out” about how humans are blowing their chances to reverse climate-change effects. It has not picked up great reviews in the international press but may be worth a watch for the star cast and being a strident call out on human narcissim and hubris, which is causing the destruction of nature.

The second disaster movie is a Korean sci-fi series, The Silent Sea. Incidentally, the Koreans excel at making sci-fi films with films like Space Sweepers and Snow Piercer that have been popular with Indian OTT audiences.

In The Silent Sea, it is the year 2075 when the depletion of natural resources has devastated Earth and an elite team is sent on a special mission to an abandoned Balhae Base research Base on the moon to find a solution.

While looking for clues to save Earth, team members become mired in mysterious predicaments and unforeseen events that occur in outer space. As secrets start to unravel and the station’s sinister past begins to come to light, what was meant to be a simple retrieval mission quickly devolves into a desperate fight for survival, states the synopsis. Like most Korean shows, this one may well turn out to be an addictive, edge-of-the-seat thriller.

Also read: OTT: Aarya battles Russian mafia; an alien invasion & a classic love story

The charming antics of an American in Paris

In the middle of the pandemic in 2020, Emily in Paris, this charming comedy of the learnings of an ambitious and spunky twenty-something marketing executive from Chicago, who unexpectedly lands her dream job in Paris, became a huge hit. This Emmy-nominated show reached 58 million households in its first 28 days on the streaming platform, making it Netflix’s top comedy of the year. Its lighthearted narrative was a welcome form of escapism. The plot is silly and pure fun and is not meant to tax your brains too much.

Created by Darren Star (who made Sex and the City), this show’s resounding success made it easy for the streaming giant to give the green light to a second season. The second season of Emily in Paris landed on Thursday (December 23) and many fans cannot wait to see what will happen next to marketing extraordinaire Emily Cooper played by the charming Lily Collins.

What will become of Emily’s friendship with her bestie and now roommate Mindy (Ashley Park)? How will she move forward with the handsome Gabriel (Lucas Bravo), who she cannot stop thinking about but has to give up?.

The reviews are good with one reviewer giving a “salut” to round two of stereotyping snooty Parisians, while another wallowed in Emily’s candy floss world with pure guilty pleasure. It is little more than a shallow escpae said another, seems like a perfect way to curl up after you need to unwind from the festivities of the Christmas season.

Must watch: Encanto, this Walt Disney’s 60th animated film, which released in cinemas on November 26, will land on OTT on Christmas Eve. Touted as one of the best movies of 2021, this musical-fantasy has reportedly performed well at the box-office as well.

Encanto is the tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia in a magical house, in a vibrant town called Encanto. In the film, the magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family with a unique gift from super strength to the power to heal — every child except one, Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz.

Mirabel then is an “ordinary” 15-year-old who’s struggling to find her place in her family. But when she discovers that the magic surrounding the Encanto is in danger, Mirabel decides that she, the only ordinary Madrigal, might just be her exceptional family’s last hope. It has been directed by Byron Howard (“Zootopia,” “Tangled”) and Jared Bush (co-director “Zootopia”) and if you liked Moana then this one is for you.