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Topic: Movie review Mistress of Spices (Read 1374 times)
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desifans
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Movie review Mistress of Spices
« on: May 09, 2006, 12:48:58 AM »
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How about sharing with other desifans about the latest movies you have watched and your reviews ...
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Ankush
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Re:Movie reviews ...
« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2006, 05:56:20 AM »
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Ok here's Ankush's review
Watched Mistress of Spice...the plus point is definately Ash and her acting was ok and the minus point is the title. It should be titled Mistress of Bland cuz thats what it is. I wasted friggin 1 and a half hours watching this crap 
If am to compare I think Bride and Prejudice was much better...yup thats just how bad it is.
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SPECIAL-DESIFAN
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Re:Movie reviews ...
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2006, 05:44:01 AM »
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Speaking of MOS.
I've got several reviews with hopes of sharing it you ya'll.
a positive review-Review from 2005 TIFF, 18 September 2005
Author: Richard from Toronto
I saw this film at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.
Mistress of Spices is based on the novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and is the directorial debut for Paul Mayeda Berges. Berges has worked previously with his wife, Gurinder Chadha, on a number of films including Bend it Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice. Chadha co-wrote the screenplay here with her husband.
The movie follows Tilo, played by Aishwarya Rai, who is a member of an old, mystical cult that worships spice in all its forms. She is sent to Oakland to open a shop and help people using the mysterious powers of the spices. Tilo, who also has the power to see visions of the future, soon ends up helping a whole coterie of characters: a man (Anupam Kher) who is distressed over his granddaughter (Padma Lakshmi), a woman who has grown up in America and adopted western ways, much to his dismay; Jagjit (Sonny Gill Dulay), a teenager who is having trouble with the kids at school; Haroun (Nitin Chandra Ganatra), a cab driver that has a cloudy future; Kwesi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a man trying to win the heart of a woman.
But to be successful, Tilo must follow three rules: one, she must never leave the store; two, she must never touch the skin of another person; three, she can never use the spices for her own gain. One day a man (Dylan McDermott) falls off his motorcycle outside her store and they are both instantly drawn to one another, challenging Tilo's devotion to her cause and threatening her control over the spices.
This is a nice, light film, reminiscent in many ways of Chocolat, with Aishwarya Rai in the Juliette Binoche role. Rai is luminous on screen, and the chemistry between her and Dylan McDermott is good. I didn't think the voice-over narration of Rai's character's inner thoughts was entirely successful, although I can't see how else you could really do it; funny enough, the voice-overs reminded me of another spice-related movie, David Lynch's Dune. The movie explores a bit of the mixing between east and west and the conflict between old and new, but not quite as successfully as some of Berges' and Chadha's other films, but that is probably due more to the limitations of creating an adaptation.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407998/#comment
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Re:Movie reviews ...
« Reply #3 on: May 11, 2006, 05:44:59 AM »
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Friday, April 28, 2006:
If you were planning to dig into some popcorn and hang out at a theatre near you this weekend here is a line up of some of the films released across the country.
Gurinder Chaddha's latest directed by Paul Mayeda and starring Bollywood beauty Aishwarya Rai seems to have failed to impress British audiences.
Initial collections of Mistress of Spice have been rather disappointing.
It's a story about an Indian woman called Tilotaama who comes to San Francisco and cures people's ailments using a variety of spices.
Suddenly she falls in love - but her problem - she cannot leave her spice store - from there the story slowly unfolds.
http://www.ndtvmovies.com/newstory.asp?section=Movies&id=4638
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Re:Movie reviews ...
« Reply #4 on: May 11, 2006, 05:45:41 AM »
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Indian dish Aishwarya Rai is good enough to eat in this mild romantic fantasy from the husband-and-wife team behind Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice. She plays Tilo, a kindly 'mistress of spices' whose psychic gift is nutmegged when a hunky architect walks into her San Francisco spice shop. Diverting enough, but the bland dialogue and clich?d characters won't tickle every palate.
Movie rating:
Stars: Aishwarya Rai, Dylan McDermott, Ayesha Dharker
Director: Paul Mayeda Berges
Year: 2005
Running time: 96 mins
Certificate: 12
Having written Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice with his director wife Gurinder Chadha, Paul Mayeda Berges gets his turn behind the camera with a romantic recipe taken from the same cookbook as fantasies Chocolat, Woman On Top and Like Water For Chocolate.
It stars former Miss World Aishwarya Rai as Tilo, a genuine Indian spice girl living in San Francisco whose training in the condimentary arts allows her to improve the fortunes of the customers who visit her spice emporium.
As a 'mistress of spices', her magic will only work as long as she abides by certain rules: act selflessly, never leave the shop, and never touch another person.
But her passions are stirred by Harley-riding (and -crashing) architect Doug (McDermott). That makes the turmeric temperamental, the cardamoms cross and the chillis churlish.
No matter how many apologies Tilo offers to the spices (which is a lot), she knows that when the rules are broken, they can be a vindictive bunch.
A karate instructor gets the chop from his girlfriend, a nice Sikh boy becomes a bling-wearing badass and Tilo's taxi-driving friend takes a beating. She should have seen it cumin...
Is Tilo strong enough to keep her mortar away from Doug's pestle so that karma can be restored?
Rai's luminous presence is dimmed by less-than-magical effects and dialogue which is as self-conscious as the thinly sketched stereotypes surrounding her.
It may have been wiser, too, to omit the deeper issues covered by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's source novel since the immigrant's lot is painted in overly simplistic strokes and a flashback revealing Doug's Native American roots does nothing to enhance the story.
Showing brutally slain parents and a vicious mugging doesn't add much to the romantic mood either.
Not one to dine out on, then, but an acceptable takeaway.
Elliott Noble
http://www.skymovies.com/skymovies/article/0,,80007-13501160,00.html
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Re:Movie reviews ...
« Reply #5 on: May 11, 2006, 05:46:27 AM »
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Mistress of Spices: So bad, it hurts
Chinmayee Manjunath | April 28, 2006 18:18 IST
It's impossible to pick the worst thing about Mistress of Spices.
Is it the stereotypes ? exotic India in the strands of saffron, the yellow hues of turmeric or the fiery bite of a chilli? Is it Aishwarya Rai ? pensively simpering, beseeching 'her' spices to 'talk'? Is it the range of incoherent, empty-headed characters, like the one essayed by Padma Lakshmi, who looks unexpectedly hideous? Could it be Dylan McDermott, trying to look oh-so-hot but ending up laughably insipid? Or is it just the fact that Paul Mayeda Berges, in all his wisdom, has faithfully translated Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's passable book into an indigestible film?
One could keep adding to this list, but let's resist that temptation.
Those who read the book either loved it or hated it. Because Divakaruni's overwrought prose, with its undertones of magic realism, evokes either appreciation or loathing. The film though, goes one step further in being utterly awful.
Rai plays Tilo, who acquired powers of divination as a girl and, through vaguely believable twists of fate, finds herself washed ashore on what seems like a part of Kerala. There, the First Mother, played by prima donna Zora Sehgal, holds forth on the magic of spices and teaches a group of young girls how to use them to help others, in various cities across the world. Warning her not to step out of the store, not to use the spices for her own desires and never to touch the skin of anyone else, Sehgal packs Tilo off to San Francisco.
There, in the picture-pretty Spice Bazaar, Tilo hands out packets of cloves, pepper and sesame to Haroon, a Kashmiri cabbie, Dadaji, a culture-shocked grandfather (played by a bored Anupam Kher) and sundry others, including a token African-American. She whispers their attributes -- garlic as an aphrodisiac, asafoetida as an antidote to love, cinnamon for friendship and so on. Some work, some don't, but no one's complaining.
Until, preceded by the whispered warnings of the chilli (don't even ask), Doug (McDermott) has an accident right at her doorstep. And all of Tilo's hidden, denied desires come leaping forth, much to the anguish of her beloved spices. Aided by the punch of pepper, he unravels a past that has an American-Indian twist to it. She listens and falls in love. Of course, Doug and Tilo touch, leading the spices to wither, get infested with worms and backfire on the unsuspecting souls who have believed in the mistress' magic.
And so the story progresses, ridden with accidents and a coy moment of love-making, until Tilo's destiny unfolds itself, in the most predictable manner.
What's most unfortunate about the film is its earnestness. Berges and his wife, Gurinder Chadha, the acclaimed director of Bend It Like Beckham, seem to have put their hearts and souls into it. Sadly, they fall short in almost every aspect.
The story is so tedious it makes ants crawl through your brain. Situations begin to play themselves out and are cut short. Dialogues are so terrible you are torn between tears and hysterical laughter. Especially when Tilo whispers, 'talk to me, spices' or 'why are you warning me, chilli'. The soundtrack is a mish-mash of what could vaguely pass as fusion music, with a token Bally Sagoo composition.
Characters appear, then vanish. The roles of the protagonists, even, are half-baked. Tilo, in the book, is given to long soliloquies, which could have been used to layer her character, but she ultimately ends up being vapid. And Rai, with her affected accent and inexplicable pout, does no justice to the role. Neither do McDermott or any of the other actors. Possibly, the only one who is vaguely commendable is Ayesha Dharker in her too-fleeting cameo.
Mistess Of Spices' flaws are particularly disappointing because one would expect so much more from a partnership with Chadha, who has made evocative, touching and thoroughly enjoyable films in the past. Well, let's forget Bride & Prejudice for now. It's also particularly disappointing because, despite all its flaws, the basic plot of Divakaruni's book may just have been redeemed with an intelligent, sensitive and imaginative adaptation. It just may have.
Ah, and the worst thing about it may just be that it could lead you to harbour a deep, dark disdain for your own hapless spice cabinet. Be warned, the whispers of cinnamon and power of pepper are more irritating than you may have imagined.
Rediff rating: 1 out of 5 (interpreted as=Nominated for the world's worst mivies)
http://ia.rediff.com/movies/2006/apr/28mistress.htm
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Re:Movie reviews ...
« Reply #6 on: May 11, 2006, 05:47:02 AM »
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STORY: Tilo (Ash) is the Mistress of Spices. Which means, the spices talk to her and she can see the future. But she is one of the chosen few and is forbidden to fall in love. But alas, here comes our hero Doug (McDermott) and after lenghty dialogues and even lengthier pauses, they fall in love.
REVIEW: This is another flop attempt of Ash trying to go global. The film is very s-l-o-w. At times, I felt as uncomfortable as having an extreme bout of diarrhea while taking an important exam. Ash is plastic-ky as usual and the same goes for Dylan. The whole premise is very tacky (who believes in magic, anyways?) and even the much-talked about hot scenes between the lead stars are a letdown. The side characters esp. Jagjit and the cab-driver are strictly okay. Anupam Kher shines in a 2-bit role.
ANYTHING GOOD?: The Bally Sagoo remix of "Aap ki nazron ne samjha" is simply amazing! Also Santosh Sivan's cinematography adds some spice to the movie.
SPOILER: Cameos by Ayesha Dharker & the very hot Padma Lakshmi.
BOTTOMLINE: This movie is as spicy as an ice-cream.
By Vaibhav *beep*
http://www.mtvindia.com/mtv/movies/reviews/06/tmos/index.php
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Re:Movie reviews ...
« Reply #7 on: May 11, 2006, 05:48:05 AM »
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After supporting his filmmaker wife, Gurinder Chadha on her Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice projects, screenwriter Paul Mayeda Berges finally gets his hand on his own solo project and makes his directorial debut with The Mistress of Spices.
When Tilo (Aishwarya Rai), a young member of an old, mystical secret clan of women who believe spice can help others lead richer lives is sent to Oakland, USA to open a spice shop she is told she must follow three rules. In order to become an official spice girl she must never think about her own, personal desires, never physically touch anyone else, and never leave her shop. In return, her store - Spice Bazaar is filled to the brim with all manner of exotic goods, something for everyone. Over time, her customers become devotees, looking for cures for their problems to improve their lives and give their romances a bit of a boost.
When the beautiful Rai comes to town, the men also come a flocking and soon, her stunning blue eyes capture the attention of Doug, a handsome architect, played by Dylan McDermott. He crashes his Harley in front of her store, but soon, whether it's the aroma or his devilishly good looks, her heart takes over, but what will become of her spice power?
This is a feel good, romantic film that bears a strong resemblance to Chocolat. Sadly, the romance between Rai and McDermott fails to heat-up, despite the amount of cardamom pods or dried chilli surrounding them. Instead the joys of the film are the richness of and warmth of colours, with all the colours of the rainbow crammed into the quaint shop, while the eyes of Rai are enticing.
Copyright ? MRIB 2006.
http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/m/Mistress-of-Spices/review-96448.html
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