99 - Review

Why you might want to watch it:

• Great cast - Imagine Cyrus Broacha, Boman Irani, Mahesh Manjrekar & Vinod Khanna all in one film.
• A funny film which uses Match-fixing (A not so funny theme) as its backdrop. 
  

The Good: Casting, Performances, Plot, 
The Bad: The songs (Not a major minus but still not really needed in this plot)  

Look out for: Mahesh Manjrekar as AGM the tough, mean yet endearing Mumbai dada! 

Bottomline: Thanks to the IPL and the General Elections, mainstream Bollywood has been decidedly quiet. And as I was watching 99 it hit me that this silence is actually a good thing for Hindi cinema. 99 begins in 1999 and follows the story of Sachin (Kunal Khemu) and Zaramud (Cyrus Broacha), two small time con guys who dabble with SIM Cards (The Mobile revolution was just taking off at that point!). They make one stupid mistake and become bonded workers (Literally!) for one of Mumbai's toughest yet funniest Baddies AGM (Mahesh Manjrekar). A 'paisa vasool' trip takes them to Delhi and into the world of Rahul (Boman Irani) and JC (Vinod Khanna) where they get fully pulled into the match-fixing racket that was making headlines in 2000. 99 is fun to watch because it is one of those rare intelligent Hindi comedies which is loaded with subtle and sometimes plain rude humour (My favourite was all girls in Delhi are usually called Pooja or Neha) and also uses a factual backdrop of the match fixing controversy. The plot is well knit and almost every scene (Even where you least expect it) is loaded with humour. The casting is spot on and the performances (Not surprisingly) are top class. Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK's 99 is easily one of the most enjoyable Hindi films of the year.    

Running Time: 135 mins (Approx)