Ae Dil Hai Mushkil ** ½

Dir:  Karan Johar

Starring: Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Aishwarya Rai, Fawad Khan, Lisa Haydon, Imran Abbas

Karan Johar is still mining some of the same territory that he explored in his debut Kuch Kuch Hota Hai almost two decades ago – the sometimes fine line between love and friendship. His take here is a little more adult than before and he’s grown up in many ways along with his viewers but he’s also treading water in other areas. Impossibly good looking and designer-clothed people living, laughing, and loving in impossibly pristine surroundings (often outside India), completely divorced from your reality or mine, their biggest concern the breaking or mending of hearts. They all talk nineteen to the dozen, breaking (un-ironically) into filmi dialogues at the drop of a hat, and all wrapped up in a neat little self-referential (sometimes irritatingly so) Bollywood bow.

All fine and good - and Johar knows how to keep things humming along - but you do want more meat to the bones, even if it is a love story (of sorts) that you are witnessing. For that the characters and the situations have to ring true and, here, Johar (he’s also written the film) falls short. The underlying message of the movie is an important one (love manifests itself in many ways) but I didn’t buy much of the set up nor much of the characterisation. None of the characters felt like real people to me (Anushka Sharma’s Alizeh comes closest) and most of the situations forced. And that, ultimately, is the movie’s biggest failing.

The movie features some hummable numbers and everybody looks good (including our Fawad Khan and Imran Abbas, both in glorified cameos) and some moments may pluck at your heartstrings but performances vary. Anushka Sharma delivers best (though nobody does effervescence quite as well as Kajol), Lisa Haydon brings the comedy, Aishwariya Rai is her generally plastic self and Ranbir Kapoor is the most disappointing. He can be a very fine actor but he seems to have picked up some bad "Acting" tics that he seems to be resorting to more frequently now (Bombay Velvet, Tamasha), and where he appears to be some sort of mildly autistic man-child suffering from a Rak Kapoor hangover.  He needs to get rid of these affectations - and fast.

Cut to chase: Karan Johar wants to grow up but appears stuck.

Doctor Strange ****

Dir:  Scott Dickerson

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen

From its trailers, Doctor Strange wasn’t raising my expectations. I thought this would be a more middling Marvel Studios entry a la Ant-Man. But the movie itself ends up casting quite a spell - and it’s surprisingly funny, to boot (humour is not something that you necessarily associate with the original comics). Humour aside, the movie is generally faithful to the source material by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee  (yes, I know, The Ancient One here is a Celtic woman instead of a Tibetan monk but Tilda Swinton is so good in the role that it is a change that is easy enough to accept) as it depicts a narcissistic neuro-surgeon’s dramatic fall and resurrection as a sorcerer supreme who battles the forces of darkness to save the world.

Director Scott Dickerson handles his material deftly and provides appropriately superb perception altering special effects (Doctor Strange comics had a cult following in the drug-influenced counter-culture of the ’60s as Ditko’s superb psychedelic renderings caught the fancy of hallucinogen afficianados). A climactic showdown with the big bad of the movie in a nether dimension reminded me of the fantastic art of Gene Colan and Tom Palmer who were one of the best art teams to follow Ditko in the comics.

Dickerson is also well-served by an excellent cast. Backing up the excellent Benedict Cumberbatch in the titular role is not only Swinton but such fine actors as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, and Mads Mikkelsen, who all manage to ground the more fantastical elements of the film. And Stan Lee has one of his cleverest cameos yet in a Marvel movie as he’s soon reading and chuckling at Aldous Huxley’s "Doors Of Perception."

Cut to chase: Doctor Strange casts a marvellous spell.

Kmumtaz1@hotmail.com; Twitter: @KhusroMumtaz

Rating system:  *Not on your life     ** Hardly worth the bother     ** ½ Okay for a slow afternoon only     *** Good enough for a look see     *** ½ Recommended viewing     **** Don’t miss it     **** ½ Almost perfect     ***** Perfection