DUS KAHANIYAAN:

The movie is a ten course dinner – At a roadside fast food joint. It starts with a story called Matrimony, a sarcastic title really, because the theme is adultery with a O. Henry ishtyle ending, complete with Guy de Maupassant - necklace. Each story takes about 15 minutes and that’s what it is about - Ten unrelated stories.
Five of them directed by Sanjay Gupta, the rest by Jasmeet Dhodi, Rohit Roy, Hansal Mehta, Meghna Gulzar, Apoorva Lakhia. Yes they give you Mandira Bedi, Arbaaz khan and Sudanshu Pandey for starters. The main course is about Mahesh Manjrekar, Jimmy Shergill, Suniel Shetty, and Anupam Kher. They serve rare wines like Shabana Azmi and Naseehruddin Shah. Dessert consists of Nana Patekar and out of season fruits like Sanjay Dutt and Amrita Singh. Tarina Patel, Neha Dhupia, Masumeh, Dia Mirza Mandira Bedi provide the spice. Sounds like a hell of a cast right? – No, Wrong. The actors are great but the stories and the screenplay cannot contain them. Shabana Azmi and Naseehruddin shah are known to give the kind of performances that leaves the director open mouthed and wide eyed, till somebody else says “cut”, they are acting in a hopelessly predictable story like “Rice Plate” which should have belonged to the National Integration era of the nineties. The scripts are lazy and predictable. “Kya tumne pyaar kiya?”, “(silence)”, “Aapne mere sawaal ka jawaab nahi diya”, “kuch sawaalon ke jawaab nahin hotey (stupid smile)” or something to that effect. The six chefs serve you famous delicacies and rare wines, in greasy cracked plates and dirty tea-glasses. The ten course dinner then turns into a gigantic, silver screen sized Misal Pao, wholesome but difficult to digest. Overall it is little more than a film festival of various directors; this raises the hopes of the audience, every time the name of the next director flashes on screen and every time the hopes are crushed. Kartar Singh Duggal's short story, “Pooranmashi” and “Gubbare” by Gulzar are outstanding stories with great endings. The two junior artistes in “Rise and Fall’ are good too.