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Heroine Movie Review by Top Critics
Ratings:2/5 Heroine Review by Rajeev Masand Site:CNN IBN
Heroine, directed by Madhur Bhandarkar opens with genuine promise, but very quickly collapses into a heap of lazy stereotypes. Sadly, the film offers no original insight into the minds of movie stars or the inner workings of the Mumbai film industry – this is a movie that might well have been made by an avid reader of gossip rags. Despite an entertaining first half, thanks to all the unintentional laughs, Heroine slips into a slush of melodrama post interval. By this point, it feels interminably long and boring. Bhandarkar loses his grip on the script, and it’s evident that his storytelling now desperately needs reinventing.I’m going with two out of five for Heroine. It’s pack-up for this one!Visit Site for more
Ratings:3.5/5 Heroine Review by Taran Adarsh Site:Bollywood Hungama
HEROINE astounds you with its brutal bluntness. Also, the director illustrates the heartrending and lamentable realities of the movie world brilliantly. On the flip side, although the writing borrows from reality and has ample shock value, the writers could've avoided a few episodes in Mahi's story, which seem unimportant. HEROINE is Kareena's film all the way and she delivers an award-worthy performance.On the whole, HEROINE is yet another hard-hitting motion picture from Madhur Bhandarkar. For persistently choosing women-centric themes, for consistently winning national acclaim and most significantly, magnetizing moviegoers in large numbers to view his cinema, the efforts of the maverick film-maker deserve to be lauded. Watch HEROINE for Madhur's imposing direction, for Kareena's superlative performance, watch it also for its fearless, inspiring and enlightening storyline divulging the scandalous realities of the movie industry. Try not to miss it!
Ratings:---- Heroine Review by Komal Nahta Site:ETC
The story, penned by Madhur Bhandarkar, Anuradha Tiwari and Manoj Tyagi, is quite dark and depressing. Even the screenplay, written by the trio and Niranjan Iyengar, has plenty of sad and depressing moments and very few happy ones. In that sense, the film lacks very much in entertainment value.On the whole, Heroine is too stark and dark to be entertaining. It is not universally appealing. It will go down well sectionally only. Business in the big cities will be good during the weekend only, but its fate in lesser cities, lesser multiplexes and ‘B’ and ‘C’ class centres will be way below the mark.
Ratings:2/5 Heroine Review by Anupama Chopra Site:Hindustan Times
The first half, though, has a delicious, camp quality to it. It’s hugely entertaining, unintentionally of course. But in the second half, everybody gets serious and the laughs go out of the window. Mahi weeps and weeps and then, weeps some more. Helen, playing a yesteryear superstar, gives us the moral of the story: that selling your soul for the glitter of glamour will always, always end badly.Mahi is just a trembling mass of furiously smoking insecurity from beginning to end. And she’s just not interesting enough for us to spend two and a half hours with. At one point in Heroine, a character asks: Iss glamour industry mein kaun fraud nahin hota. This film certainly is one.
Ratings:3/5 Review by Meena Iyer Site:Times of India (TOI)
Very clearly the written material at hand draws from unflattering accounts of various real and reel Hindi film heroines of the 80s who were in messy situations with their married co-stars. The film is made enjoyable by some pithy dialogue credited to Niranjan Iyengar. Heroine would have been crisper had it not digressed to cover every Bollywood insider account. Of course the saving grace of the film is Kareena who not only looks drop-dead gorgeous but is also adept as the girl interrupted. Heroine is Kareena's Dirty Picture. The actress has shown ample cleavage and partaken in some really intimate bedroom scenes. Definitely worth a dekho!
Ratings:2/5 Review by Sukanya Verma Site:Rediff
How do you take a film seriously when all it has on its mind is to somehow convey all the juicy tittle-tattle Bhandarkar has accumulated over the past two years in the name of research.How do you care for a character that's neither about triumph of spirit nor being a victim of abuse? Unfortunately, in Heroine everything strikes as so deliberate, it's hard to tell the thin line between bold and sensational. Bhandarkar seems so enamored by his electrifying Heroine he probably forgot to say 'Cut' during the last half hour, which seems like a never-ending audition of a nervous breakdown making Heroine overbearing, desperate and agonizingly long.The film ends on an abrupt and futile note making everything that happened before a waste of time.
Ratings:2/5 Review by Saibal Chatterjee Site:NDTV
The foremost problem with Madhur Bhandarkar’s Heroine is that behind its gossamer exterior, it is weighed down by banalities that don't quite add up.In conveying the ebbs and tides of the life of a self-obsessed, impulsive and troubled Bollywood diva, the film taps into the tropes that constitute the Bhandarkar formula. The novelty has worn off. So, all that the audience is left with is an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.Heroine is drably monotonous, its insights are shallow, most of the characters are caricatures and the lines that they speak border on the corny, if not on the outright ridiculous.
Ratings:2.5/5 Review by Kanika Sikka Site:DNA
Before the interval, the film is a mess up of fast-paced events. The second half, though slow, manages to bring these events into order to lead to a predictable end.If you are a Madhur Bhandarkar fan, I would recommend you skip this one. One, it may be disappointing; two, you’ve seen all this before. If you are a Kareena Kapoor fan, it’s a treat.All said and done, the film may be a one-time watch. But if you expected too much out of the film, it may not be worth the anticipation and your money.
Ratings:2/5 Review by Shubhra Gupta Site:Indian Express
The only reason to watch Madhur Bhandarkar’s films is for the way they go behind the headlines and show us the dirt and the hurt that’s usually brushed under frayed rags and burnished carpets. In his better moments, Bhandarkar has let us see the stuff that’s crawled out from underneath clearly, and we’ve overlooked the tackiness because it has added to the understanding of the subject. ‘Heroine’, Bhandarkar’s pass at Bollywood, does none of this. It remains a string of drab cliches, despite a strong performance from leading lady Kareena Kapoor.
Ratings:1.5/5 Review by Raja Sen Site:Rediff
Kareena Kapoor impresses in Heroine, but is let down by the film itself. Unfortunately the sheer mediocrity surrounding her -- with everyone in spoof mode, especially the dialogue writers -- never lets us feel for her character in what turns out to be a grotesquely long film.
Heroine Hindi Movie Review by Other Critics
Ratings:1.5/5 Review by Roshni Devi Site:Koimoi
What’s Good: Some performances; the title track and Saiyaan song.What’s Bad: The story and script seem to be in an endless loop; stereotypical, uni-dimensional characters; Kareena’s frequent breakdowns in the movie.Loo Break: Any number of times.Watch or Not?: Heroine movie irritates more than entertains, but some of the performances are nice.Kareena Kapoor does a good job and, heck, you even get to see her in a pseudo lesbian scene along with other steamy scenes. If that’s enough to drag you to see Heroine, go ahead. Give it a miss otherwise.
Ratings:3/5 Review by Zee News Site:Zee News
Wronged lead protagonist. Check. Cheating lover. Check. Clinical depression. Check. Manipulative friends. Check. Homosexuality. Check. Rising and then eventually falling and slowly fading in career. Check.These are the main ingredients of each and every Madhur Bhandarkar film. And ‘Heroine’ is no different really.The premise of the film, like every other film of Bhandarkar's, remains the same. Lead protagonist who has negative shades goes through the highs and lows in her life, enjoys a period of success and then goes through a low phase only to reform and rebuild herself as a human being.2 for the film and one extra one for Bebo. Three cheers for the film
Ratings:-- Review by Manjusha Radhakrishnan Site:GulfNews
For those who are enchanted by Bollywood and its troubled stars, this film is delightfully voyeuristic as it takes you into their sexy-yet-shady world. While the film’s first half is brisk, the second half meanders but manages to get its act together towards the end. There are some obvious loopholes -- such as how a top actress such as Mahi can be this isolated from the human race and reality -- but the weak links aside it’s a satisfying watch.
