India Masala

Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum: Double trouble

Adult comedies aren’t too common in mainstream Bollywood. Most comedy films will try to throw in a couple of raunchy jokes to get a few laughs from the audience, but to make an out-and-out risqué film isn’t very common.

Sachin Yardi’s sequel to the 2005 “Kya Kool Hain Hum” certainly tries to fill in that gap. There is double entendre, skin show, crude gestures and lots of old e-mail forwards converted into one-liners.

There is also no pretence here — there is the skeleton of a story and after the first half, everyone stops pretending they are even trying to tell you one. Instead, Yardi strings together several gags and songs, almost as if he is hoping that the many bawdy jokes will make up for the lack of real content.

Riteish Deshmukh and Tusshar Kapoor play Sid and Adi, two friends who are poor (but own a luxury car, a MacBook and designer clothes) but have big ambitions. Adi (Kapoor) fancies himself an actor, but can only find work in television shopping commercials. Sid (Deshmukh) is a DJ who has to be content playing at dandiya parties. That is about the only coherent part of the story.

The film revolves around a diamond, a trip to Goa, two dogs who are the reincarnations of a couple, a fake guru called 3G baba and many other inane plot points that make no sense and ultimately merge in your head and cause it to burst.

To be fair, there are a couple of funny incidents that will make you laugh, but they are in the first half, and are thanks to Riteish Deshmukh, who is the only actor who displays any comic timing.

The rest of the cast might as well fade into the wallpaper. Tusshar Kapoor, especially, looks so out of place and so completely bereft of any acting abilities that it’s embarrassing. And as if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, he even dares do to a “Dostana” style scene, which is the most unintentionally hilarious scene of the film. You might double up laughing at him trying to give Neha Sharma a come-hither look while pulling at his swimming trunks.

Which is your favourite Rajesh Khanna moment?

The image that came to mind when one heard of Rajesh Khanna’s death was, of course, the pivotal scene in Hrishikesh Mukherjee‘s “Anand” where the words “babu moshai” ring out.

Fans of Khanna will feel the same kind of emotion — that he might be gone, but that his voice, his shy smile and the “flying a kite” hand movement that was so much a part of his personality will be with us, reverberating much after he has passed on.

He was, of course, India’s first romantic superstar, giving rise to much frenzy among female fans in the 1970s, and even though his last years weren’t all that distinguished, every romantic hero today will admit there is a bit of Rajesh Khanna in him.

For me, there can never be another performance like “Anand”, ironically, one of the few films where he wasn’t a romantic hero. But his line, “zindagi lambi nahi, badi honi chahiye” (life should be big, not long) epitomises the character in that film.

Which is your favourite Rajesh Khanna moment?

Cocktail: The mix isn’t right

You know that time when you chance upon this new product at the supermarket? Maybe it’s a new drink or a bottle of jam — it comes in a really nice looking bottle and looks so enticing that you have to pick it up and bring it home. And then you open it and realise it only looks good on the outside. The product is past expiry, the fizz has gone out of the drink and all you are left with is a nice looking bottle. Yes, that.

Homi Adajania’s “Cocktail” is definitely one of those films you shouldn’t judge by its cover (or poster). This is supposed to be a light-hearted attempt at tackling the oldest trick in the romantic comedy book — the love triangle, but Adajania forgets to infuse any freshness into the story.

His protagonists are written almost predictably and at times are one-dimensional. There is Veronica (Deepika Padukone), the free-spirited, troubled and sometimes volatile firecracker. In sharp contrast is her best friend Meera (Diana Penty), who is demure, sorted and at times, meek. Veronica, who flits from one relationship to the other, meets Gautam (Saif Ali Khan), who might as well be her male counterpart. He too is looking for a no-strings-attached relationship and it seems that Veronica might be the perfect girl for that.

But when Gautam’s overbearing mother (Dimple Kapadia) comes to London from New Delhi, hoping to convince her son into marriage, she takes an immediate dislike to Veronica. To placate her, Gautam tells her he’s seeing Meera, who seems much more “wife material”. But when real feelings replace those being acted out, things get complicated.

The writing, by Imtiaz Ali, is stale and the dialogue is so stunted it will make you cringe and wonder if this really came from the person who wrote “Socha Na Tha” and “Jab We Met”. There are only so many story angles you could use in a love triangle, but what helps differentiate the good films from the bad is smart writing and zany dialogue. Both are sorely missing. What does save the film is the music by Pritam and the energy with which the songs are choreographed.

Adajania drags the story unnecessarily and by the time the climax rolls around, you don’t really care who falls in love with whom. It would seem like Saif Ali Khan didn’t care either. He seems jaded throughout the film, mouthing his lines almost mechanically, and you feel as if he’s thinking “oh no, not another Casanova role”. His first scene, where he’s flirting with an air hostess falls completely flat on its face and the character never quite recovers its mojo.

This role is no different from what he’s done in “Love Aaj Kal” or “Hum Tum”, and to be honest, he doesn’t fit the part any more. Perhaps he would be better off leaving the chocolate boy role to younger actors.

Bol Bachchan: All talk, no substance

A one-line review saying “this is a Rohit Shetty” film would suffice for most movies this director churns out with billion-rupee regularity, but “Bol Bachchan” is different. This time, Shetty has attempted to remake one of Hindi cinema’s most iconic comedies, one which shares its name with the series of films that gave Shetty his first hits in the industry.

In re-imagining “Gol Maal“, Shetty is taking up a gauntlet that he should have left well alone. Hrishikesh Mukherjee‘s brand of comedy couldn’t be more different than Shetty’s and in trying to combine the two,  the film ends up going nowhere.

Mukherjee’s 1979 comedy of errors, about a meek protagonist who tries to fool his boss into thinking he is two different people, is also at the heart of “Bol Bachchan”, except Shetty spikes it with a liberal dose of item songs, inane dialogue, and of course, exploding vehicles.

Abhishek Bachchan plays Abbas, an unemployed youth who comes to a small village in Rajasthan with his sister Saina, hoping to improve his lot in life. In his attempt to save a child from drowning, Abbas inadvertently breaks open the lock of a temple, and invites the attention of Prithviraj (played by Ajay Devgn), the local ‘king’.

Shetty is obviously trying to bring the communal harmony angle here, but like most things in this movie, this is half-hearted and gets lost amid dialogues like “my chest has become blouse” (yes, really).

Abbas (now answering to the name Abhishek Bachchan) starts working for Prithviraj, which mostly means beating up rivals and rescuing his sister Radhika (Prachi Desai) from their clutches. When Prithviraj spots Abbas at a Muslim prayer meeting, confusion ensues and there are cover-ups and forced gags galore to fill up the rest of the film.

Unlike “Gol Maal”, which was intelligent comedy, free from slapstick and crass humour, “Bol Bachchan” caters to the lowest common denominator. The bar here is extremely low. Abhishek Bachchan tries to make the best of it, putting in an earnest performance in a double role. Ajay Devgn doesn’t seem to have recovered from the “Singham” hangover and flexes his muscles, but doesn’t trouble the ones in his face, rendering it expressionless most of the time.

from India Insight:

Cleaning up TV’s dirty pictures

I was watching a documentary on Greta Garbo on television. The film was in English with English subtitles for people more comfortable following written English than quick spoken English. Every time the word "sex" or something related to it would come up, the subtitles avoided it. "Heterosexual" became "hetero." "Her sexuality" became "her femininity." Dedicated channel surfing revealed similar evasions. In a conversation about breast cancer on an English channel, the station inserted an asterisk to partially mask the word "breast" in the subtitles, even though you could hear it onscreen.

TV stations and networks in India, similar to broadcast TV channels in the United States, remove objectionable content (sex scenes, nudity, some foul language and violence) from movies and other programming (see this recent Reuters story about how it works). This is thanks to the Indian Broadcasting Federation's Broadcasting Content Complaint Council. The idea is to make sure that public airwaves remain friendly enough for the ears of children and sensitive adults, though it can result in unintentional bloopers like the breast cancer example.

Apply that to film, and it can be an editing massacre. Look for odd leaps forward in the film's plot and you can see where the chopping happened. It wasn't always this way. Channels such as Star Movies and HBO made minimal cuts or none at all until the BCCC was established in 2011. Hindi films fare little better. The lovemaking scene between Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta in "Salaam Namaste" was removed from the televised version of the movie. "The Dirty Picture," the film about softcore actress Silk Smitha that starred Vidya Balan, came in for 59 cuts, but still couldn't make the cut for television.

Just in case you missed the message about naughty content, messages flash on English channels every once in a while, asking viewers to report objectionable content to the complaint council. After a while, the question presents itself: is this nanny state protection or is it the more ominous "censorship"? Either way, it doesn't seem to bother anyone.

Maybe people use the TV to "turn off," while they use the Internet to "turn on". How else to explain the protesters who showed up (albeit in small numbers) on the streets of India's cities when the government shut down file-sharing services that some people use to watch pirated movies and listen to pirated music? The government also put a cap on what it defined as objectionable content that people post on Facebook and other social media sites. That's a good way to raise some grassroots complaints, but it's surprising that cutting TV time entertainment hasn't sparked the same ire.

Maybe TV is like all the other curtailments to freedom of expression that Indians have dealt with. Who spoke up when the importation of Salman Rushdie's bestselling novel "The Satanic Verses" was banned? Or when Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute library was ransacked by extremists protesting James Laine's book "Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India." Or when groups operating under their moral codes impose them on university syllabi or school textbooks?

Have people tacitly waived their right toward censorship by not exercising it? Many of us allow our freedom of speech to be curtailed when it comes to books and TV, but when asked to pay to watch movies and music, we lace up our combat boots ... at least for now. The longer-term trend in India seems to be for its young people to plot paths to career success rather than thinking about preserving freedom or fighting for anything other than a religious dispute. Maybe there's no gauntlet to pick up. Sooner or later, we may find ourselves treating Web surfing the same way we treat watching television -- passive and without complaint.

Teri Meri Kahaani: A love story that needs direction

As they sit sipping coffee at a roadside café in London, Radha (Priyanka Chopra) tells Krissh (Shahid Kapur) “sometimes life is a suitcase but you feel like it’s a lunch-box” (or was it the opposite?), and if you are sitting in the audience, you might be forgiven for going “Huh? Did she really say that?”

Be prepared for many such moments during this two-and-a-half-hour film that claims to be an epic love story spanning three eras. Director Kunal Kohli is obviously trying to tell you that love does not change, whether in pre-independence India or London in 2012.  If only you didn’t have to watch this film to find out.

Instead, you have to sit through three love stories, and except for the first one, between an aspiring musician and a coy actress, none of them manage to touch a chord. The second, between two Indian students in London uses Facebook as the main plot in their love story, while the third, a long-winded, at times inane tale of  two lovers in pre-Independence India is the most taxing of all.

When Kapur’s character, who has been jailed for attacking a British officer, locks the jailor out of the prison and starts dancing and wooing his lady love, you are ready to throw your hands up.

Kohli uses the oldest of clichés, the most banal of plot points and if it hadn’t been for the chemistry between his two leads, “Teri Meri Kahaani” would have been a complete loss.

Thankfully, Kapur and Chopra share a rapport on screen and are easy on the eyes, especially during some of the song sequences. But they are saddled with a weak script and a director who is akin to a bad driver, going too slow when he needs to quicken the pace, and crashing his vehicle at almost every sharp turn.

Unless you are a sucker for mush or a fan or Chopra or Kapur, give this one a wide berth.

Gangs of Wasseypur: Visceral revenge saga

Anurag Kashyap’s revenge saga “Gangs of Wasseypur” starts off in the most innocuous way — a shot of actress Smriti Irani opening the door and inviting the audience in with a beaming smile. It’s a scene millions of viewers are familiar with, thanks to the popularity of the soap, but definitely not something you’d expect to see in the first frame of a revenge drama.

Such incongruous scenes and unexpected surprises pop up regularly during the 2.5-hour-long film. Kashyap uses a tongue-in-cheek approach to tell his story, pairing it with searing imagery, a couple of history lessons and the edgiest characters you will see on screen for some time.

But don’t blame yourself if the first 30 minutes of this film seem like a blur. Kashyap crowds it with so many characters, their back stories and so much history, that you won’t know who’s who. Eventually you will realise that this is a revenge saga centring around Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpayee), whose only aim in life is to avenge his father’s death at the hands of coal mine owner Ramadhir Singh (played by Tigmanshu Dhulia).

The story starts before Sardar’s birth, establishes his past and then chronicles his life, including a turbulent married life, and his rise as the “bahubali” (strong man) of Wasseypur, a mining town in Jharkhand.

His rivalry with the Qureshis, who are the butchers of Wasseypur, and Ramadhir form the crux of the story, but Kashyap also devotes ample time to the two women in Sardar’s life — his two wives and the messy family equations his marriages create. Both Richa Chaddha and Reemma Sen are exceptional in their roles as the feisty wives of the protagonist.

Rajeev Ravi’s camera captures the dirt and grime of coal mines with such intensity that you might imagine yourself covered in soot. Kashyap makes sure the first half of the film doesn’t lose its pace, keeping you hooked. There is an occasional sprinkling of Bollywood dialogue (perfectly timed) and some edgy music by Sneha Khanwalkar which lend to the tone of the film.

In the second half though, the film loses steam and Sardar’s mission to finish Ramadhir Singh takes a back seat, and he chooses to give up his life of crime and take up fishing instead. Why he does this is not very clear, and with that plot point, the film loses its way.

Ferrari Ki Sawaari: Would you please hurry up?

Towards the end of Rajesh Mapuskar’s “Ferrari Ki Sawaari“, as the protagonist and his son are re-united and embrace each other, cry and wipe the tears off each other’s cheeks, an onlooker hesitantly asks “aap jaldi karenge zara?” (would you please hurry up?). It might sound like an insensitive thing to say, but perhaps that is what someone should have said to Mapuskar as he went about making this film.

Perhaps he might have restrained himself from writing a convoluted and at times contrived script that seems to stretch on for longer than its 2 hour 15 minute duration.

But Mapuskar seems hell-bent on extracting every last tear or making the audience go “awwww” every single minute, and borrows heavily from mentor Raju Hirani’s style of feel-good tear-jerkers. Unfortunately, he cannot pull it off quite as well as Hirani does.

Mapuskar has the germ of a good idea in the story — that of an earnest, hard-working father who wants the best for his son, but cannot always provide that, thanks to his middle-class existence. When Rusy’s son Kayo wants to participate in a cricket camp which will take him to the hallowed Lord’s cricket ground in London, he has to arrange 150,000 rupees (approximately $2700).

When a wedding planner who needs a Ferrari for a marriage in the family of a small-time politician offers Rusy the money if he can get her the car, he decides to take the plunge. Since the only person with a red Ferrari in Mumbai seems to be cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, who also happens to be his son’s idol, Rusy decides to try his luck.

Instead, through a twist in the tale, he finds himself with the keys of the car and no one to stop him as he drives away. As he realises later, things don’t always work out the way you want them to.

Mapuskar does manage to create some moments that will charm you, especially in the first half, even though you might grit your teeth at how goody two-shoes Sharman Joshi’s character is. His chemistry with Ritwik Sahore, who plays his son is spot-on. Sahore looks like a mini-Tendulkar at times and plays his part well enough.

Shanghai: The story of India

There are some films that you watch, not because you want (as Vidya Balan claims in ‘The Dirty Picture’) “entertainment, entertainment, entertainment”, but because they are a reflection of the times we live in, and if these movies didn’t get made, these chaotic times wouldn’t be chronicled for eternity.

Dibakar Banerjee certainly seems determined to be that chronicler for India. In his fourth film “Shanghai”, Banerjee keeps the grittiness of “Love, Sex Aur Dhokha” or “Khosla Ka Ghosla“, but gets more ambitious, with his canvas, dealing with murkier issues like urbanisation, development and the politics of today’s India.

In less than two hours, he manages to make a telling comment on the country we live in, the people who govern it, and most importantly, the people we think govern it. After all, as a character in George R R Martin’s epic “Game of Thrones” series says — “power resides where men believe it resides.”

Banerjee sketches his characters with all the skill that he has displayed in the past. Emraan Hashmi is undoubtedly one of the stars of this ensemble cast – stripped of his loverboy image, wearing ill-fitting clothes and flashing a goofy smile, Hashmi shines as Jogi Parmar, a small-time maker of video films who is caught in circumstances he doesn’t always know how to deal with.

Parmar is one of the witnesses to the hit-and-run death of a prominent social worker, Dr Ahmedi (Prosenjit Chatterjee), minutes after he addresses a rally opposing a major infrastructure project which will take up slum land. Ahmedi’s associate Shalini (Kalki Koechlin) enlists Jogi’s help to gather evidence that the attack was pre-planned and had the sanction of a coalition partner of the ruling state government.

Owing to pressure and Ahmedi’s stature, the state government sets up a one-man inquiry commission, headed by upcoming bureaucrat Krishnan (Abhay Deol) to investigate the incident. Krishnan soon realises that the commission might be an eyewash and he might be forced to question his values.

Politics is not an easy subject to make a film on, and it is easy to oversimplify or make carictures of characters, but Banerjee treads carefully. The detailing is evident in every scene, and even characters with the smallest roles have some powerful lines. Special mention for Anant Jogue and Tilottama Shome, who don’t have more than three or four scenes each, but are brilliant in each of them. Banerjee paints even the “heroes” of this film in shades of grey, and in doing so creates some memorable characters.

Rowdy Rathore: South Indian remix

When Akshay Kumar fashions himself a sudarshan chakra (the ultimate weapon of destructive in Indian mythology) from a broken bamboo stick and some construction equipment and uses it to slay 20 men with axes and knives, you know “Rowdy Rathore” isn’t aiming for realistic cinema.

Once you reconcile yourself to that and realise that director Prabhu Deva is channeling his inner Rajnikanth, you can sit back and enjoy the Ray-Bans, nubile dancers and a pretty liberal use of cinematic liberties.

The film is a remake of the Telugu hit “Vikramarkudu“, and draws on many of the elements that work for movies of this genre. So there is a guest appearance by Prabhu Deva, gyrating to a song, loud and garish costumes and dialogue and action that is bound to appeal to mass audiences.

Akshay Kumar plays a double role — that of small-time crook Shiva and the seemingly invincible police officer Vikram Rathore. There is of course, the very familiar case of mistaken identities, and Shiva is forced to deal with a gang of axe-toting hooligans hunting for Rathore.

Somewhere in the story is a love track with Paro (Sonakshi Sinha in a rehash of her “Dabangg” role), and a couple of raunchy item numbers which raise the visual impact of the film considerably.

Prabhu Deva channels the very successful South Indian formula of over-the-top emotions, skin show, brutal action, fake blood and the battle of good versus evil. Akshay Kumar doesn’t have the panache of a Salman Khan or the style of a Rajnikanth, but he manages to pull off the quirkiness quite well.

Sonakshi Sinha’s waist gets more screen time than her face, but that is just as well, given that she can’t muster up too many expressions.