REVIEW 1: IMPATIENT VIVEK

Release date: January 7, 2011
Director: Rahat Kazmi
Cast: Vivek Sudershan, Sayali Bhagat, Hrishikesh Joshi, Charu Asopa

Already my resolution is looking formidable. In keeping with my promise to the world at large, I bravely make my way to the press preview of Impatient Vivek this week. It’s a film that stars Sayali Bhagat, former Miss India runner-up, Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Malik’s once-rumoured-ex-girlfriend and not a bad looking girl at all. That apart, I’ve not heard of the lead players involved in this project. But didn’t I just say every film deserves a chance? Famous last words from a suicidal film critic!

What do I say about a film in which the leading man kidnaps the leading lady, and on the advice of his friend, asks her (in what is clearly intended to be a comic scene): can I *beep* you? More than once!

What do I say about a hero so uncharismatic that he could be Kamaal R. Khan aka KRK’s younger brother?

What do I say about an industry in which genuine talent struggles for a break, while this chap Vivek Sudershan gets to play a hero although he can't act, walk, talk, run, smile, sit or stand well.



Impatient Vivek is the story of a no-gooder whose wealthy family and ragamuffin friends address him as IV. We’ll talk about that moniker later – since the film maker wanted to create some suspense surrounding it, let me play along. IV spots pretty and carefree Shruti (Sayali) while on vacation in Goa with his friends. O gawd, why do I get the feeling that director Rahat Kazmi thinks he’s a cool dude making a male bonding film in the tradition of Dil Chahta Hai? Blame my assumption on the early scene of IV and friends perched on a broken wall overlooking the Goan sea and ruminating about their lives.

'Look guys, isn't this where the DCH boys hung out?'

 It’s around this point that I begin to feel a combined urge to both gag and giggle though it’s hard to figure out how that would be simultaneously possible. But first … this review ... IV tries to woo Shruti who clearly finds him as unattractive as I do, and doesn’t give him the time of day despite seeming to enjoy the devotion. Nothing new there. After all, didn’t so many exalted Hindi films up to the 1990s work hard to establish that when a girl says no she means maybe, and that whatever a girl may tell you, she actually likes the attention of sundry sexual harassers, molesters and roadside Romeos?

Of course, since this is Goa, we must also have white women in bikinis in Impatient Vivek. IV almost beds one of them, but halfway through the heaving and huffing and puffing and rolling around on a bed in a hotel room with her, he darts off to the bathroom where we are given a shot of his back while he heaves and huffs and puffs by himself. You dirty-minded pigs, it’s not what you are thinking! IV is, in fact, pumping air into a basketball, though we are never told why he chose that exact moment to do so.

A couple of years later, IV is hitchhiking on a road near his home town Udaipur and a skimpily clad girl on a scooter gives him a lift. To cut a long story short, she turns out to be Shruti and he kidnaps her on the eve of her wedding. Also in the picture is Shruti’s best friend who dumps her fiance for Shruti’s NRI stepbrother who longs for his stepmother’s love but doesn’t get it because the aforesaid stepmom is insecure about her own son who, by the way, is the best friend of the aforesaid fiance that the aforesaid friend dumped.

That convoluted sentence reminds me of the question that I suspect the film maker thought his audience would be pondering deeply till the answer is revealed towards the end: why does everyone address the hero as IV? Ah, the tragedy of it all … Vivek’s father thinks he’s Idiot Vivek, his mother thinks he’s Incredible Vivek, the boy himself think he’s Impatient Vivek but lo and behold, tragedy turns to comedy when Shruti concludes that he’s actually Innocent Vivek!!!

So what do I say about this film? I could tell you that it’s cheap, poorly cast, poorly acted, tackily written, loud, offensive and completely unfunny. Or I could just not bother. I think I’ll just say nothing at all.

But I say “nothing at all” with a purpose. Because films like Impatient Vivek strategically choose their release dates in the hope that theatre-goers landing up to see another film like, say, No One Killed Jessica and finding house full boards up, may think, ‘Chalo, NOKJ nahi to Impatient Vivek hi sahi.” Nahiiiiiiiiiiiin!

During a purportedly profound scene between heroine’s father and heroine’s stepbrother in Impatient Vivek, Daddy says: Beta, ek zindagi hoti hai jo guzarti hai, ek zindagi hoti hai jo kat-thi hai, aur ek zindagi hoti hai jo na guzarti hai na kat-thi hai. Well, I’m in a mood to be profound too: Betas and betis, ek fillum hoti hai jo guzarti hai, ek fillum hoti hai jo kat-thi hai, aur ek fillum hoti hai jo na guzarti hai na kat-thi hai.

Note to myself: When I last visited Udaipur, it was not run over by girls on the streets in teeny weeny shorts and off-shoulder, thigh-revealing mini dresses. Impatient Vivek would have me believe otherwise. Just to verify my facts, I think I may visit Udaipur sometime soon. Hmm, maybe that should have been my New Year resolution!

Rating (out of five): -25 stars