REVIEW 13: UNITED SIX

Release date: February 4, 2011

Director: Vishal Aryan Singh

Cast: Parvathy Omanakuttan, Luna Lahkar, Daisy Bopanna, Mahi, Isha Batwe, Pooja Sharma

“Do you have an aisle seat free in the last row of the theatre?” I asked the lady at the ticket counter. She grinned. “Ma’am you are the first person booking a ticket for this film in days. All seats in the hall are available.”

A pity, I tell ya. Because of all the films I’ve watched since I made my New Year resolution to review every single Hindi film released in 2011, United Six is unarguably the most entertaining.

U6 … yes yes, why should cool acronyms only go to KJo’s films? … U6 is the story of six Indian girls in Bangkok sick of the cards that work and love have dealt them. So, during the course of one of the most poorly acted drunken conversations you are likely to see in Hindi film history, they decide to rob a bank! Simple plan! Hire the bakery next to the bank from which one of them has just been fired, dig a tunnel from its basement to the sewage line that runs past the bank’s strong room, and voila, the job will be done!

Words of wisdom trip off their tongues as they formulate their plans. “Itna aasaan thodi na hai,” says one of the girls. “Yeh izzat thodi na hai jo loot li.” Waah, kya dialogue maara!

Cut to a song just before the bank robbery in which the girls wear sweet nothings and sing, “We have the fire, toofano se hum khelenge.” Double waah!!

It’s around this point that I started involuntarily laughing out loud in the hall. I looked around and much to my embarrassment, realised that I was not alone. The usher was watching the film intently too. Like him, I remained glued to my seat till the very end of U6. No other film this year has had this effect on me.

Get this ... As they dig their way to the bank, it doesn’t occur to the girls to down the shutters or lock the door of the bakery above – even though a policeman keeps dropping in on them upstairs! ... Though the Bangkok police suspect that the mastermind behind the robbery is the bank’s ex-employee, it doesn’t occur to them to fish out her photograph from the bank’s records and show it to the sole eyewitness. Instead, they get a police artist to sketch her picture, based on the eyewitness’ description. Maybe because that’s what they’ve been seeing in C.S.I.? ... The extras in the film (playing cops and gun dealers) make the white policemen in Kites look like drama school toppers ... And why do I have a sneaking feeling that the dialogue writers patted themselves on the back when they came up with the following gem? The girls repeatedly refer to a horny policeman as “KLPD” and the nitwit of the group thinks they mean, “Kuala Lumpur Police Department”. Taaliyaaaaaaaa!!!

And there’s more bad acting, bad writing and ridiculous storytelling where that came from. The director has been quoted in the press as saying that a major portion of U6 has been shot in Bangkok and Pattaya! Imagine, someone actually spent money on this project! In a pre-release interview, he also assured a journalist that his film “is nowhere close to Charlie’s Angels”. Whew, thanks for clearing that up!

Incidentally, U6 marks the Bollywood debut of Parvathy Omanakuttan, an attractive former Miss India World. But try as my kind heart might, I can’t think of a single redeeming factor in this film that may sound encouraging to her.

I remember meeting Ms Omanakuttan at the Cannes film fest 2009. At the time, she was lamenting the fact that it’s such a struggle to enter Bollywood. Honey, now that I’ve seen U6, for your own sake I wish you’d just waited some more.

Rating (out of five): 0 stars