REVIEW 15: TUM HI TO HO

Release date: February 4, 2011

Director: Sanjay Goel

Cast: Vipinno, Madhavi Sharma

My film-viewing year began with Impatient Vivek, a film so bad that I was convinced it couldn’t get any worse than that in 2011. But in less than two months, the Hindi film industry has rubbed my optimism in my face and lived up to the rest of the country’s low expectations.

Tum Hi To Ho is the story of a chap called Rajiv who ends up in an institution when his girlfriend is killed in an accident. The said institution is populated with doctors who say super-sensitive things to their patients such as, “Logon ke paagal hone ke kaee vajah hote hai. Ab tumhari vajah kya hai kaun jaane?” I’ll make short shrift of the rest of the story … Rajiv is discharged and almost immediately bumps into a girl who looks exactly like his dead darling. Problem: she is married. So he bumps off the husband. Problem solved. Then he bumps off some other people. Enter: Jackie Shroff playing a detective who finally solves the case.

Yes yes, I’ve given away the entire story. Big deal! I’m not about to be reticent while reviewing one of the worst Hindi films I’ve seen in my entire life (and believe me I’ve seen quite a few bad ones)! But THTH is so terrible that it’s a must-watch!

The first hint of things to come arrives before the opening credits … a picture of the late actor Vivek Shauq (he of Jaspal Bhatti and Ulta Pulta fame) appears on screen accompanied by the words, “Dedicated on the memory of Vivek Shauq.” What a sad start to approximately two hours of my life dedicated on (sic) Tum Hi To Ho. Shauq – who passed away just this year – has co-written the dialogues of this film and plays a supporting role in it. Ah well, sometimes sweet guys star in lousy films because life ain’t as easy as it should be, I guess …

And sometimes, guys like Vipinno get to be leading men …

Yup, the hero of THTH is an over-muscled fellow called Vipinno who doesn’t have an acting bone in him. But his style of walking and talking are so uniquely appalling and his histrionics are so wonderfully pathetic that I had a rollicking time watching him! I laughed till I had to hold my stomach in pain as he held a conversation with a statue of God, demanding to know why he can never catch a break! Such dialoguebaazi from Hindi film heroes of the past have prompted the good lord to soften up. Not surprisingly, God remains unmoved by Vipinno / Rajiv’s demands and proceeds to punish him instead. For his bad acting, perhaps?

I laughed some more watching the hero do a song-and-dance routine against a back-cloth of mountains and fields that the director had not even bothered to smoothen out.

I almost choked on my steamed corn-in-a-cup when the hero himself drives over a cliff in slow motion and turns to us, the audience, for one final wave. Classic!

But I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or be traumatised at a very personal level by the fact that the dead girlfriend’s name is Anna, since it led to a scene in which Vipinno / Rajiv declares, “I love you Anna!” Ewwwwww!

A pre-release article on THTH in the media informs me that actor Vipinno is a Gujarati from Mozambique. The posters of the film declare grandly: “For the first time in Indian cinema, an actor arises from Africa.” Well, the sun that a-rises (sic) also a-sets (sic). So there is hope for the world.

Rating (out of five): -50 stars

PS: The official trailer of Tum Hi To Ho. It’s actually way way better than the film … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0dzDoql5VE