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Release date:
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September 25, 2015
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Director:
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Madhur Bhandarkar
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Cast:
Language:
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Akanksha Puri, Avani
Modi, Kyra Dutt, Ruhi Singh, Satarupa Pyne, Madhur Bhandarkar
Hindi
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It feels sad to write
this review. Was this film really made by the man who gave us Chandni Bar, Page 3, Corporate and Fashion?
No doubt the concept of writer-director-producer
Madhur Bhandarkar’s Calendar Girls is
worth expanding into a full-fledged film. This, however, is not that film. This
story has a been-there-seen-that feel to it – a whiff of Page 3, a dash of Corporate,
a sprinkling of Fashion all chucked
into poorly fleshed out scenarios. No new insights. No new perspective. And
plain tacky.
If good writing is the
cornerstone of a good film, then Calendar
Girls is on the verge of collapse from its opening scene. The dialogues are
of embarrassingly bad quality, most are heavy-handed, many mix Hindi with
awkwardly handled English, and too many try too hard to sound clever.
The over-smartness is irritating.
Such as when a photographer tells a bunch of models: Each of you must do
something for me now that every model has to do for me the night before a shoot.
Cut to the girls, all taken aback at what they assume – as we are no doubt expected
to assume too – is a blatant request for sex. The music changes to reflect
their fears. Grim silence follows, during which I could picture the writer
visualising viewers thinking, “Oh, he wants to sleep with them.” At last the
lensman speaks up, asking an offensive but different question. Dan ta tan!
Combine this mediocre
writing with lousy casting and what you get is a non-starter, not a film.
Were Calendar Girls’ five female leads really
picked by the man whose heroines so far have included Tabu, Konkona Sensharma, Priyanka
Chopra and Bipasha Basu?
Here we get Akanksha
Puri as aspiring model Nandita Menon from Hyderabad, Avani Modi as London-based
Pakistani girl Nazneen Malik, Kyra Dutt in the role of Sharon Pinto from Goa,
Ruhi Singh as Mayuri Chauhan from Rohtak and Satarupa Pyne as Paroma Ghosh from
Kolkata. The five do not have as much charisma collectively as Tabu, Konkona,
Priyanka or Bipasha possess in one little toe. Avani in particular cannot act
and her personality is completely unsuited to the itsy-bitsy Westernwear that
is the ladies’ wardrobe almost throughout the film.
Kyra and Satarupa hold
out some hope. Kyra acts better than the others, but she either gained weight
half way through the film or is poorly served by the clothes and camera – I
can’t be sure which. Satarupa fits the glamour girl mould better than the rest,
but needs to work on her acting. All five – especially Akanksha, Avani and
Satarupa – suffer greatly from the combined assault of over-done make-up and
poor lighting that highlights rather than camouflages their pancake.
The story is about five
women from diverse backgrounds selected to feature in a high-profile, high-glam
corporate calendar, clearly drawing on Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Calendar. This
is their big break. The film is about the hurdles they face in tinseltown and how
they get past them.
The point being made by Calendar Girls is this: that though films
and modelling are life-suckingly challenging, you don’t necessarily have to
sleep around to make it as is assumed by the public. Now if only this point was
being made in a more polished, less exploitative film.
Madhur’s last two ventures
– Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji and Heroine – were certainly problematic, but
any objections to them are dwarfed by the aura given off by Calendar Girls that he had a low budget here
and/or that he made this as a quickie while waiting for his next project to
take off.
Nothing else can explain
the all-pervading sloppiness of the film. Take for instance the titular calendar.
The Kingfisher Calendar is an exclusive product that is gifted to a select few
people, but the calendar in this film is shown hanging sadly at cheap eateries
in Mumbai.
Elsewhere, at an
agitation against Pakistanis, the protestors include men in skullcaps and women
in burqas. Was a profound point about secularism being made here? If yes, it
was lost on me.
A woman is told by her
dad-in-law that her husband’s serial infidelity is a family “parampara”. She is heart-broken. Without
any evidence given of a progression of feelings, we are later given a passing
shot of the same woman, pregnant and being mollycoddled by that same husband. Had
she accepted the “parampara?” Or had
hubby turned over a new leaf? No idea.
Get get get Idea. Go
go go go, get Idea. Aha ah ah, get Idea.
Don’t mind me. I got so
sleepy revisiting this film for my review that I sang Idea Cellular’s ad jingle
to wake myself up. Now seriously… Calendar
Girls lacks attention to detail.
For instance, TV anchors do not walk away from the camera the second they utter
the last word on a show; they pause briefly to be sure they’re done. You
wouldn’t learn that though if you were to take tips from a character in this
film who is an anchor. Nitpicking, you say? No, demanding finesse.
Filmein
toh bahut banti hai, par film wahi hota hai jo release hoti hai (many films
get made but a film is truly a film only if it is released), says a character
in Calendar Girls to a starlet.
Here’s a thought: Filmein toh bahut banti hai, par kuchh filmein
aisi hai jo release nahin honi chahiye. After Calendar Girls, it will take a lot for Madhur Bhandarkar to redeem
himself.
Rating
(out of five): ½ (half a star)
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CBFC Rating (India):
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A
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Running time:
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132 minutes
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