Release
date:
|
October 18, 2018
|
Director:
|
Vipul Amrutlal
Shah
|
Cast:
Language:
|
Parineeti Chopra, Arjun Kapoor, Aditya Seal,
Alankrita Sahai, Mallika Dua, Satish Kaushik, Anil Mange
Hindi, Punjabi |
You know feminism
has been identified as the hot, saleable fad and formula of the season, when
producer-director Vipul Amrutlal Shah starts caring about the concerns of the
womaniya in his film. This is the same Vipul Shah who produced Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty
(2014), in
which Akshay Kumar’s character relentlessly stalks the heroine (Sonakshi
Sinha), treats her disinterest with disdain, physically assaults her in public
– shortly after which she falls in love with him, because as conventional wisdom
in Bollywood has long held, the way to a woman’s heart is through
molestation – and later tells her that women like her intentionally send
misleading signals to men but slam men for responding to those signals.
Yes, THAT Shah who
backed THAT misogynistic film,
has now decided that women’s views matter. And so in his directorial venture Namaste England, which is in theatres
this week, he makes a bizarre, garbled attempt at advocating the rights of
one Jasmeet played by Parineeti Chopra. She is a jewellery designer whose
conservative Granddaddy thinks women should not have careers. Convinced of her
uterus’ duty to the world, the old fellow gets her future Dad-in-law to promise
never to ‘allow’ her to work. In this Punjab of Shah’s fantasy, far removed
from the conservative Punjab of reality, the ladkewaale actually let the ladkiwaale
dictate terms to them.
All this comes
after Jasmeet has been sighted, selected and courted by Param (Arjun Kapoor)
through passing seasons, successive festivals, multiple costume changes and the long Hindi-Punjabi song Dhoom
dhadakka with the refrain “Tim lakk
lakk te / tim lakk lakk te / tim lakk lakk te re...”, which my
tortured soul now chooses
to remember as “Dim luck luck te / dim luck luck te /
dim luck luck tere” being hurled as a
taunt at us unlucky critics professionally compelled to watch this dim-witted
film.
After seeing Namaste England, I happened to catch a
few minutes of an interview with Chopra and Kapoor on NDTV in which the
gentleman laughingly said his co-star is such a fan of Shah’s Namastey London (2007) that he thinks
she agreed to do this film on hearing its name, without bothering to read the
script. That could explain why Chopra, who comes across as a reasonably
intelligent woman, would have hitched herself to this ridiculously illogical
mess. But what of Kapoor himself? He actually spoke in that interview of Namaste England operating at multiple
levels. All I spotted was one level: sheer stupidity. A more
appropriate title would have been Alvida
Common Sense.
Bollywood villains
of the past have committed murder and other unspeakable acts of violence, burnt entire villages and abducted children to take revenge on righteous heroes, but the bad
guy in Namaste England commits the
ultimate 21st century act of villainy, the very worst thing you could do to any
Punjabi munda: he uses his clout to
ensure that the leading man never gets a
– wait for it! – visa for Europe.
And so Jasmeet
comes up with a seriously hare-brained idea to get herself to England, a move
which – I am not sure how – is guaranteed, in her view, to fulfill her dreams. Param,
who we are pointedly told is a farmer and an MSc in Agricultural Sciences,
seems to have nothing better to do than hatch another hare-brained idea to get himself
there too and track her down. Along the way there are lectures on love, India’s
greatness and illegal immigration, a wan second male lead played by Aditya
Seal who is well suited to this insipid film, and a second female lead played
by the interesting Alankrita Sahai who deserves better than this rubbish.
I still have no
clue why Jasmeet thought getting to England would help her conquer her
grandfather’s narrow-mindedness or why Param sagely stated that this is the
first time he has heard of a wife having an affair with another city rather
than another man. I stopped trying to make sense of this contrived plot when I
noticed that in scenes in which Jasmeet is supposedly crying, Parineeti Chopra
looks like she is trying hard to suppress her laughter. I swear I am not
imagining this.
Taking a cue from
her, I am not trying to decipher the rest of the story for you.
I realise this may
not be the popular opinion this week, but I do think there is untapped
potential in both Ms Chopra and Mr Kapoor. She lit up the screen in her debut
film Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl (2011), but is yet
to match up to that early spark. His brooding intensity could evolve into
something special in the hands of better directors and scripts. Obviously, he
gets neither in this ludicrous project.
Namastey London, which Shah directed, was fun even if occasionally silly and intermittently stereotypical, and
was elevated to more than it might otherwise have been by Akshay
Kumar and Katrina
Kaif’s combined charisma. To call Namaste England
merely silly would be a compliment. It is a cinematic zero.
Rating (out of five stars): 0
CBFC Rating (India):
|
UA
|
Running time:
|
135 minutes
|
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