REVIEW 655: BHAIAJI SUPERHITTT

Release date:	November 23, 2018
Director:	Neerraj Pathak
Cast: Language:	Sunny Deol, Preity Zinta, Ameesha Patel, Arshad Warsi, Shreyas Talpade, Jaideep Ahlawat, Pankaj Tripathi, Brijendra Kala, Mukul Dev, Ranjeet Hindi with a bit of Punjabi

If you thought Sunny Deol uprooting a hand pump and scaring the Pakistan army by hollering at them was a landmark moment in Indian diplomacy, then you must give his new film a shot. In a climactic battle in Bhaiaji Superhittt, Deol lifts up an entire SUV when he finds it pinning his wife down on a rail track while a speeding engine approaches. No Romeo has yet done that for his Juliet, no Majnu for his Laila, but then of course neither gentleman was blessed with this hero’s dhai kilo ke haath that have been known to achieve what hordes cannot manage.

Deol here plays the Benares-based gangster Deen Dayal Dubey a.k.a. 3D Bhaiaji a.k.a. Bhaiaji who decides to produce a romantic film about his love story to win back his suspicious spouse Sapna (Preity Zinta) when she leaves him accusing him of infidelity. His collaborators on this project are the avaricious Bollywood director Goldie Kapoor (Arshad Warsi), the struggling Bengali writer Porno Ghosh (Shreyas Talpade) and the manipulative movie star Mallika Kapoor (Ameesha Patel).

The hoodlum with a heart of gold who melts into an emotional puddle in matters involving the woman he adores has been done to death by cinemas across the world, and this Bollywood version has nothing new to offer. Nothing. I repeat, N-O-T-H-I-N-G. 

The colours of the costumes and sets are as loud as any you have seen in Akshay Kumar’s comedies of the past two decades. And the screenplay is packed with formulaic elements that dominated 1970s and ‘80s Hindi films. This includes a long-drawn-out closing passage in which all the players in the drama gather at one spot to engage in fisticuffs that take them from what looks like a deserted factory to a railway line to a cliff where the lead couple hang precariously, using the opportunity for a reconciliation. One small change from an earlier era: here the heroine does not stand whimpering and watching, she bashes up a bunch of bad guys herself.

Lord Shiva is a recurring motif that goes nowhere. Sometimes the writer introduces clichés just for the heck of it without knowing what to do with them. In the second half, for instance, Bhaiaji’s doppelganger appears on the scene, which might cause you to assume that a Shakespearean comedy of errors is about to unfold, but no, it does not. This chap, a squeaky-voiced aspiring actor, is also – obviously – played by Deol. His arrival makes no difference to the plot, and his erasure would have left the outcome unchanged.

If writer-director Neerraj Pathak and his co-writers thought they were spoofing Bollywood, then here too they hold out little novelty value. Deol, for one, has done enough self-referential parodies of his He-Man screen avatar since Gadar for this aspect too to feel stale.

Still, there are moments when the project’s comic potential peeps through, such as in that scene in which Bhaiaji yells at someone for dancing “like a woman” while filming a romantic number, and demands that his moves be more macho. The swiftness with which the fellow switches to aggression is amusing. Deol is not the world’s greatest actor (to put it kindly), and yes, he hollers and grimaces in Bhaiaji Superhittt as he always does, but what comes to his rescue here is what seems like a determination to not take himself seriously, which makes it hard to dislike him even while disliking the film.

Zinta, who is appearing on screen after a long gap, looks pretty and is fair enough as Sapna Dubey, but the role does not challenge her as it should a woman of her immense talent.

The supporting cast features some wonderful actors, though it is unclear why Pathak bothered to cast them since he fails to tap their abilities in anyway. Jaideep Ahlawat (Gangs of Wasseypur) and Pankaj Tripathi (Newton, Nil Battey Sannata, Gurgaon) are completely wasted here.

It is Arshad Warsi’s comic timing that saves Bhaiaji Superhittt from being an absolute cipher, and the reason why I am going with a 0.5 rating instead of zero. I found myself occasionally giggling in spite of myself around Warsi’s Goldie Kapoor, though I must say I laughed out loud only once, and that was when the aforementioned train engine was hurtling towards Bhaiaji and Sapna, and I thought Pathak & Co intended to get Deol/Bhaiaji to stop it with his bare hands. Maybe that is what they should have tried if they wanted to go all out in the direction of a Bollywood parody of Bollywood formulae, but the breadth of this film’s imagination is too limited for that.

Bhaiaji Superhittt has been in the making for almost a decade, but its mediocrity can hardly be blamed on the delay. The film is a regurgitation of numerous Hindi films made in the past 50 years. It feels so dated that the only originality I could spot are the three Ts in the second word of the title and the two Rs in the director’s first name – neither innovation is worth the price of my ticket.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	133 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bhaiaji-superhittt-movie-review-sunny-deol-screams-preity-zinta-pouts-in-a-jurassic-era-relic-with-a-sliver-of-comic-potential-5605181.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhaiaji_Superhit

REVIEW 200: SHORTCUT ROMEO

Release date:	June 21, 2013
Director:	Susi Ganeshan
Cast: Language:	Neil Nitin Mukesh, Ameesha Patel, Puja Gupta Hindi

Shortcut Romeo doggedly pursues a formula Bollywood’s better directors have been trying to eschew. Songs in this film don’t even pretend to take the narrative forward. No effort has been made to smoothen out the arrival of a musical number or its end. Unlike many of today’s film makers who facilitate a character’s visit to a nightclub to justify the insertion of a song-and-dance interlude at a particular point, this one does not bother even with that. No sir, writer-director Susi Ganeshan simply stuffs song after unremarkable song into Shortcut Romeo as and when he wishes – abruptly, and sometimes to comical effect as a consequence.

Still, there are actually quite a few attractive individual elements in this film which is the Hindi remake of Ganeshan’s own Tamil film Thiruttu Payale. For one there’s leading man Neil Nitin Mukesh who is delightfully evil and vulnerable by turns in Shortcut Romeo. Former Miss India Puja Gupta fills out her role as well as she fills out a stunning little bikini in this film. She has evolved very swiftly from her so-so-ness in F.A.L.T.U. in 2011 to her brief though effective turn in Go Goa Gone earlier this year to the sweet likeability of her performance here.

If you consider just the kernel of Shortcut Romeo’s story, you’d see that it has potential. A con man called Suraj (Neil) blackmails the wealthy Monica (Ameesha Patel) with a video of her doing the dirty with her husband’s friend. The two play cat-and-mouse games to outwit each other, he to get millions out of her, she to get back that video. The husband is too busy making those millions to give her time but he loves her immensely all the same. Ridden with guilt, Monica wants to get out of her affair but is tied down by Suraj’s blackmail and her boyfriend’s refusal now to let her go. Everything changes though when Suraj meets the heiress Sherry (Puja Gupta) while on a vacation in Kenya paid for by Monica, and falls deeply in love.

The desperation of a woman blackmailed, the transformation of a man in love, the pain of a husband cheated by a beloved wife can all be compelling. Yet Shortcut Romeo falls terribly short. Apart from the tendency to unceremoniously thrust songs into the proceedings, the film also gives its hero an unconvincing emotional graph. Suraj’s physical attraction towards Sherry is plausible, but considering that they barely get to know each other on that trip, it’s hard to digest his all-consuming love; a love for which he turns his back on a lifetime of trickery at Sherry’s request, settles for a middle-class existence and takes up a job to honestly earn his bread. Can a bikini have such a life-changing effect on a man?! Just kidding.

But seriously… The depth and sincerity of Suraj’s love for Sherry is inexplicable, making it hard as a viewer to invest in their relationship. What makes it hard to invest in the film as a whole though is that the pivotal role of Monica is played by an actress who can’t act to save her life. (SPOILERS AHEAD!) This was a role that required a much greater talent, someone who could effectively switch from the helplessness of a blackmail victim whenever she’s cornered to the viciousness she’s capable of in the battle with her blackmailer to the triumph each time she thinks she’s outsmarted him to the penitence of the wife who’s gone astray to her heartbreak when she is raped by her boyfriend under threat that he’ll inform her husband about their affair unless she gives in. In the telling of that last episode, Ganeshan does something that few people in the Hindi film industry – or our society at large – would do. He does not adopt a “she asked for it” tone. Bless him for that. Ameesha gives her best to the character but that, sadly, is far from enough.

She is not, however, the film’s only weakness. Ganeshan’s direction is inconsistent. There’s a disconnect between his storytelling style in different parts of the film. Plus he elongates a story that might have been effective as a one-and-a-half-hour songless thriller into an over-two-and-a-half-hour long, song-filled affair. There are actually some rather well-told portions in this film, most notably the poignant flashback to Suraj’s childhood which explains how and why he developed a weakness for shortcuts to wealth. The action sequences where Suraj is fighting off goons sent by Monica (especially the one in Kenya) are smoothly executed. It’s interesting too that Ganeshan chose to explore Kenya as a location for Suraj’s vacation. Bollywood is fixated on North America, Europe and more recently, Australia. The wilds of Africa lend themselves to many breathtaking shots in this film, but bereft of emotional heft, those scenes end up seeming better suited to a Discovery channel documentary than a fiction feature. Vrajesh Hirjee’s entry with four African women in tow shaking their booty to Bollywood item numbers is like most of Hirjee’s film appearances: irritating, cringe-worthy, and unconnected to the rest of the film. Logic is not always a priority here. How, for instance, does an innocent and poor, usually-cotton-salwar-kameez-clad girl (don’t ask who) transform overnight into a glamorous, swimsuit-wearing sophisticate? No idea. And that’s the way the film goes: crest, trough, crest, trough, up, down, high point, low point, high point… The last half hour of Shortcut Romeo holds out several surprises. The tautness of the narrative at this point is what Ganeshan should have gone for throughout. Sadly, by then it’s too late to salvage the film.

Rating (out of five): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	153 minutes (as per pvrcinemas.com)

Photograph courtesy: Effective Communication

169: RACE 2

Release date:	January 25, 2013
Director:	Abbas Mustan
Cast: Language:	Saif Ali Khan, John Abraham, Anil Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Jacqueline Fernandez, Ameesha Patel, Special appearance by Bipasha Basu  Hindi

Watching Race 2 is somewhat like the experience of watching Dabangg 2. You know someone has found a winning formula, regurgitated every single element from the first instalment, put little thought into the sequel and served up a similar product. So yeah, there’s a bit of mindless fun to be had with Race 2, but for the most part it is such an unimaginative replication of Race 1 that it’s hard not to feel taken for granted as a viewer.

The story, if you can call it that, marks the return of Ranveer Singh (Saif Ali Khan) to the scene, this time determined to take revenge – for reasons I shall not give away – on new-entrant-in-the-series Armaan Malik, a millionaire casino owner played by John Abraham. Anil Kapoor is back as the fruit-obsessed Robert D’Costa aka RD, an ex-cop whose seemingly goofy demeanour masks a sharp, crooked mind. Since hot women in skimpy clothing are mandatory in the Race formula, this time we get Deepika Padukone playing Armaan’s half-sister Alena while Jacqueline Fernandez is his girlfriend Omisha. Katrina Kaif's character died in the original film, but here Sameera Reddy and Bipasha Basu too are done away with for flimsy reasons. Bipasha does make a fleeting appearance as Ranveer’s lover from Race 1, perhaps to prove to those of us who care about such things that Abbas Mustan are not complete MCPs who treat women as dispensable commodities in their stories while male stars are considered irreplaceable.

Actually, never mind the story … there’s not much of it. All you need to know is that as in the case of Race, in Race 2 too you never know who is double-crossing, triple-crossing or quadruple-crossing an associate. But there was a freshness to Race that made it effective, a certain intelligence with which the twists were engineered. Race 2’s unpredictability gets predictable after a point. It doesn’t help that the thriller elements are embarrassingly half-baked and contrived. This leads to some unintentionally comic situations, epitomised by a scene in which a bomb is placed in a briefcase at the entrance to the Italian church that houses the world-renowned Shroud of Turin. The guard at the gate spots the bomb, runs to the phone and … did you think he’d call the police?!! No no no, he phones a nun inside the building and informs her of the bomb! It occurs to the bright chap to call the police only when the sweet nun instructs him on the phone: Call the bomb squad!

It gets worse! Secret codes are cracked in the most childish fashion. Hardened criminals don’t bother for hours on end to check bags of cash delivered to them. Perfect timing is achieved not through precise planning but because the screenplay writer chose to make matters convenient for the hero. And frankly, the leading man achieves his goal because the biggest crook in the film is a darned stupid, gullible ass who forgets the weapons in his own armory that he has described in detail to the enemy.

Race 2 also continually crosses the line between cool and trying-too-hard-to-be-cool. Imagine the tackiness of the writing in a film where Omisha says to Ranveer: “Men are many but money is money.” Hehe … that’s as kindergarten-ish as RD’s voiceover describing her as “the big O (pause for effect) Omisha” right after he describes Armaan’s only weakness other than money as “the big F (pause for effect) Females”. And you can imagine the puerile jokes that are spun off the fact that RD’s new ditsy assistant goes by the name Cherry. Uff!

Everyone looks great here … as they did in Race. Everyone wears great clothes … as they did in Race. Everyone is lying to someone … as they did in Race. Like the writer and directors, the music directors too seem not to have a new idea in their bag of tricks. So, like Munni badnaam hui in Dabangg 2, the fabulous Allah duhai hai is resurrected in Race 2. The rest of the music, though hummable, fails to match up to Race’s excellent soundtrack. Even the insertion of the songs into the narrative is abrupt, almost becoming laughable when a couple in the film start making love and precisely at that point, voices in the background blare out the song Be intehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

For a film that clearly prides itself on its new-age slickness and style, its ironical that the most fun in Race 2 comes from good old chases on foot and raw hand-to-hand combat: Ranveer pursuing a killer through the streets ... Armaan drawing blood in the fighting ring ... dishum dishum between Armaan and Ranveer on a plane, which is the point at which the film should have ended, but did not ... just as this story should have ended with Race 1, but did not.  

  

Rating (out of five): **1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	146 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_2