164: KHILADI 786

Release date:	December 7, 2012
Director:	Ashish R. Mohan
Cast: Language:	Akshay Kumar, Asin, Himesh Reshammiya, Raj Babbar, Mukesh Tiwari, Mukesh Rishi, Mithun Chakraborty, Rahul Singh, Sanjay Mishra, Johnny Lever Hindi

A family of goondas waylays truck drivers on highways and loots them in collusion with the local police. Their son is in search of a bride but no family wants to give him their daughter. A gangster is in search of a husband for his sister, but the combined might of her explosive nature and bro’s explosive career keeps prospective grooms away. The girl is Indu Tendulkar; the ‘boy’ is Bahattar (yes, 72) Singh. You know of course without being told that he is played by Akshay Kumar and she by Asin, that their paths will cross at some point and that they will fall in love.

The name Bahattar forms the crux of one of the film’s many lame jokes. Equally lame is the ‘joke’ that the men in this family are all married to foreigners which means Bahattar’s mother is a white woman and his grandmother is black. This could have been funny except that the point is repeated ad nauseum plus both ladies can’t act. Cliches abound in this film, as frequently as dull songs. In the role of a marriage broker cum wedding planner, Himesh Reshammiya moves his facial muscles here more than he ever has before, but the fact that a non-actor like him gets to hog screen space in all his scenes while the supremely talented Sanjay Mishra is relegated to the role of his sidekick is completely unforgivable, even if Himesh happens to be one of the film’s producers. Johnny Lever appears in a brief role to contort his face a few times. Asin fans may derive consolation from the fact that her character is less insignificant here than she was in Bol Bachchan, but that’s not saying much for an actress who was an established star in southern India when she entered Hindi filmdom with a splash in 2008, before making a series of bad career choices. Still, it must be said that she looks pretty in Khiladi 786, has a natty wardrobe and shows off a refreshingly well-rounded body that’s neither overweight nor skinny in the manner of many of her industry colleagues. 

Nothing, however, illustrates the poor quality of the film’s writing better than the title itself. We’re never given a full explanation for why Bahattar Singh is also widely known as Khiladi 786 in the story (apart from a brief glimpse of one his palms on which the lines form those three numerals), but it doesn’t take much of an IQ to figure out that this is the team’s unsophisticated effort to remind us of Akshay’s run of luck with film titles featuring the word “Khiladi” while also using the numerical significance of 786 to appeal to a community that Bollywood wisdom tells us has primarily been Salman Khan’s catchment area so far. So tacky and in-your-face is the effort that at one point, when Bahattar Singh aka Khiladi 786 has just notched up a major gain in his life, as he walks away from the scene of his victory, he turns to look pointedly at a place of worship that just happens to be there. Finesse is clearly not the strong point of this team.

Equally gauche is the film’s repeated odes to its leading-man-cum-Bollywood-box-office-king-of-2012-so-far Akshay, precisely in the manner that all Salman Khan’s films pay homage to Salman these days. But even a charismatic star like Akshay needs to do more than strut, preen and pose around to be appealing.

It’s not that Khiladi 786 is without any redeeming factors. It actually is genuinely funny in places, my favourite moment being the manner in which Bahattar Singh pronounces the word “valet” to mean something completely different in Hindi. But such moments are few and far between. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind mindless comedies. My issue is that this one is predictable and flat and just occasionally amusing. It actually made me long for Sajid Khan - yes, it is THAT bad.

If your tastes run in the direction of this genre, then here’s another comparison that may help you: with all its loudness and its repetitiveness in the second half, Son of Sardar is a far far far more entertaining film than Khiladi 786. Now have I made myself clear?

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	141 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khiladi_786

REVIEW 143: BOL BACHCHAN

Release date:	July 6, 2012
Director:	Rohit Shetty
Cast:	Abhishek Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Archana Puran Singh, Asrani, Asin, Prachi Desai, Guest appearance by Amitabh Bachchan

Rohit Shetty does not know this but Bol Bachchan is actually a suspense thriller. So utterly over-the-top and exaggerated are Ajay Devgn’s lines in the film, that after a while I derived much of my enjoyment just trying to predict what his Prithviraj Raghuvanshi would say next. It’s all quite crazily ridiculous, but then that’s not such a bad thing in a world where we’ve got so much to be serious about. Prithviraj is a village pehelwan-type who is so in love with English that he massacres it every time he speaks. You’ve heard that his “chest has become a blouse” from the film’s promos. Do you also know that’s his way of saying someone has done him proud? When a young man interrupts a conversation between two older persons, Pratap chides him with, “When elder get cosy, younger don’t put nosy.” He also at one point doles out this wisdom: “Hard work is the keyhole to the saxophone.” There are dozens and dozens more where that came from!  

Yes yes, if you stop to think, it’s all quite silly, but the film’s leading men seem to be having such a good time that it’s hard not to be drawn into the madness. It starts off rather dull though – that’s when the writers get characters who know each other well to discuss their back stories with each other in a way real people never would. Perhaps they couldn’t think of a better device to give us a backgrounder. The story is about Abbas Ali (Abhishek Bachchan) and Sania (Asin), siblings from Delhi whose financial struggles prompt them to move to their uncle’s village of Ranakpur, Rajasthan. The uncle introduces them to his boss Pratap (Ajay Devgn) who offers Abbas a job … except that he does not know his employee’s real name because circumstances led to a lie as a result of which Abbas was introduced to Pratap by the name Abhishek Bachchan.

I’m not telling you more of the story, but since you already know that Bol Bachchan is a remake of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Amol Palekar-Utpal Dutt-starrer Golmaal, you may as well know this too: that while Utpal Dutt’s character hated men without moustaches, Ajay’s Pratap  in Bol Bachchan hates lies and liars; the Bindiya Goswami equivalent in this film is played by Prachi Desai who is Pratap’s sister; and a mujrewaali played by Archana Puran Singh steps into the role of Dina Pathak’s character from the old film. Bol Bachchan’s music by Himesh Reshammiya and Ajay-Atul is an absolute downer, which gave me an ache in the heart because Aane waala kal sung by Kishore Kumar for Amol Palekar in the old film is one of my all-time favourites! Know this too … that Hrishida provides only the skeleton for this film which is far far far removed from the understated mania of the original. Bol Bachchan is, in contrast, a comedy of errors completely in the Rohit Shetty mould with hard-core action scenes featuring fisticuffs and big cars against a background score that’s often too loud for its own good. But the overall effect, it has to be said, is quite a bit of fun.

It’s not often that Abhishek Bachchan relaxes and completely lets his hair down before the camera. Here though, Shetty has managed to get him to do both to good effect. When the actor performs “Kathak” it looks unforgivably like a blend of bhangra, garba and nothingness, but who cares, right?! Also, Bachchan jr’s transformation from Abbas to Abhishek to the third supposedly homosexual character he plays in the film is interesting because although his interpretation of “gay” subscribes to the stereotype, he stops short of being offensively caricaturish the way so many Hindi film portrayals of homosexual men have been.

Prachi is effective in a small role, and her designer for the film really needs to tell me where they went shopping for all those lovely outfits. Asin, on the other hand, is so marginal to the proceedings that she needs to do a serious rethink about the choices she’s making in Bollywood after having made such an indelible mark in southern Indian cinema. Asrani is endearing as ever.

However, the scene stealers in Bol Bachchan are Ajay Devgn and Archana Puran Singh. The latter is an absolute hoot as a woman struggling to play a sedate mother while being an incorrigible seductress in reality ... though it’s a sign of the industry’s inescapable sexist ageism that heroes in their 40s act as the lovers of heroines in their 20s without batting an eyelid, but 49-year-old Archana is considered “too old” to play 36-year-old Abhishek Bachchan’s sister, but the right age to play his mother! Ah well … if she doesn’t mind, why am I protesting on her behalf?!

It’s lovely to see Ajay’s evolution in comedy from the days when he deadpanned his way through David Dhawan’s Hum Kisise Kum Nahin to the rollicking time he’s having in Bol Bachchan. His acting, his characterisation by the writing team, and the absolute and deliberate defiance of logic in the writing and delivery of his dialogues are what make Bol Bachchan worth a watch.

For the most part, the director and the actors keep the pace just right … There are scenes that intermittently fall flat though, the most important of those being the one in which Abhishek and Ajay try to do a flashback to Amol and Utpal in the original Golmaal … nope, I’m afraid these gentlemen are not good mimics. What they are though, is having a blast. And surprise surprise, the film also has a neatly woven in message of secularism that comes in the form of the very backbone of the story – Abbas/Abhishek’s lie. Although it is stated loud and clear it does not for a second sound like lecturebaazi. Arrey waah, Rohit Shetty…aap se yeh ummeed nahin thi!

Rating (out of five): **3/4

Language:                              Hindi

Censor rating:                       U/A

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

REVIEW 128: HOUSEFULL 2

Release date:	April 6, 2012
Director:	Sajid Khan
Cast:	Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Riteish Deshmukh, Shreyas Talpade, Rishi Kapoor, Randhir Kapoor, Asin, Mithun Chakraborty, Jacqueline Fernandez, Zarine Khan, Boman Irani, Johnny Lever, Malaika Arora Khan, Shazahn Padamsee

I can deal with Salman Khan urinating on a haystack in Anees Bazmee’s Ready. I can even take the farting ape of Bazmee’s No Problem. I can forgive the now predictable scenario that unfolds at the end of pretty much every Priyadarshan comedy, with the film’s entire cast congregating at one place and chasing each other in circles. But nothing, absolutely nothing, is an excuse for The Great Bollywood Rape Joke.

It was the last straw for me in Housefull 2. It came in a scene in which Sunny (Akshay Kumar) visits his father in the film. Dad is played by Ranjeet, villain of yesteryears. In an allusion to the numerous rape scenes the actor has shot through his career, the name plate behind him reads, “Dr Ranjeet V. Asna K. Pujari”. Get it? Vasna ke pujari? Devotee of lust? Yawn. That’s supposed to be his name. And below that comes the word “therapist”, except that the letter “e” has got partially unhinged from the board, so that it reads, “the rapist”.

When will Bollywood stop treating rape as a source of amusement? Sickening!

It can’t possibly get lower than this, I thought. But I was wrong. Towards the end of the film, when Sunny visits Dad again to introduce him to his bahu (Asin), the old man does not realise that the pretty girl before him is his daughter-in-law. So he leers and approaches her while gradually unbuttoning his clothes and lasciviously chanting the word, “beauty … beauty … beauty,” with every step he takes. Stop! Dad, she’s your bahu, says the son. Creepy Dad halts in his tracks, starts buttoning up again and retraces his steps, while still ogling her and now chanting, “Beti … beti … beti …”

Ugh! Yikes! Ewwww!

How Asin – Bollywood newcomer but star of southern Indian cinema – could have subjected herself to such a scene is beyond me. So I’ll say it again: I have no problem with the crocodile in Housefull 2 biting the bottom of Jolly (Riteish Deshmukh). I can close my eyes to the scene in which a python clings to the penis of Jai (Shreyas Talpade). I can even survive all those shots of lecherous Sunny’s tongue marginally lolling out. But I draw the line at rape!

Let me be very clear about this: I actually do enjoy the occasional mindless comedy and I realise that slapstick humour is often politically incorrect by nature. Despite its rampant sexism, I still laughed through No Entry. In spite of its overt homophobia and crudeness, Kya Kool Hai Hum cracked me up. Welcome was silly but hilarious. The Golmaal series maybe juvenile but I actually had fun with Golmaal 2&3. Though most critics in this country ripped Housefull to bits, I didn’t mind it too much. And what the heck, I found DesiBoyz and parts of F.A.L.T.U. funny. But there is a difference between being cheeky and being distasteful, between being politically incorrect and downright insensitive. And I suspect even diehard devotees of brainlessness would agree with me that when a film maker repeats his own successful formula, it can get boring.

And so, if in Housefull Sajid Khan gave us two men trying to deceive one father and one brother in collusion with two pretty women, he takes the “2” in Housefull 2 rather literally, giving us four men trying to deceive four fathers in collusion with four pretty women whose primary job is to look smashing in skimpy outfits. If in Housefull we were given the song Papa jag jaayega, here in Housefull 2 we get Papa toh band bajaye and Right now. Most of the dialogues involve rhyming words such as Sunny saying, “Langurs, have my angoors.” No you dirty people, it’s not what you are thinking, he’s actually offering grapes – the fruit – to guests!

The formulaic repetitiveness of the plot and dialogues are quite tragic because on a good day, Akshay, Asin, Riteish and Shreyas can be killer comics, and it was nice to see how John had evolved from being Akshay’s sidekick in Garam Masala to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Akki in Desi Boyz. Besides, there’s some serious … uh … erm … chemistry between Akshay and John here. And the déjà vu notwithstanding, the songs are catchy, visually attractive and well choreographed. Despite everything I’ve said before this, I’ll concede too that there are some genuinely entertaining scenes here and there in the film (especially the ones involving Rishi Kapoor and a wisecrack offered by Johnny Lever about a man, his pregnant mother, his gullible father and their driver). But these scenes are few and far between, there are too many intermittent slow patches and there’s too much that’s a reminder of Housefull in Housefull 2.

But congratulations all the same, Sajid Khan! In Aakhree Pasta (Chunkey Pandey) you have managed to create one of the most irritating characters I’ve seen in a Bollywood comedy. As for you, Shreyas Talpade, having seen you in Nagesh Kukunoor’s splendidly sensitive Iqbal and witnessed your comic abilities in Om Shanti Om, it hurts to watch you in this film!

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating:                       U/A
Language:                              Hindi

Photograph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housefull_2:_The_Dirty_Dozen