Crew: Girls just wanna have fun and break the law – Bollywood finally gets it (Review 801)

 

Release date:	March 29, 2024
Director:	Rajesh A. Krishnan
Cast:	Tabu, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Kriti Sanon, Rajesh Sharma, Saswata Chatterjee, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Kapil Sharma, Diljit Dosanjh, Trupti Khamkar
Language:	Hindi

   

Why are women-centric films always about serious issues? Why don’t we get to act in crazy comedies of the kind routinely made for guys? I remember Madhuri Dixit Nene raising these questions in an interview she gave me about 20 years back while I was with The Indian Express. Back then, blue moons would pass between goofy, fun flicks revolving around women, such as Seeta aur Geeta (1972) starring Hema Malini, Khoobsurat (1980) with Rekha, Chaalbaaz (1989) headlined by the great Sridevi, and Dixit’s own Raja (1995). The Hindi film industry’s approach to comedies is still unfair to women, but it has improved in recent years, owing considerably to the producer Rhea Kapoor whose latest screen adventure is Crew, jointly produced by Ektaa Kapoor, directed by Rajesh A. Krishnan, written by Nidhi Mehra and Mehul Suri.     

Starring Tabu, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Kriti Sanon, Crew comes not far behind 2023’s Thank You for Coming! in which Bhumi Pednekar’s character (spoiler alert, hehe) attained sexual nirvana at her own hands after years of trial and error in bed with men. In Crew, Geeta Sethi (Tabu), Jasmine (Kapoor Khan) and Divya Rana (Sanon) have settled for their respective Plan Bs because Plan A has not (or not yet) worked out. They are flight attendants on a sinking ship called Kohinoor Airlines run by the stinking rich and corrupt Vijay Walia. The minimal effort invested in disguising the real-life entities referenced here is just one of the sources of amusement coming at us from all directions in Crew.  

 

Geeta has long wanted to use her PF to start an eatery in Goa with her husband (Kapil Sharma), but Kohinoor is not paying up. Jasmine is waiting for her business idea to find takers. Divya was an academic achiever and ace athlete in school whose actual aim was to be a pilot. As Kohinoor gradually goes under and the friends see their dreams receding further into the distance, they decide to break the law in a bid to improve their bank balances and ultimately, to also get back at the unscrupulous Walia. Their mini scams culminate in one big fat heist.  

  

Crew has no pretensions to being intellectual. The tone is determinedly flip for the most part. To dismiss it as mindless would be wrong though. In a cinematic universe where Dixit Nene’s hope for women is still only being fulfilled in baby steps, Crew’s significance lies in the way it defies the industry’s tradition of equating “women-centric” with “grave” and “weepie”.  

  

Discrimination, harassment and violence are intrinsic to the experience of being female in most cultures, but laughter is one of the tools that helps us survive – and finally, finally, the Hindi film industry seems to be getting it. Crew is part of the emerging trend sparked by this realisation. The bonus here is that, as with other women-led Hindi film comedies so far, the director and writers of Crew too demonstrate that it is possible to elicit laughs without being sexist in the way makers of mass-targeted men-centric comedies usually are.  

 

After years of crass quips about women’s bodies and rape jokes in men-centric comedies, it is a pleasure to see the agency in a film’s humour being handed to its women characters, and to watch these women crack up as they toss double entendre about themselves at each other without trivialising violence or themselves or women at large. When a passenger gets handsy with one of the trio in Crew, his conduct is not humourised. What is humourised is his shock at a woman striking back. And guess what, Dudes Who Write Sexist Comedy? Team Mehra & Suri have written an entire women-centred comedy film without a single wisecrack about the rape of men. 

  

The lesson from Crew for the likes of Indra Kumar (the Masti series) and Sajid Khan (Housefull 2) is this: you can joke about sex without demeaning other genders, without making light of violence, and without lazily aiming at the oppressed and their oppression. 

  

The film is high on energy owing to its unrelenting plot developments and infectious music, in particular the reboot of the blockbuster number Choli ke peeche from Subhash Ghai’s Khalnayak (1993) and Sona kitna sona hai remixed from David Dhawan’s Hero No. 1 (1997). Geeta, Jasmine and Divya are spunky, funny and flawed. Though they have a mountain of troubles on their plates, their ruminative and sorrowful moments are never maudlin.  

 

Crew’s script and craft could have done with some polishing up though. There is, for instance, an awkwardly shot post-interval scene in which the three women hide behind a luggage trolley, and for some seconds, it looks like a decapitated Kapoor Khan’s head is on top of a suitcase. Sanon does not come off much better in that frame. If this was intentional, it would have been a hoot, but it comes across as unwitting. Greater finesse would have made Crew a better film and a different film but as things stand, it is both entertaining and thoughtful, despite its rough edges.  

  

I want to believe that Crew’s and Laapataa Ladies’ simultaneous success at the box office marks an important turning point for the representation of women in mainstream Hindi cinema. For the record, both are very different. Laapataa Ladies is sublime and finessed. Crew is rambunctious (in a good way) but some of the writing also feels hurried. The heist, for instance, is simplistic. What makes it work nevertheless is that the narrative pace and the cast’s conviction leave little time for analysis. Frankly, I have felt no differently about most heist films I have watched. This genre tends to demand a suspension of disbelief. A filmmaker’s challenge is to convince the audience that the film is worth that effort. Krishnan is very much up to the task. 

  

Geeta, Jasmine and Divya get equal treatment and space in Crew’s screenplay. Cinematographer Anuj Rakesh Dhawan has also shot them without celebrating one body over the other, without being sheepish about any one’s girth or complexion, without de-emphasising any one’s age.  

Tabu is now reportedly 52, Kapoor Khan is 43, Sanon is 33. The camera does not make any visible distinction between them. Any concessions made have been made unobtrusively.  

 

Dhawan’s work in Crew, no doubt in keeping with Krishnan’s vision, is a reminder that, as I wrote in The Economic Times in the context of Laapataa Ladies, “‘The male gaze’ is not merely ‘the gaze of a man’. It is the gaze of a man who lacks empathy... Likewise, ‘the female gaze’ is not merely ‘the gaze of a woman’. It is the gaze of a woman who possesses empathy.” Illustrating this premise, the women in Crew are treated as people, not mere bodies. That each in her own way has a fabulous body is a bonus, which too is celebrated unapologetically. 

 

Given the care that has gone into these choices, I do not see why Crew’s soundtrack is dominated by male voices or why the heroines are shown lip syncing to a male singer’s voice in the end.  

 

In an interview she gave me after Veere Di Wedding, Rhea Kapoor had explained why she got Badshah to sing Tareefanfor the central female quartet: “The idea came from this Beyonce-Jay Z video where Beyonce has kind of taken on Jay Z’s mantle and kind of raps for him – there’s something so f*cking empowering about that.” The problem is that a woman singing for a man has been used over time as a comical device in films, so describing the reverse – a man singing for a woman actor – as “empowering” comes from the same subconscious conditioning that has got even progressive women equating the “balls”, not the uterus or vagina, with courage. 

 

This discordant note particularly stands out because Kapoor, Krishnan & Co have got so much else right here. Quite unusually for an overtly commercial film, Crew’s scriptwriters do not view the presence of a male romantic partner as mandatory to complete a woman. The leads don’t measure their self-worth in such terms either. Geeta has a warm relationship with her spouse that is unconventional going by society’s expectations of who ought to be the income provider in a family. Without batting an eyelid, the writers write Jasmine as a single woman, while Divya bumps into an old flame (Diljit Dosanjh).  

 

There is so much that Crew does unobtrusively while doggedly entertaining us, that its politics could easily be underrated. Its attitude to women apart, note how a turbanned Sikh is not only the romantic interest of a glamorous woman, Dhawan’s camerawork and Dosanjh’s vibe in the role purposefully make the man sexy. This is not a lens that usually falls on Sikh men in Hindi cinema who have for decades been positioned variously as boisterous, patriotic, dutiful, loyal, comical, buffoonish, innocent and loveable, but rarely as hotties. Nice touch.  

  

Krishnan’s first film, Lootcase (2020), too dealt with a primary character’s questionable morality and ill-gotten wealth. It was well begun but half done. In Crew, he lives up to the initial promise of a lark right till the end without once treating the audience like idiots or insensitive jerks.  

 

The smart script is elevated by Tabu, Kapoor Khan and Sanon’s crackling chemistry. The casting coup goes well beyond their stardom. The three come across as real-life friends who had a blast while shooting this film. Their enjoyment is contagious and makes for a cracking combination with their natural affinity for comedy, adding yet another feather to Rhea Kapoor’s expanding filmography of resolutely women-centric, resolutely hilarious-not-stupid Hindi cinema.  

      

Rating (out of 5 stars): 3.5   

 

Running time:

120 minutes

 

Visuals courtesy: IMDB 

 

RELATED LINK: Read my column in The Economic Times on Laapataa Ladies and the female gaze published on February 18, 2024

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/et-commentary/engazing-with-empathy-through-the-female-gaze/articleshow/107783299.cms 

 

REVIEW 754: PANIPAT

Release date:	December 6, 2019
Director:	Ashutosh Gowariker
Cast: Language:	Arjun Kapoor, Kriti Sanon, Sanjay Dutt, Mantra, Mohnish Bahl, Padmini Kolhapure, Zeenat Aman, Nawab Shah Hindi with a bit of Marathi

The bar for Hindi film historicals plunged to unprecedented depths last year when Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat brazenly edited the truth to cash in on the anti-Muslim sentiment currently pervading India. Since then, Anurag Singh’s Kesari has rivalled that all-time low, distorting a 19th century battle by a Sikh regiment of the British Indian Army against Pathan forces, demonising the Muslim Pathans and rewriting the episode as a long-term fight by the Sikhs for India’s Independence.

History has been one of the many casualties of this era of fake news.

It is a measure of the abysmal state of Bollywood that it comes as a relief that Panipat is not an Islamophobic film. The Third Battle of Panipat was fought at that historic site in north India between the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali and the Marathas. though the writing team and director Ashutosh Gowariker (maker of Lagaan, Swades and Jodhaa Akbar) do take liberties with crucial facts here, at least they do not falsely paint this as a war between Muslim monsters and Hindu saints.

This is not to suggest that the film is bereft of caricatures. Of course not. The point simply is that the caricaturing in Panipat is not along religious lines, it is employed instead to portray the Marathas – their Muslim associates included – as a cleaner, gentler, more likeable people than Abdali and his associates. Towards this end, for instance, the opposition soldiers who attack the Peshwa’s young son Vishwas Rao and the Maratha general Ibrahim Khan Gardi on the battlefield are shown growling and contorting their faces like beasts of prey. It goes without saying that no Maratha in the film growls. No Maratha in the film is shown killing quite as viciously as Abdali either. Likewise, Abdali’s Rohilla ally Najib-ud-Daula is designed, both in terms of acting and styling, as an in-your-face slimeball. Again, no member of the Maratha side is pointedly made to look like a snake.

Still, it is important to note that this lack of nuance is not one-tenth as blatant and tacky as Padmaavat, nor dangerous and hate-filled in the way that film was.

Panipat casts Arjun Kapoor as Sadashivrao Bhau, the commander of the Peshwa’s Army who was sent to confront Abdali’s forces advancing across north India. This is 1761, the Marathas hold sway over large parts of the Indian subcontinent, the last of the powerful Mughal emperors, Aurangzeb, has been dead for half a century, and the present occupant of the throne in Delhi is a  weakling who owes allegiance to the Marathas. The Mughal court is divided though between pro- and anti-Maratha elements, and this is one of the sparks that leads to Sadashivrao’s campaign against Abdali (played by Sanjay Dutt) which culminates in the historic Battle of Panipat on January 14, 1761.

Gowariker’s Panipat spends considerable time on how the rivals stitched together alliances with small rulers across north India, using material gain and religion as a lure. This part of the narrative – despite the melodramatic acting by the supporting cast, the narrative’s penchant for overstatement and overcrowded as it is with new characters – remains interesting to the extent that it illustrates the impermanent, opportunistic nature of political relationships of the time, no different from the modern age.

Whether factual or fictional I cannot tell, but Sadashivrao’s wife Parvati (Kriti Sanon) is portrayed as an intelligent strategist whose advice and negotiation skills stood him in good stead. She, in fact, is the prime narrator of her husband’s story.

We know from Jodhaa Akbar that Gowariker has a gift for mounting lavish battlefield scenes, and here too the director does not disappoint although he is thankfully less self-indulgent in these passages in Panipat than he was in that earlier film. The actual combat and manoeuvrings at Panipat are surprisingly engaging, again, despite the amateurish acting of the bit-part players.

If Panipat remains a middling film despite this, it is because of its complete lack of finesse in addition to the needless romanticisation of the Marathas. A point once made is underlined and then re-underlined by the background score and the use of close-ups, which become particularly problematic when they end up  focusing on hammy actors. Sometimes the tone of the narrative becomes ponderous while at other times tricky points are rushed over. This is especially disappointing when Abdali, angered by the Maratha takeover of one of his occupied territories, decides to cross the Yamuna although the river is in full flow. Showing how precisely he managed this despite the high and turbulent waters would have played up his smartness and determination as a leader, which Panipat obviously does not want to do, but as a consequence a potentially great scene with spiffing special effects just never happens.

Then of course there is the minor matter of facts. Contrary to what the closing text on screen says,  avoids saying and implies, in reality the loss to Abdali in the Battle of Panipat grievously affected the Marathas, stalled the spread of their empire in India and in the long run laid the ground for the establishment of most of India as a British colony.

This much laypersons know if they paid attention to their school books. Hopefully a historian will watch this film and offer us a more detailed analysis, but until then a few hours of research even by a non-expert reveals reasons for the Marathas’ failure at Panipat that the film intentionally skips, thus robbing it of additional layers. According to the film, Sadashivrao lost due to limited resources and betrayals by four key allies, a point stressed in the choice of title, Panipat: The Great Betrayal. What it does not mention at all is what critics of the Peshwa say, that among other issues, Sadashivrao was a poor diplomat and did not know the north well, which made him a bad choice as leader for this war.

Panipat shows a large contingent of women (companions, not fellow warriors) accompanying the Maratha Army and a character in passing mentions a number of pilgrims also with them. A common sense question from even a lay viewer would be, why would an army weigh itself down in this fashion? Historians believe this too was a factor in Sadashivrao’s defeat, but Panipat is not a film to indulge in such a critique. The film’s goal is clear: to dwarf the victor (because he came from what is even now a foreign land) and idolise the vanquished (because he is our desi boy, y’know), to claim that Abdali was motivated by greed while Sadashivrao had no selfish interests. With this in mind, Sadashivrao even gets to deliver a line about how “loot” has spurred Abdali to fight for Delhi whereas he, Sadashivrao, is there to offer “raksha” (protection). Ya sure, “raksha” and not a desire to expand Maratha rule.

The lack of gray in the characterisation of Sadashivrao makes him bland and pulls down the film in its entirety. Frankly, Parvati – the medicine woman he marries despite her lower social status – is far more fascinating.

Of the main cast, Sanon’s spirited performance as Parvati proves once again that this youngster deserves more than Bollywood has been offering her so far. She is beautiful, has a commanding personality, towards the end of this film offers evidence of impressive fighting skills and can act. In Panipat she also has the benefit of a character who is better fleshed out than most of the rest. In fact, Team Gowariker seems to be making a point to Team Bhansali when Sadashivrao is shown extracting a promise from her that she will not commit Sati if he dies, in sharp contrast to Padmaavat which glorified this regressive practice and treated Rani Padmavati’s Sati like a fashion parade.

Kapoor as Sadashivrao is earnest, while Dutt deadpans his way through the role of Abdali. Zeenat Aman is wasted in a cameo. And this cannot be said enough: the casting of most of the remaining actors comes across as careless.

So yes, Panipat is shorn of Padmaavat and Kesari’s insidious intent, but it is not exactly an innocent, truthful chronicler of Indian history. Add to that its lack of polish and spark, and for all its positives, it ends up as just an average affair.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	173 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/panipat-movie-review-ashutosh-gowariker-tweaks-history-into-a-maratha-fan-fantasy-sans-bhansalis-insidious-intent-7747171.html

Poster courtesy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panipat_(film)