REVIEW 80: HUM TUM SHABANA

Release date:	September 30, 2011
Director:	Sagar Ballary
Cast:	Shreyas Talpade, Tusshar Kapoor, Minissha Lamba, Pia Trivedi, Satish Kaushik, Sanjay Mishra

When I made a promise on this blog at the start of the year that I would not miss a single Hindi film released in the National Capital Region in 2011, I don’t think I realised what I was setting myself up for. But to quote Salman Khan’s refrain from the film Wanted and then take it further “with a little help from my friends”: “Ek baar jo maine commitment ki, to apne aap ki bhi nahin sunti. Doosri baar commitment ki to apne baap ki bhi nahin sunti. Aur teesri baar commitment ki toh RAJINIKANTH ki bhi nahi sunti.” (Line 2 – courtesy a Delhi radio jockey who I heard in passing, Line 3 – courtesy @trishul3 a.k.a. Trishul R.S. from Twitter).  

So – since I skipped the press preview of Hum Tum Shabana (HTS) because I was tied up, and since I didn’t get the time to watch it on Friday and Saturday either – here I am on Sunday, typing up a gale of words on my computer after having watched the film earlier in the day. To borrow a line from another film that I won’t denigrate by naming it in the same breath as Hum Tum Shabana: jo vaada kiya, woh nibhana padega! Sigh!

Hum Tum Shabana is the story of two rivals in love. Karthik Iyer (Shreyas Talpade) and Rishi Malhotra (Tusshar Kapoor) work for an event management company that’s organising a beauty pageant in which Shabana Raza (Minissha Lamba) is a contestant. Their competition for her affections takes them all the way from the catwalk in Goa to her gangster uncle’s home in Mumbai. The uncle in question is a vile, violent fellow who has a penchant for slapping himself when he’s angry and smacking others to show affection. To win Shabana – torn as she is between Karthik and Rishi – the boys are ordered to train in an academy for the underworld (ha ha ha!) and pass an exam. There you go, that’s the précis of the story.

Director Sagar Ballary is the man who brought us the sleeper indie hit Bheja Fry in 2007 that became Vinay Pathak’s calling card in the profession. His Bheja Fry 2 earlier this year was dismissed by most critics and viewers, but I’ll confess I thought even that was good timepass. To say I didn’t laugh AT ALL during Hum Tum Shabana would be a lie … I did laugh … Precisely 10 times … Yes, I counted with tally bars! … That’s how bored I was! Whatever happened to your easy sense of humour, Mr Ballary?

HTS’s witless script and unoriginal dialogues are not its only problems. The film is unintentionally funny when its casting choices present Minissha Lamba to us as a credible Indian beauty pageant contestant. Please don’t get me wrong – I don’t believe in making personal remarks. But just as I’d be unconvinced if any Indian film served up a serving defence services officer with dreadlocks and earrings, so too I’m unconvinced when I’m shown little Minissha on a ramp in the midst of tall, willowy, svelte women who end up making her regular-girl-type, petite figure seem stocky in comparison.

HTS’s bankruptcy of ideas is evident from the fact that Karthik contaminates Rishi’s mouthwash in the film, causing him to lose his voice, thus giving Tusshar Kapoor the opportunity for a few minutes to reprise his speech-impaired character in the superhit Golmaal film series. Worse, the moment I heard the film’s signature song Ke music band na karo on the radio a few weeks back, it gave me a sense of déjà vu. The musical style and the tone of the lyrics felt too much like a hangover of Chaar baj gaye lekin party abhi baaki hai from the film Faltu earlier this year. HTS offers us a second song that just rejigs the subsequent lines of Char baj gaye that go “Hey Mr DJ, mera gaana please play. Aaj no wine, aaj no lager, aaj piyenge champagne.” In HTS that becomes: “Thank you Mr DJ, thank you for this song. Thank you to the baby (or at least that’s what it sounded like to me) for dancing all night long.” Now that I’ve done my research for this review, whaddyaknow, I discover that Sachin-Jigar of Faltu are the music directors of HTS too!

Not surprisingly, those 10 laughs that I did have in the film were elicited by situations involving Shreyas Talpade, Sanjay Mishra and Satish Kaushik, all three of them natural comics who deserve better than this film and have certainly done better in the past. The only member of the cast who comes off looking good is model Pia Trivedi in the role of Shabana’s bitchy fellow contestant. Either she’s playing herself completely, or she’s got a genuine spark and I’d like to see more of her in the future.

Before I wrap up, my profuse apologies to the amorous couple who clearly became self-conscious as soon as I took my seat in the last row of which they’d been the only other occupants until then in a near-empty hall. I didn’t have the presence of mind to switch rows. The result … I spent Rs 225 and two hours-plus on this film and didn’t get my paisa vasool. Because of me, they didn’t either. I’m truly sorry!

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating:                       U/A without visual cuts, but with several words muted

Running time:                        125 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/#!/Hum.Tum.Shabana  

REVIEW 53: BHEJA FRY 2

Release date:	June 17, 2011
Director:	Sagar Ballary
Cast:	Vinay Pathak, Kay Kay Menon, Minissha Lamba, Suresh Menon, Amole Gupte, Aditi Govitrikar

I enjoyed Bheja Fry but I wasn’t in love with it. Those words perfectly encapsulate my feelings towards Bheja Fry 2 too.

Vinay Pathak once again plays Bharat Bhushan, the slowhead from Bheja Fry whose profession as an income-tax official is in sharp contrast to his passion for old Hindi film songs. In Part 2, Bhushan wins a national reality tele-show which earns him Rs 25 lakh in cash and a berth on a luxury cruise. Also on the ship is the TV show’s executive producer Ranjini (Minissha Lamba), and businessman Ajit Talwar (Kay Kay Menon) who has been tipped off that an IT raid is headed his way and that a tax official is on board the ship. Talwar erroneously assumes that Bhushan is the taxman who has been sent to track him. The conspiracies and misunderstandings that follow are what makes up Bheja Fry 2.

It’s a funny film about a silly man; funny in a way that doesn’t insult the viewer’s intelligence or ask us to send our brains on vacation while we watch it. As in Bheja Fry (a remake of the French film Le Diner De Cons), Bhushan continues to be a tuneless music buff who insists on singing at the drop of a hat, not quite realising what an ass he’s making of himself. He also remains a well-meaning, pesky bumblehead whose good intentions are often at cross-purposes with the demands of a situation, leading to comical consequences. If you are a Hindi film music devotee who can quote years, names and lyrics with precision, then you are particularly likely to enjoy this film, like the gentleman seated just ahead of me in the theatre where I watched Bheja Fry 2, who kept completing Bhushan’s verses much to the amusement of his fellow viewers.

The film offers plenty of laughs, though not at an unrelenting pace. I particularly enjoyed Bhushan’s ridiculous English translation of Dard-e-dil, and an unexpected exchange with a gray-haired tycoon who allows alcohol to melt his “I spent most of my early years in America” snobbery to join Bhushan in a duet of Marathi songs. Equally hilarious is the North India-South India rivalry between Bhushan and his fellow IT inspector M.T. Shekharan. Their exchanges are filled with stereotypes, yet manage to steer clear of being offensive.

But in a film that’s filled with tasteful humour, I fail to understand the need for that pointless rape joke that was tossed into a conversation between Talwar and his friends. For the nth time, could Bollywood please note: RAPE IS NOT FUNNY!

Suresh Menon as M.T. Shekharan and Kay Kay Menon playing Talwar are the pick of the cast for me. The impact of Pathak’s performance is diluted to some extent because he has played the loveable simpleton too often in too many films since 2007 when Bheja Fry was released. I could still live with that (I liked him very much in Chalo Dilli earlier this year), but in Bheja Fry 2 there are too many places where I became conscious of the fact that he was acting, and not being just Bharat Bhushan. I must also say I was disappointed when the film arrived at the cameo by Amole Gupte playing an eccentric music buff living alone on a deserted island. Gupte recently played an oily schoolteacher to remarkable effect in his own directorial venture Stanley ka Dabba and was the nasty gangster poking fun at Shahid Kapoor in Kaminey. I’m not sure whether it’s the acting or the jumbled writing that’s to blame here. I just know that Gupte’s Raghu D. Burman in Bheja Fry 2 was too loud, too noisy, too muddled and I just couldn’t figure out what he was all about.

Still, it’s nice to see a light-hearted comic venture from Bollywood in which male infidelity is not the central theme (yawn!), nobody pees or farts to amuse us, and the entire cast doesn’t gather in the final scene to run around in circles like they do in pretty much every Priyadarshan and Anees Bazmee comedy. No, Bheja Fry 2 is simpler, not raucous and with all its flaws, it’s entertaining.

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

CBFC Rating:                       U/A without any cuts or beeps. (The Censors wanted a scene removed, but the director changed a dialogue in the scene and got an okay from a review committee.)

Running time:                        127 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bheja_Fry_2