Release date:
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September 20, 2013
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Director:
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Rajkumar Santoshi
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Cast:
Language:
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Shahid Kapoor,
Ileana D’Cruz, Padmini Kolhapure, Zakir Hussain, Darshan Zariwala, Saurabh
Shukla, Sanjay Mishra, Mukesh Tiwari
Hindi
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No one farts in this film. There’s not a
single joke about faeces or other bodily excretions or secretions. The volume
remains relatively low. The characters are not all wearing red pants, purple
shirts, green shoes, mustard-framed goggles and pink scarves with yellow polka
dots or similar colour combinations. Nor do they rhyme their sentences. But
whaddyaknow, Phata Poster Nikhla Hero is
still good for a bunch of laughs. Writer-director Rajkumar Santoshi’s latest comedy
is not consistently crackling like his 1994 Aamir Khan-Salman Khan-Karisma
Kapoor-Raveena Tandon-starrer Andaz Apna
Apna. It also holds out a rather muddled message in the end: should children
not follow their dreams but do their parents bidding instead?! Yet, in this era
of ‘humour’ dominated by loud crudeness, it’s still a breath of fresh air.
PPNH is the story of Vishwas
Rao (Shahid Kapoor) who pretends to be a policeman to please his mother Savitri
Rao (Padmini Kolhapure), while surreptitiously working towards an acting career.
Misunderstandings and melodrama ensue. Along the way they encounter a social
worker who is so vigilant about crime that the police nickname her ‘Complaint’
Kajal (Ileana D’Cruz); a failed film writer (Sanjay Mishra); an honest senior
cop, Shivanand Khare (Darshan Jariwala); the corrupt Inspector Ghorpade (Zakir
Hussain); an evil don, Gundappa Das (Saurabh Shukla); and a faceless
international gangster who goes by the name Napoleon.
Santoshi’s screenplay is clever for the
most part, extracting laughs without under-estimating the viewer’s IQ. When the
film’s pace occasionally dips – and this happens only in the second half – it’s
more to do with the direction than the writing. The bow to Deewar’s iconic “mere paas
Maa hai” dialogue, for instance, is unforgivably poorly paced. There are also
a couple of low-energy scenes post interval, especially that one in which the
good people have blinded the bad people in their den and must escape, but run
around in confused circles instead.
Pritam’s best tunes for this film (Main rang sharbaton ka and Tu mere agal bagal hai) are well
picturised but elsewhere there are too many abruptly inserted songs including
the very ordinary Dhating naach featuring
Nargis Fakhri in a guest appearance and Mere bina tu, the picturisation of
which is too reminiscent of Tu jaane na
from the director’s earlier film Ajab
Prem ki Ghazab Kahani. One song may seem mild in comparison with the onslaught
of sexual harassment in Raanjhanaa,
but in a country where so many crimes against women take place because
patriarchy believes men can demand sex as a matter of right from women, we could
do without these lyrics from Tu mere agal
bagal hai: “Khali peeli khali peeli rokne
ka nahin / tera peecchha karoon toh tokne ka nahin / Hai tujh pe right mera / tu
hai delight mera…”
These lines are particularly incongruous
because of the dialogue preceding the song: when Vishwas Rao’s friend notices
that the boy is smitten by Kajal, he warns him, “Yeh Mumbai ki ladki hai. Hehe karke baat karegi par line maarne jaaoge
toh tumhare upar doggy chhod degi.” Meaning: Just because a girl is
friendly does not mean she’s romantically interested in you. Now that’s a
pleasant change from Hindi filmdom’s old message of: when a girl says no, she
actually means maybe or yes. Equally important is the fact that the women in
this film are not side shows or show pieces or pushovers. Kajal may seem ditsy
but she has a mind of her own. And Maa
is an autorickshaw driver, which is unusual enough as a choice of profession
for Indian women but is particularly noteworthy in a film industry which
prefers stay-at-home, full-time roti-serving,
bartan-washing, bhagwan-se-bintee-karo-ing moms. Equally uncommon for a Bollywood
mother is the way Savitri tells her irresponsible husband that his child cannot
be deemed his child merely by virtue of the blood tie.
Some mixed messages there then, but let
not this review leave you in any doubt: I had fun watching Phata Poster Nikhla Hero. Shahid is a chameleon in this film,
switching from deliberately exaggerated humour to emotional intensity to a spot
of mimickry at the drop of a hat. He even gets a scene in which the villains
generously pull off his shirt, leaving him in a black vest that gives us a nice
view of that trim torso and well-muscled arms. For the record, may I add that
if he ever decides to leave Bollywood, I suspect he’d be a helluva pole dancer.
In her second Bollywood film, Ileana
reveals what Telugu audiences know well already: that she is a versatile
actress. Is she the slightly melancholic Shruti of Barfi! or the slightly nutty Kajal of PPNH? Besides, she’s a delicate little beauty, in possession of possibly
the largest eyes to haunt the Hindi film screen in decades. To borrow Laurent
the Frenchman’s description of Sridevi’s saucer-like eyes in English Vinglish: “like two drops of coffee on a cloud of milk.” The rest of the excellent
cast provide able support to these two.
The film’s production design is
interesting, more often than not opting for a set-like, stagey look that brings
back memories of Ajab Prem... There
are, in fact, several nods here to Ajab
Prem… and Andaz Apna Apna, the
best of them coming in the form of a cleverly crafted guest appearance by Salman Khan who plays
himself brilliantly in those couple of minutes. That scene alone is worth the
price of a ticket. Despite its weaknesses, so is the rest of Phata Poster Nikhla Hero. It’s funny and goofy, sweet even when it's being silly, a good ol’ clean comedy from Bollywood after a long time.
Rating (out of five): ***
CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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2 hours 32 minutes (courtesy pvrcinemas.com)
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