REVIEW 213: RABBA MAIN KYA KAROON

Release date:	August 2, 2013
Director:	Amrit Sagar Chopra
Cast: Language:	Akash Chopra, Tahira Kochhar, Arshad Warsi, Riya Sen, Anuradha Patel, Raj Babbar, Tinnu Anand, Shakti Kapoor, Himani Shivpuri, Sushmita Mukherjee Hindi

Rabba Main Kya Karoon follows Hindi cinema’s long-standing tradition of finding mirth in male marital infidelity. When women cheat it merits a grim social treatise from this industry, when men cheat it becomes a source of humour. No Entry, Shaadi No. 1, Do Knot Disturb and most recently, Thank You … comedies revolving around philandering husbands and boyfriends are a dime a dozen in Bollywood.

Like them, RMKK too is a cliché. To make matters worse, it’s lackadaisically acted, poorly edited, unimaginatively directed and stars two uncharismatic actors in the lead. The film serves as a launchpad for the hero Akash Chopra, brother to the director Amrit Sagar Chopra. Amrit and Akash are the grandsons of Ramanand Sagar who is best known for the pioneering Hindi television series Ramayan. Not surprisingly then, every effort is made to tomtom Akash’s limited talents. He takes off his shirt in his very first scene to display a slim – though not at all stirring – torso, I suppose to announce the arrival of the next generation of competition to John Abraham and Hrithik Roshan. He also dances around with a group of bikini-clad gori mems, gets a former Miss India finalist to play his heroine while a bombshell in minimal clothing lusts after him.

The story in a nutshell is this: just days before his marriage, Sahil (Akash) is told by his cousin Shravan (Arshad Warsi) that for a happy married life he must cheat on his wife. Shravan then tries to get Sahil into bed with another woman even before the pheras. In the background, the groom’s Maama (Paresh Rawal) sleeps around and convinces his unsuspecting wife (Sushmita Mukherjee) that she’s mentally ill. Apparently that’s funny. Another uncle (Tinnu Anand) has spent a lifetime in search of a bra. Never mind why … yawn! And a third uncle (Shakti Kapoor) lands his paws on every woman in sight. Akash has an impactless but not insufferable presence (samples of insufferability can be found in Hum Hai Raahi Car Ke and Ramaiya Vastavaiya that both launched film family heirs earlier this year). But imagine as a viewer of RMKK having to sit through a song-and-dance number in which one of the leads is a blonde Shakti Kapoor in a silver blue suit. Ugh! Imagine a scene in which Tinnu Anand is supposed to be a pehelwan and special effects have been used to laughable effect to place his head on the shirtless body of a real-life pehelwan.

I wanted to drown in a pool of my own tears as I watched Arshad Warsi – one of the best actors in present-day Bollywood – starring in this sub-par film right after giving us the sweetly realistic and genuinely entertaining Jolly LLB. RMKK doesn’t merit a serious review so I thought I’d give you an idea of the quality of humour in this film by quoting here the lyrics of a song titled Tu khulla saand ban jaa featuring our hero:

“Jholi sharaafat wali khoonti pe taang de

Chooza ban kar ke miliya murge ki baang de

Husn ka mela hai

Duniya tabela hai

Control chhad koyi kaand kar jaa

Tu khulla saand ban jaa, haaye

Tu khulla saand ban jaa

Tu khulla saand ban jaa, haaye

Tu khulla saand ban jaa

Para para para para paraam

Mardon ki aankhein hoti hain camera

Mauka dekh ke zoom badha

Apne black and white usuloon pe

Naye zamaane ke rang chadha

Kaliyon ke garden mein tu

Bhanwara akela hai

Baaki tu khud understand kar jaa

Tu khulla saand ban jaa, haaye

Tu khulla saand ban jaa

Character ki saarangi chhod

Rangraleeyon ka guitar baja

Tu khulla saand ban jaa

Para para para para paraa

Character ki saarangi chhod

Rangraleeyon ka guitar bajaa ha

Rule ki fixed deposit todd ke

Jism ka tu udhaar chuka

Jumbo jet kudiyan hai

Tu pilot ka chela hai

Ayyashi ke one way pe land kar jaa

Tu khulla saand ban jaa, haaye

Tu khulla saand ban jaa.”

Those of you not proficient in Hindi should know that “Tu khulla saand ban jaa” translates into a piece of black-and-white advice to men to stop disguising their hormones and reveal themselves as raging bulls instead. Saand = bull. And yes, “bull” has precisely the same sexual connotations in Hindi as in English. Now you know.

Rating (out of five): 0 stars

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	118 minutes & 52 seconds, and every second counts

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

Tu khulla saand ban jaa video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41sMYEGhAUg

REVIEW 79: TERE MERE PHERE

Release date:	September 30, 2011
Director:	Deepa Sahi
Cast:	Jagrat Desai, Sasha Goradia, Vinay Pathak, Riya Sen, Sushmita Mukherjee, Darshan Jariwala

They’re completely in love. But when he makes coffee for her, he leaves a mess behind. When she sees the mess she screams at him. After a bath, he dumps his wet towel on a chair. She spots the offending cloth and screams a little more. Before you know it they’re barely on talking terms.

It’s a familiar story of a loving relationship gone awry, that is always interesting in the re-telling. But Tere Mere Phere fails to make sense because the fraying of the lead couple’s ties happens not over several years of marriage but during the first few days of their honeymoon! And you know what, the heroine’s high-pitched nagging is such a challenge to the ears that when the husband asks her, “Tum itna chillaati kyun ho?” I wanted to add my voice to his complaint.

Actress Deepa Sahi makes her directorial debut with a film filled with potential that it fails to live up to. Pooja (Sasha Goradia) and Rahul (Jagrat Desai) are a squabbling couple on their honeymoon, riding their trailer truck through scenic Himachal Pradesh. Along the way they pick up Jai (Vinay Pathak) who hitches a ride with them at gunpoint since he’s desperate to reach his lady love before she’s forcibly married off to someone else by her family. As Rahul and Pooja incessantly yell and throw barbs at each other much to Jai’s exasperation, we’re told their love story in flashback.

From the very first scene it’s clear that this film is meant to be a farce. Everyone is deliberately over-acting, especially the lead pair and the boy’s mother played by the delightful Sushmita Mukherjee who deserves a lot better than the film industry ever offered her. The early scenes of the family’s shenanigans at a wedding – so typical of the behaviour of guests at large Indian shaadis – are genuine rib-ticklers. But pretty soon, the joke is on us as the film degenerates into unbearable loudness and a ceaseless series of relationship improbabilities. Sample this: Rahul is a nice guy in love with his bride, but when they pick up a hitchhiking couple, he is immediately ensnared by the charms of the lady who openly flirts with him in Pooja’s presence. During a phase when couples are usually trying to cover up their flaws and present their best side to each other, these two seem determined to do the opposite.

I’m not sure why Sahi felt the need to crunch the complete degeneration of a relationship into such a short time span. If she hadn’t, she might have had an interesting film to offer us. Desai and Goradia may actually be good in a better film, but in Tere Mere Phere their exaggerated sparring becomes terribly unfunny and insufferable beyond a point. Vinay Pathak has nothing new or remarkable to offer us in this film. And after pitching in a surprisingly good and understated performance in Rituparno Ghosh’s Bengali film Noukadubi earlier this year, Riya Sen as his supposedly rustic girlfriend is nothing more than a pretty presence with an inexplicably westernized accent in the film.

The one major plus point of Tere Mere Phere is the way it explores spectacular Himachal Pradesh in ways that Hindi films have not done before. A thumbs up to the cinematographer for doing justice to the state’s beauty. A thumbs down to the film though!

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Rating (out of five): *1/2

CBFC Rating:                       U/A without cuts

Running time:                        124 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

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

REVIEW 50: A STRANGE LOVE STORY

Release date:	June 3, 2011
Director:	Tarique Khan, Sahil Seth
Cast:	Eddie Seth, Riya Sen, Ashutosh Rana, Yashpal Sharma, Raj Zutshi

It took two full human beings to direct this film! Well, I’d like to compliment them because A Strange Love Story must rank as one of the most aptly named films of the year. It truly is strange. The film stars Riya Sen and Ashutosh Rana, if you insist on knowing the known names in the cast first. But the one I’d really like you to meet is Eddie Seth who plays “world famous photographer Kabeer” (not my words, it’s on the film’s official website). Kabeer meets pretty Jennifer a.k.a. Jia (Riya Sen) at a party. The two subsequently visit a lonely dargah at night, because … well, how else would the horror story unfold? While they are there, a spirit falls in love with Jia and before you know it, odd things start happening to her and to the people around her.

Never mind what the rest of the story is. Since the film’s website is quite delightful, please allow me to quote from it again: Jia is apparently “a wild and bohimian (sic) girl”. How does A Strange Love Story illustrate that point? Well, she wears short dresses, drinks, attends parties at nightclubs and smokes joints. When chided by a friend for the latter bad habit, Jia asks: If your mother died and your father hooked up with a girl your age, what would you do? Ah, the world’s drug problems explained!

The film must be lauded for its secular approach to horror. The lead couple visit Hindu, Muslim and Christian holy men to solve their problems. The Hindu priest is a lecherous sort whose lust for Jia gets him into trouble with her bhoot boyfriend while a Muslim cleric (whose flunkey plays football with ghosts) finally utters some mumbo jumbo that scares the spook away. Jia by the way is a Goan Christian who says “Jijjus” for “Jesus” in Rakhi Sawant style. Since I’ve just seen Riya Sen deliver a fine performance in Rituparno Ghosh’s Noukadubi, I’m tempted to be kind to her and blame it all on M/s Tarique Khan and Sahil Seth.

Other humungously entertaining things happen in this film. We are told that the world is divided into humans and animals, and then there is another species: ghosts. The one who falls for Jia takes human form to woo her. This Jinn-nath befriends Kabeer in the bargain. Towards the end of the film, when a policeman asks Kabeer about that friend, Kabeer replies absolutely straight-faced: “He’s not X, he’s a Jinn-nath.” Oh, that explains it all, says the policeman nonchalantly, as though it is the sort of sentence he’s used to hearing every day.

This is the kind of story that could swing either way – it could come across as silly or quirky, depending on the treatment. A ghost falling in love with a human being was the theme of Vijaydan Detha’s charming little story which Amol Palekar made into the film Paheli (yes, kill me if you must, I know I’m one of the few people in this country who found that film sweet). But A Strange Love Story is constrained by lacklustre direction, an even more lacklustre hero who, coincidentally, is the producer’s son, and an absolute lack of energy, all of which add up to a silly product! There are precisely two genuinely eerie moments in the film – yes, I counted. The only other things I remember liking about it are Riya Sen’s wardrobe and smooth complexion, and the interiors of the various houses she visits. There is also a hilarious song picturised on the hero featuring lots of Caucasian women and a central female figure in silver silk (or was it satin?) flailing her arms and the fabric around as though she’s a bird. It reminded me of the songs with gori ladies in that other classic I watched earlier this year, Happy Husbands, though to be fair, that film was even stranger than A Strange Love Story.

So it’s confession time: while watching this film, I amused myself by pretending not to notice the amorous couple in the row just ahead of me in the hall and wondering about a solo female viewer at another end who watched the film with such concentration that I found her intriguing. Arrey, stop judging me! I spent Rs 150 on my ticket, and I have a right to seek out my money’s worth!

Rating (out of five): 1/2

CBFC Rating:                       A

Running time:                       120 Minutes

Language:                             Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.astrangelovestory.com/