REVIEW 557: KAALAKAANDI

Release date:	January 12, 2018
Director:	Akshat Verma
Cast: Language:	Saif Ali Khan, Akshay Oberoi, Isha Talwar, Sobhita Dhulipala, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Shenaz Treasury, Vijay Raaz, Deepak Dobriyal, Amyra Dastur, Neil Bhoopalam Hindi

When the writer of Delhi Belly announces his intent to direct, obviously there is reason enough to sit up and take notice. That film – released seven long years back, produced by Aamir Khan and directed by Abhinay Deo – was an excellent black comedy that pushed the envelope in the genre more than most Bollywood filmmakers had for decades before that or have since. Its writing, direction and casting were in sync with each other. Kaalakaandi gets one element right: its cast. But though Saif Ali Khan is funny as hell here and several of his talented co-stars show spark, the writing does not give any of them enough substance to bite into and the film does not fully take off at any point.

Khan plays a man who has just discovered that he has stomach cancer and barely a few months to live. He is shocked at the diagnosis because he has lived what he considers a clean and healthy life. Read: no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, no fooling around. Since his family is celebrating a wedding when the doctor breaks the news to him, he decides to keep it to himself but also to live it up since he now has nothing to lose. His bizarre transformation confuses the groom (Akshay Oberoi) who, in any case, is coping with his own set of problems arising from pre-marital heebie-jeebies.

In the same city lives a young couple on the verge of parting ways since she (Sobhita Dhulipala) is leaving him (Kunaal Roy Kapur) behind while she heads off to the US for a PhD. With just hours to go for her flight they attend the birthday party of a close friend (played with aplomb by Shenaz Treasury).

What seems like light years away from their swish lifestyles, a notorious gangster’s sidekicks (Vijay Raaz and Deepak Dobriyal) are dealing with dilemmas of their own.

During the course of the film, the paths of these disparate characters cross in the most fleeting fashion, resulting in dramatic consequences for all of them.

Kaalakaandi (which, I have learnt from one of Khan’s pre-release interviews, means “gadbad” or “everything going wrong) is about karma taking over as we make other plans and the importance of occasionally surrendering to fate. The film is set in Mumbai and about two-thirds of its dialogues are in English, a choice that is well suited to the milieus it inhabits. Verma has an interesting enough concept in place here and has picked just the right bunch of artistes to get where he wants to go. The opening half hour offers plenty of Saif-Ali-Khan-induced laughter and zaniness to hold out the promise of more to come.

Sadly, the rest of the film does not live up to this potential, since it is neither madcap enough nor pacey enough nor raunchy enough nor witty enough nor shocking enough nor clever enough nor gutsy enough nor experimental enough to have the effect that it seems to be aiming for.

Verma’s inability to flesh out his basic idea for Kaalakaandi is particularly unfortunate because Khan is in his element here. In film after film, this actor has shown that he has the chops to pull off pretty much every genre, but his industry is not offering him projects to match. He was sweetly likeable in Chef last year and beautifully melded amorality with heart in Rangoon just months earlier. In Kaalakaandi, he lets his hair down wonderfully as he descends into nuttiness, but the script is too frail to give him the space to spread his wings.

That said, the writing of the thread about his character is the only one with the substance and life to keep this film going. The highlight of Kaalakaandi is his encounter with a transgender sex worker played by a luminous Nary Singh. The easy blend of light-heartedness and poignance in their interaction marks an important milestone for the portrayal of the trans community by Bollywood.

In the sensitivity Verma seemingly effortlessly combines with humour in that one episode, he proves that he has what it takes to be a director. If only he had spent more time on his script, it may have occurred to him that the strand involving Khan could have been a standalone venture.

The rest of Kaalakaandi is dead before it takes birth. Getting Oberoi to say “fuck” a few times, infusing Raaz and Dobriyal’s segment with ma-behen abuses, showing a naked woman covered in a sheet and throwing her lingerie at a horny lover or injecting a heavy dose of drugs into the plot doth not a black comedy make.

Each member of the cast has provided ample evidence of being a gifted performer in earlier works. Vijay Raaz was the heart and soul of Delhi Belly and Kunaal Roy Kapur was a hoot in the same film. We know from the Tanu Weds Manu films that Deepak Dobriyal is a killer comic. The good-looking Akshay Oberoi is just emerging from the brilliance of Gurgaon last year. Sobhita Dhulipala – who is a hottie – made a smashing debut in Anurag Kashyap’s Raman Raghav 2.0 in 2016. Yet in Kaalakaandi, when they are occasionally engaging, it feels more like a factor of their natural charisma than the writing of their respective characters. And then there is the usually exceptional Neil Bhoopalam who has zero impact in a pointless cameo here.

Besides, the timeline is inexplicable. The events in Kaalakaandi happen over one night, yet everything seems to take much longer than it possibly could in reality. The young couple, for instance, pack so much into the two hours before her flight that you have to wonder what clock they are operating on. This loose writing deprives the film of the compactness it should have had considering that its 111 minutes and 54 seconds is far less than the average Bollywood length.

It is hard to believe that a film directed by the writer of Delhi Belly is, for the most part, a drag. Despite Saif Ali Khan being in cracking form, Kaalakaandi lacks fizz and purpose.

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	111 minutes 54 seconds

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/kaalakaandi-movie-review-saif-ali-khan-is-funny-as-hell-but-the-film-lacks-fizz-4299605.html

  

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaalakaandi

REVIEW 58: DELHI BELLY

Release date:	July 1, 2011
Director:	Abhinay Deo
Cast:	Imran Khan, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Vir Das, Poorna Jagannathan, Vijay Raaz, Shenaz Treasury

There’s nothing particularly more “ashleel” about this film’s “bhaasha” than other Bollywood offerings we’ve seen before – methinks that phrase has been used as a publicity hook by the film makers. I mean, yes Delhi Belly does give us a close-up of human shit (no no, I don’t mean that figuratively, I mean literally a pile of human faeces belonging to a man suffering from diarrhoea). And yes, the characters do use foul language without inhibitions, but I can assure you that my limited vocabulary of English and Hindi abuses has not been dramatically enhanced by watching this film: I don’t recall hearing swear words in Delhi Belly that we hadn’t already heard in Shor In The City, Bhindi Baazaar Inc, Shaitan or Yeh Saali Zindagi released earlier this year.

Ah well, perhaps I don’t understand film marketing techniques as much as I think I do. And none of this should take away from the fact that Delhi Belly is an enjoyable, unconventional Bollywood film! For starters, it’s not in Hindi.* The language is primarily English with a smattering of Hindi, and flows smoothly, sounding just the way you can expect the various characters to sound if you bump into them in Delhi. So the first round of applause should go to the dialogue writing. The story revolves around three friends Tashi, Arup and Nitin, the sight of whose filthy flat could make you puke. Tashi is a journalist who is marrying his girlfriend under family pressure. Nitin is his photographer colleague with lax morals and worse eating habits. And Arup is a frustrated cartoonist in an ad agency whose girlfriend has just unceremoniously dumped him. Their lives go into a karma-spurred spiral when a pouch of diamonds enters the picture and gets mixed up with a stool sample.

The mix-up that leads to everything else is a trifle too convenient to be credible, but that doesn’t alter the fact that Delhi Belly is unrelentingly amusing and telling at the same time. In fact, the film is so well done that it’s hard to believe it’s been made by the same director behind that Abhishek Bachchan-starrer Game. Must say Aamir Khan as a producer seems to have a good influence on the directors he signs up.

The film’s title of course is a reference to a term used to describe what could happen to your stomach if you are not careful about your eating habits in the nation’s capital – both literally because of Nitin’s stomach upset that lasts throughout the film and figuratively because of the dirt the story digs up. Now a round of applause please for the film’s casting director who has handpicked each actor with affection and attention, giving us a cast that fits their parts to a T, a U and a V. Imran Khan as Tashi has been more effectively used here than in any of his films since Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. Here’s an actor with a likeable screen presence but a so-far limited range who clearly benefits greatly from associating with a good director. Khan needs to work on his Hindi diction for other roles, but as the primarily English-speaking Tashi in Delhi Belly he is just fine. Kunaal Roy Kapur (Nitin) is a natural. And Vir Das is so inherently funny, that I don’t feel like analysing his acting skills: he just made me smile … a lot.

But the stand-out performances in Delhi Belly come from a newcomer and a veteran. Poorna Jagannathan who plays Tashi’s colleague has a casual ease before the camera that matches her casual, un-self-conscious sex appeal. And Vijay Raaz as a gangster is so damn good that I hope he’s on every Best Supporting Actor nominations list when the awards ceremonies come around by end-2011.

Delhi Belly is as much a celebration of basic human goodness as it is an essay on how “shit happens” unexpectedly for no fault of ours. If you withdraw a blackmail threat because your intended victim turns out to be a nice guy, you couldn’t be all-bad, right? The USPs of the film are its wry sense of humour and refusal to mince words while saying what it has to say. On the downside, there is a certain repetitiveness that bothered me when it seemed like the director had discovered a device he found edgy and wanted to make sure we noticed it. In the opening scene, Arup and Nitin are in bed – separate beds – in their flat, heads enveloped in sheets, and the camera gives us a shot of Nitin’s (I think) butt crack. But just in case we didn’t spot it the first time, it’s shown to us again, and then again! Okay, I got it, you’re cool enough to show an Indian audience a man’s half-exposed bum! Now move on, please! Likewise, it was entertaining to see Nitin seated on a commode the first time, and perhaps even a second, because we’re not used to seeing such things in Hindi films – but then Tashi’s girlfriend is also shot on a pot, then Nitin is back in the loo, then his stomach gurgles, then he’s back on the toilet seat, then his belly grumbles again, then … and then it just felt childish.

The closing song-and-dance featuring Aamir also felt like an unnecessary and irrelevant add-on. Was he not confident enough of this film that he felt the need to make it more saleable with an item number? Oh no! Et tu Aamir?! Instead, I wish I wish that Ram Sampath’s delightfully raucous DK Bose song had been better used.

Koi nahi, as Delhi-ites would say. Never mind, because in the ultimate analysis, Delhi Belly is frank, funny, in-your-face, unapologetic and unafraid. I had such a good time watching it. My pick of the film’s hilarious moments involves Kathak, a ceiling fan and a very poorly constructed building. Now tell me, what’s yours?

Rating (out of five): ***1/2

CBFC Rating:                       A without cuts (yes, would you believe it?!)

Running time:                       96 Minutes

Language: *                          English with a few Hindi dialogues (the producers have also released a Hindi version of the film)

Photograph courtesy: http://www.facebook.com/delhibelly?sk=photos