REVIEW 367: MASTIZAADE

Release date:	January 29, 2016
Director:	Milap Milan Zaveri
Cast: Language:	Sunny Leone, Vir Das, Tusshar Kapoor, Asrani, Shaad Randhawa, Suresh Menon, Sushmita Mukherjee, Guest appearances: Riteish Deshmukh, Gizele Thakral Hindi

I spent much of my morning struggling to distinguish between Mastizaade and last week’s release, Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3. This is not a comment on the genre (both are what are called “adult comedies” by those who have a low opinion of human adults). No, this is a comment on the carbon copying of content and lazy casting. Here’s a sampler:

KKHH3 featured Tusshar Kapoor as one of its two male leads. Mastizaade too has two heroes of which one is played by – let’s chant the name together – Tusshar Kapoor.

In KKHH3, Tussh was called Kanhaiyya Lele, a surname that is meant to be funny to practitioners of Hindi slang. In Mastizaade, Sunny Leone plays twins Lily and Laila – wait for it, wait for it, wait for it – Lele!

KKHH3 had a cameo by Riteish Deshmukh. Mastizaade has a cameo by Riteish Deshmukh.

KKHH3 included gags using the words “masti” and “grand masti” as an ode to the titles of the film series starring Riteish. One of Mastizaade’s heroes describes Riteish’s character as a chap with whom they have done a lot of “grand masti”.

Sushmita Mukherjee – best known to Hindi screen audiences as Kitty from the old Karamchand TV shows – was a horny elderly woman in KKHH3. In Mastizaade she is an elderly sex addict.

Starling Gizele Thakral had a supporting role as a porn star with a breath-laden style of speaking in KKHH3. In Mastizaade she has a guest appearance as a busty banker with a breathy voice. Her make-up artist’s pride in her handbag-sized, pursed-up lips is evident in both films.

Hoo boy, I just dozed off making that list for you.

As it happens, KKHH3 and Mastizaade are both written by the same team: Milap Zaveri and Mushtaq Sheikh. Milap has also directed this film. It takes a special kind of courage to lift your own ideas, recycle them and spit them out at the audience within a span of just one week.

To be fair, their wandering eyes have not spared their colleagues’ works either. Mastizaade is filled with situations and character traits familiar from numerous other raunchy Bollywood comedies of the past two decades, right down to a scene in which Tusshar and Vir Das are spotted in an awkward position where they appear to be – but are not – boinking each other and a horse. Remember the man with the mannequin in the first Kyaa Kool Hain Hum film?

In short, you can see most of this film’s jokes coming from a mile away. Oh… I said “coming”. Giggle giggle.

So anyway, Mastizaade is about two sex-crazed men called Sunny Kele (Tusshar) and Aditya Chothia (Vir Das) – yeah yeah, we get it, we’re supposed to notice the names. During the course of their perennial search for action, they meet and fall in love with Lily and Laila. Lily wears saris, big glasses and has a stammer (because, you know, speech defects are so amusing, no?) while Laila wears tiny skirts and tops, does not wear glasses and does not stammer.

Two spokes in the wheel of true love appear in the form of Lily’s fiancé and Laila’s disinterest in matters of the heart. Sunny is shocked that Laila views him in precisely the way he has viewed every woman in his life so far: as a sex object. He wants more. He wants love. In the midst of all those boobs, butts and crotches, here is the element that could have made Mastizaade something more than a piece of assembly-line nonsense, but the writers barely graze this plot point a couple of times before moving on to their pre-kindergarten-level antics.

It is not that the film is an absolute zero. Mastizaade’s potential is evident from a scene in which both ladies decide to make their respective declarations of love for the heroes, and another in which Riteish as Baba Gasm mindf***s a bunch of female devotees. Besides, Vir and Riteish are blessed with the sort of comic timing and natural charm that help them occasionally rise above even terrible scripts like this one. Oh look… I said “rise”. Tee hee hee.

Sunny Leone, whose acting was disastrous in her first Bollywood outing, Jism 2, is clearly not a lost cause. In Mastizaade, we get glimpses of the comedian she might be some day in a film that is not as singularly focused on her humungous bosom as this one is.

Earlier this month, large sections of the media, the film-viewing public and even the film industry stood up for her when a senior journalist appeared to be moralising, during the course of an interview, about what he seemed to consider her shameful past as a porn star. His tone during that conversation was inexcusable, but it would be just as nice to see Sunny stand up for herself, and refuse to be reductively viewed as nothing more than a pair of very large breasts in a film.

There’s nothing wrong with artistic, aesthetic objectification. Cases in point: Michelangelo’s statue of David in Florence and Priyanka Chopra dancing to the song Ram chahe Leela in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Ram-leela. Mastizaade, on the other hand, objectifies Sunny and every other female character, in a dehumanising fashion. Your turn to speak up now, Sunny.

In case you are among those who do not mind misogyny or LGBT stereotyping (Suresh Menon plays a thoroughly over-the-top, caricaturish gay man in this film), you might still wonder why Mastizaade thought it fit to have the two heroes getting violent with a wheelchair-bound, paralysed man and flinging him down a flight of stairs.

Insensitivity is not Mastizaade’s only problem though. In fact, some people might consider this quality a film’s selling point. So no, Mastizaade’s problem is its absolute lack of originality and boring repetitiveness.

The characters in this story speak in rhyming sentences almost throughout. The double entendre seems to be drawn from pubescent schoolboys just beginning to discover the female mammary glands and cursed with particularly low IQs. Besides, what can you say about a film that has not one, but several women and a man drooling over Tusshar Kapoor, with Sunny’s Laila Lele even describing him as “hot”? Come to think of it – that is a pretty original thought. Good one, Team Mastizaade!

Rating (out of five stars): ½ star 

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	108 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/mastizaade-review-vulgarity-isnt-the-biggest-problem-in-this-sunny-leone-film-lack-of-originality-is-2603862.html

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

Film still: https://www.facebook.com/MastizaadeFilm/

REVIEW 366: KYAA KOOL HAIN HUM 3

Release date:	January 22, 2016
Director:	Umesh Ghadge
Cast: Language:	Tusshar Kapoor, Aftab Shivdasani, Krishna Abhishek, Claudia Ciesla, Gizele Thakral, Mandana Karimi, Shakti Kapoor, Meghna Naidu, Darshan Jariwala, Sushmita Mukherjee, Guest appearances: Riteish Deshmukh and Gauhar Khan Hindi

Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3 should inspire the Censor Board to introduce a new rating to the existing lot: J for Juvenile. Seriously, A for Adults Only is an insult to all those over-18s in this country with an iota of maturity and common sense.

Tusshar Kapoor and Aftab Shivdasani play buddies Kanhaiyya and Rocky in this, the third in the Kyaa Kool series. Kanhaiyya, son of industrialist P.K. Lele (Shakti Kapoor), is thrown out by his Dad for messing up at work. His quirk, since everyone must perforce have an identifying quirk in such films, is that his eyeballs get locked whenever he sees the colour red, giving him the appearance of a squint. Rocky is… well no one really bothers to tell us anything about him beyond the fact that he is Kanhaiyya’s friend.

The two take off for Bangkok where Rocky says a certain Mickey (Krishna Abhishek) has offered them a “hand job” in his business. Slip-up alert! He meant to say “a job which requires us to lend him a hand in his business”. So clever, na?

When the boys land in Thailand, they realise their friend is a producer of, ahem, adult films although he insists he is not doing “porn ka kaam” but “punya ka kaam” (applause again, please!) since his earnings are pumped into considerable philanthropic work. The residents of Mickey’s palatial home-cum-studio include a transgender actor, another who is gay and perennially semi-nude, a method actress who gets so engrossed in her roles that even her normal off-screen conversations are conducted in gasps and moans (Gizele Thakral) and another (Claudia Ciesla) who keeps going off into a trance to feel up her own body.

The setting and the latter two characters in particular have the potential for a rip-roaring laughathon. Besides, Krishna has good comic timing and KKHH3 reveals a funny bone in the Polish-German model-actress Claudia, whose calling cards in India right now are the ‘item’ number Balma in 2012’s Akshay Kumar-starrer Khiladi 786 and her appearance on Season 3 of the reality show Bigg Boss. Sadly, the writer-director team of KKHH3 loses the plot even before they’ve laid it out, recycling clichés and taking it for granted that nonsense cannot be intelligent, that rhyming words are somehow funny and that repetition is in itself a joke.

So a female porn star is known as Mary/Meri Lee, the surname Lele becomes a predictable source of merriment, a man mistakes his own foot in bed for an erection (How? Could he not feel his own body?) while another refers to a buxom woman as “boobsurat”. Yawn. Think of something new, people. Then there are meaningless inside jokes playing on the words “masti” and “grand masti” (you know, the titles of those films featuring Aftab and guest star Riteish Deshmukh). Yawn. And of course there are self-referential wisecracks about “ekta” (unity). Yawn, yawn. How often will we hear that in a film produced by Ekta Kapoor?

No doubt Ekta and her colleagues will argue, as they always do, especially if a film goes on to earn big money at the box office, that critics are too serious and incapable of enjoying comedy. Nonsense! Heard of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Sai Paranjpye, Golmaal, Chupke Chupke, Chashme Buddoor, Yes Minister, Yes Prime Minister, stand-up comedy, Pushpaka Vimana, Kamal Haasan, Govinda, David Dhawan at his best, Anil Kapoor, Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit, Mrs Doubtfire, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Ellen DeGeneres, Riteish when he is not giving himself short shrift, Seinfeld, Friends, Two Broke Girls, The Big Bang Theory, Mohanlal, Jagadeesh, Jay Leno, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel, Aisi Taisi Democracy, Poochakkoru Mookkuthi, Priyadarshan, Paresh Rawal…you really want a longer list? May I confess too that I thoroughly enjoy Anees Bazmee and Rohit Shetty when they are not taking us for granted?

No doubt too we will be told, as we always are, that this is what the public wants. Well, this member of the public would humbly submit that it is possible to be light-hearted, ludicrous and downright stupid to let your hair down, without being infantile.

Even within this series, the first Kyaa Kool Hain Hum (2005) was fun because there was a freshness to it, an impertinence that cocked a snook at ultra-conservatives, even if it pandered to those very conservatives with its many stereotypes,. The follow-up film, Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum, was boring, offensive and icky. KKHH3 is not even trying. Maybe it’s our fault that, as an audience, we made its predecessors hits. As with politicians and the media, so it is with cinema – I guess we get the films we deserve. What next? Kya Super Stupid Hain Hum?

Rating (out of five): ½ star

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	125 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/kyaa-kool-hain-hum-3-review-this-film-doesnt-even-try-but-maybe-its-our-fault-for-watching-its-prequels-and-making-them-hits-2596968.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyaa_Kool_Hain_Hum_3

REVIEW 98: THE DIRTY PICTURE

Release date:	December 2, 2011
Director:	Milan Luthria
Cast:	VIDYA BALAN. Also starring Naseeruddin Shah, Emraan Hashmi, Tusshar Kapoor, Rajesh Sharma

Must every Hindi film that gives primacy to its heroine be about sex and skin show? The question’s been asked by some people since The Dirty Picture’s promos were released. Well, when you see the film you will discover that over, above and beyond the bawdy bedroom scenes and blatant display of bosom, The Dirty Picture is about an actress who has thrown herself into a role and lived the part with no apologies, no holds barred! Seriously, Vidya Balan … wow!

The Dirty Picture is set in 1980s Madras and revolves around an aspiring actress called Reshma (Balan), a girl who fled home because she wanted more out of life than the marriage her mother was nudging her into. Her evident penury in the city does little to stem her feisty spirit, her sense of fun and her passion for cinema which is so great that one day when she’s famished and down to her last few rupees, she chooses to skip food to watch a film instead. Reshma’s persistent visits to film studios pay off when a producer finally notices her doing a sexy dance as an extra in a scene that his prudish director Abraham (Emraan Hashmi) snipped out of a film. Reshma is Discovered, she is renamed Silk, the traditional clothes are exchanged for hot little Western numbers, and her acid tongue and penchant for publicity make her an overnight headline grabber. She is every man’s dirty secret, the actress they fantasise about but don’t take their wives to theatres to watch with them. The Dirty Picture is the story of The Rise and Fall of Silk.

The highlights of this film are Vidya Balan, Vidya Balan, Vidya Balan … and Rajat Aroraa’s crackling dialogues. Oh the joy of hearing Abraham say, If Silk was the last woman on earth, I’d get a vasectomy done! The excellent make-up genuinely highlights the decline of the marquee star (though I’m not sure why her ascent to glamourdom had to be marked by her dark skin lightening up). The costumes and styling perfectly recreate those tawdry films of the 1980s. There’s also some supremely intelligent music direction by Vishal-Shekhar whose gorgeous Ooh la la – so beautifully picturised! – transports us back three decades.

I also enjoyed the way language has been used in this film. The costumes and car number plates make it clear that the story is set in Tamil Nadu, but director Milan Luthria (who earlier collaborated with Balaji on Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai) has wisely chosen not to get his cast to desperately struggle with accents. Nor are the Hindi dialogues peppered with Tamil. Such half measures often lead to amusing inconsistency. Interesting decision, Messrs Luthria and Aroraa!

Of the supporting cast, Naseeruddin Shah is good as the male star who retains his numero uno status despite his advancing years and expanding waistline, in an industry that easily tires of its leading ladies. But the actor I hope will get nominated at all the Awards next year along with Balan is the excellent Rajesh Sharma playing the producer who discovers Silk. Earlier this year, Sharma turned in a fabulous performance as a policeman with shades of gray in No One Killed Jessica. I can still hear him say, “Aap kaunsi duniya main rehti ho Sabrinaji?”

The kilos that Balan gained for this film are very much in evidence, as a sexily voluptuous Silk degenerates into the alcoholic and pot-bellied falling star. The impact of Vidya’s courageous physical transformation and acting, combined with all that entertaining dialoguebaazi however, do not alter the fact that The Dirty Picture is a highly flawed film. The performances by Tusshar Kapoor (as Naseer’s younger brother) and Hashmi lack depth, the story (especially in the second half) is riddled with loopholes and not enough attention has been paid to the character graphs! Which leaves me with too many questions that the film fails to answer … A starving Reshma/Silk is propositioned by a sleazy man in a theatre one night; she refuses to prostitute herself to him despite her desperation, so how come she does not think for a second before casually sleeping with the hero of her very first film at the very first sign of trouble? What explains Abraham’s extreme animosity towards Silk and his dramatic turnaround? Why did Reshma/Silk’s mother abruptly change her mind about her daughter right in the end? Was Silk in love with her superstar idol or was she simply hurt at being mis-treated?

There is also a certain dishonesty in the approach to the subject that is gnawing at me. For months, the producers let it be known that The Dirty Picture is the story of south Indian cinema’s sex symbol of the 1980s, Silk Smitha. Then on November 4, in the shadow of legal action from the real Silk’s family, Balaji Pictures issued a statement clarifying that the film is “a work of fiction, and any characters’ resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental”. So if this is not the late Silk Smitha’s biopic, if the leading lady in this film is only a composite of several actresses of that era, then why has the character been called Silk and why was Silk Smitha’s birthday carefully chosen as the release date for this film? Are such publicity stunts justified when it involves the reputation of a human being who can no longer defend herself?

The ethical debate apart, this would have been half the film that it is right now without Balan and the sharp dialogue writing. All those lovely individual ingredients have somehow not been cooked up into a wholesome whole, but are so darned good on their own that The Dirty Picture ends up being paisa vasool. And seriously, Vidya Balan … wow!

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating:                       A

Language:                             Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.facebook.com/thedirtypicturefilm