REVIEW 231: KRRISH 3

Release date:	November 1, 2013
Director:	Rakesh Roshan
Cast: Language:	Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Kangna Ranaut, Viveik Oberoi, Arif Zakaria, Rajpal Yadav, Asif Basra Hindi

“Congratulations, beta hua hai,” says the nurse to the beaming Priya and Krishna Mehra in a hospital room towards the end of Krrish 3. Imagine instead if the line had been, “Congratulations, beti hui hai.” Now that’s what could have elevated Rakesh Roshan’s film from merely being fun to something extraordinarily pathbreaking, special and brave. Alas, like pretty much every Hollywood superhero flick to which Krrish 3 pays tribute, here too legacies and genes are passed on only from father-to-son-to-grandson instead of from parent-(mother/father)-to-child-(daughter/son)-to-grandchild-(granddaughter/grandson). And sadly, the bravery in this project is only a remnant of the risk Roshan Senior took when he entered a heavily-special-effects-laden sci-fi-superhero genre with Koi Mil Gaya in 2003. Ten years on, he brings to us the third film in the series, a play-it-safe even if highly entertaining film.  

Krrish 3 takes off where Koi Mil Gaya and its sequel Krrish left off: Rohit – an elderly version of the mentally ‘slow’ genius from KMG – is now living a happy life with his son Krishna in Mumbai. Rohit works in a scientific research facility in the city. In his spare time he is immersed in a personal project to harness the sun’s rays through mirror arrangements to revive dead beings. Krishna is repeatedly fired from paying jobs since most of his time is spent saving the world from tragedies in his masked superhero avatar Krrish. Their family is completed by Krishna’s journalist wife Priya who we first met in the second film.

In a snowy land far away lives Kaal, a wheelchair-bound evil scientist with telekinetic powers who creates lethal viruses, deliberately causes epidemics, then earns millions by selling antidotes for those very viruses. Kaal is aided in his work by an army of mutants he created by fusing human and animal DNA, calling them maanvar (= maanav + jaanvar). Among them is the chameleon-woman Kaaya. When Rohit develops an antidote for a virus in India before Kaal’s antidote hits the market, the bad guy is enraged and makes it his mission to find out more about the Mehras and his mysterious link with them. And thence all hell breaks loose.

It becomes obvious what’s in store for us when in the opening minutes: (1) Big B’s voiceover providing a flashback to the first two films describes Rohit, with ill-chosen words, as “abnormal” (2) we meet Krishna and Priya looking stunning in their nightwear (he topless, actually) and (3) it soon rains adrenaline as Krrish emerges in his caped and masked glory, zipping across the city to prevent a plane crash. This then is what the film offers us throughout: not much intellectual finesse, handsome people, top-notch home-grown special effects (it felt good to see them credited to SRK’s Red Chillies VFX, Mumbai) and excellent action. Rajesh Roshan’s songs, it must be said, are a yawn. Making matters worse are the dated lyrics of God Allah aur Bhagwan ne banaaya ek insaan, reminding us that Bollywood remains convinced to this day that the God of Christians speaks only English, the God of Muslims speaks only Arabic and Hinduism’s many deities are Hindi-bhaashis. The disco Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram is interesting in the way it evokes the celebratory nature of Hindu worship, but the song does not rise above being lively.

On the face of it, Krrish 3’s USP is its special effects. But look closer and it’s clear that the entire series would be nothing without Hrithik Roshan. In this film he switches from Rohit to Krishna to Krrish with more conviction than the written material might have inspired in a lesser actor. Of all Bollywood’s reigning male stars today, Hrithik is the one equipped with the kind of versatile face and killer body (not overly ripped as it was in Kites) that could be equally convincing as a superhero, a towering figure from Indian history or a contemporary regular Jo. Personally, I’d love to see him play Ram, Krishna or Jesus in a film. It goes beyond his natural talent and incredible looks though. With the flawed Krrish 3 he proves that he has overcome his initial weaknesses & evolved into one of the best male actors in the industry.

Playing his wife here is one of the best female actors in the industry, which is why it’s a telling statement on the position of women in Bollywood that Priyanka Chopra is relegated to a mere hanger-on in this film. Kangna Ranaut’s impossibly curvaceous, vicious yet vulnerable Kaaya has greater substance. When she has sexual fantasies about Krishna, the director substitutes her thoughts with a sanitised song, I guess because he wanted a U certification. Despite that embarrassingly bad number sung in a desert, Kaaya remains an enigmatically appealing creature throughout. Kangna also seems to have worked hard on her accent and voice modulation, which have been her Achilles heel in recent years. With this film, the Roshans have compensated her for the shabby treatment they meted out to her character in Kites in 2010. Viveik Oberoi’s Kaal is a mixed bag though. The actor does his best, but the laboured explanations about his background and the director’s evident effort to summon up a sense of ominous grandeur around him end up slowing down the film in all his scenes. Especially dull is the scene in which a metallic body suit envelopes Kaal, so reminiscent of Yashida’s equally dull emergence as the Silver Samurai in this year’s The Wolverine.

That’s not the only scene here that is a reminder of a Hollywood superhero flick (though let's be fair and admit that when Hollywood superhero flicks resemble each other, we Indians tend to complain a lot less). Krrish 3 repeatedly crosses the fine line between inspiration, imitation and an ode. It’s hard to understand why that was necessary since there was more writing depth, flesh and originality in both Koi Mil Gaya and Krrish despite the evident inspiration from ET and Superman/Batman.

Hollywood superheroes come to us against the backdrop of their comic-book mythology. A Bollywood superhero has thousands of years of Indian mythology to dip into. The Krrish-Kaal equation harks back to Arjun and Karna from the Mahabharat. At one point a character draws a parallel between Kaal’s mutants and Ramayan’s Shurpanakha. There is potential here, but the screenplay by Akash Khurana, Honey Irani, Irfan Kamal, Rakesh Roshan and Robin Bhatt seems determined to keep it simple with what appears to be an eye on a very young audience.

Thing is, children are far more intelligent than we give them credit for. Besides, some of the best children’s films have offered layers of meaning to adults. Oh well, with all its blemishes, Krrish 3 still has a lot to offer: a loveable, beautiful-looking superhero, an intriguing female antagonist, hugely entertaining action sequences, the promise of a Krrish 4 and these words from Priya that are worth holding on to, “Krrish ek soch hai jise koi kaal nahin maar sakta”.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	2 hours 32 minutes

Photograph courtesy: Everymedia PR

REVIEW 223: GRAND MASTI

Release date:	September 13, 2013
Director:	Indra Kumar
Cast: Language:	Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi, Aftab Shivdasani & 6 women whose names I’ve not bothered to find out Hindi

WARNING #1: THIS REVIEW IS FOR ADULTS ONLY:

WARNING #2: LOTS OF SPOILERS AHEAD:

A for arses, B for boobs, C for chooths … That’s the English alphabet according to the three heroes of Grand Masti, except that they don’t even have the guts to say those three words, so “A for” uttered by one of them is followed by shots of an array of female bottoms, “B for” is followed by an array of female chests in skimpy clothing displaying lavish cleavage, and “C for” is followed, not by visuals, but by a hurried add-on comment: “guess you’ve already got the picture.” Okay, so they draw the line at vaginas?

Yeah yeah, I’m uttering the words. Improper, did you say? Then you’ve missed the point I’m trying to make. Here’s the thing: methinks there’s no better indication of our Great Indian Hypocrisy than that a film like Grand Masti, replete with the most unsubtle double entendre I’ve seen and heard in a recent mainstream Hindi film, doesn’t have the guts to actually spell things out in black and white; and though the constant allusion throughout is to the body parts and sexual frustrations of the heroes and heroines, not once is anyone shown actually having sex. Oh no no no, that would be so non-kosher, now wouldn’t it? So completely against Indian culture, no? In The Gospel According To Director Indra Kumar, calling a busty woman “sthan-ing”, not stunning, is okay (FYI non-Hindi-speaking readers, “sthan” is a Hindi word for breasts); constant discussions about milk in her presence are okay; but god forbid that we should be shown anything but bodies covered by bedsheets and quilts to indicate the act of human copulation. See, I said a bad word again! C-o-p-u-l-a-t-i-o-n! Hawww!

As we all know by now, male marital infidelity is a constant source of humour for Hindi films. If a heroine sleeps around, we get a gritty, ‘thinking’, socially conscious film like BA Pass, because of course female promiscuity is no laughing matter for the male-dominated audience. When men sleep around though, what we get are No Entry and Grand Masti. So this is a story of three husbands who decide to get some action when they go off to a college reunion without their wives. There they meet three horny, half-clad women called Rose, Mary and Marlo. Their efforts to get into bed with these three and later to escape the man in their lives in addition to the suspicion of their own wives is what the film is all about.

Subtlety is clearly not Grand Masti’s strength so if it arrives at a joke, then the point is repeated again and again and again and again and again and again until even the densest member of the audience gets it. For instance, it doesn’t take much to guess that the three ladies’ names will be said out loud in precisely that order without the use of “and”. Which Indian parent names their daughter Marlo? No one I’ve ever heard of, but what does it matter when Amar (Riteish Deshmukh), Meet (Viveik Oberoi) and Prem (Aftab Shivdasani) get to say Rose Mary Marlo, Rose Mary Marlo, Rose Mary Marlo ad nauseam through the film. Arrey stupid, you didn’t get it? They mean roz meri maar lo and if you don’t understand what that means then you have an even lower IQ than Indra Kumar expects his audience to have!

Let’s be clear here: I’m not against irreverence. I’m not against being offensive either. Point is, crudeness comes easy, offensiveness for the heck of it comes easy; irreverence, on the other hand, requires imagination and intelligence. One of my favourite American serials running on Indian television right now is Two Broke Girls which is offensive to men, offensive to women, offensive to blacks, whites and Asians, tall people and short people, gay and straight people, fat and thin people, and pretty much every majority or minority group I can think of. The show’s creators Michael Patrick King and Whitney Cummings are constantly pushing the envelope with their humour, but that humour never descends to kindergarten level. Grand Masti never rises above KG though.

And so, while there are a handful of scenes that did make me laugh in spite of myself (I counted five such in 135 minutes), for the most part what the film delivers is a complete lack of IQ: A college boy is castrated by his principal, but later surfaces with a massive bump in the crotch area that we soon discover is filled with air. That part is marked out by a big golden patch on his small, tight shorts. Why? Who knows? A statue gets erections when it sees hot women. Okay, funny. But then it happens a second time. And then one more time. And then another time. Oh, c’mon! Prem’s idea of kinky sex with his wife is to wear something that looks like a rat’s head appended to his penis area. Why? No idea. As it happens, right at that moment there’s a cat in the bedroom who sees red and attacks the rat. Now that cat belongs to Amar’s bhabhi and is called Pussy which – of course! – gives people an excuse to say “bhabhi ki Pussy” several times. In another extended scene involving shadow play, a woman reaching into a large bag and pulling out various things is positioned to look like she’s pulling out all those items from Amar’s “nether yeyya” (pardon the spelling), to borrow a term I picked up when Amy Farrah Fowler in The Big Bang Theory quoted Chaucer’s A Miller’s Tale.

Now let’s come to the film’s rape joke, for after all how can you have a Bollywood comedy without a rape joke? Rape is so funny, na? If the mighty 3 Idiots could have that lengthy balaatkaar speech, if Jab We Met could get Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor to chuckle about rape, how can we expect anything less of Grand Masti? At least these guys don’t stretch the joke beyond a sentence. At one point in this film, in the exact tone in which he has cracked all the stupid jokes until then, one of the men says: “Balaatkaar se yaad aaya, meri biwi kaha hai?” Why? Because it is okay to speak of rape in jest, I guess? Yes I heard you loud and clear, those of you who think I’m a humourless feminist. Here’s my answer: I love irreverence, I enjoy equitable sexism, I’m not one of the people demanding an end to item songs, all I ask is many more such numbers with shirtless and pantless John Abrahams, Hrithik Roshans and SRKs. Jokes about rape, however, I will never understand. What’s amusing about one of the vilest crimes a human being can commit? Those of you who condone rape jokes, would you also condone jokes about the Jews in Hitler’s concentration camps or the Hindus killed in the Godhra train burning or Sikhs burnt with tyres placed around their necks in the 1984 riots or Muslims hacked to death in Gujarat in 2002? If these acts of cruelty don’t amuse you, could you please explain what’s so amusing about a man forcing his penis into an unwilling woman’s vagina?

Gentlemen who think rape jokes are funny, I’d request you to read this article titled “The Rape Of Men” in the UK’s The Guardian newspaper and then tell me honestly if you will ever again make wisecracks about sexual assault. It’s not so amusing, is it, when it’s not happening to “the other”? As for ladies who are tickled by rape jokes: in the name of your absent self-respect, I’d urge you to find other ways of scoring brownie points with your gentlemen friends and being “one of the boys”. Yes, I’m being judgemental. No apologies.

The difference between Grand Masti and most other sleazy Hindi films of this genre is that this one dehumanises not just its heroines, but its heroes too. The women of GM are never more than a sum of their breasts and buttocks. The men here have their entire beings centred around their penises. Watching this film, I wanted to take a moment to mourn the loss of Indra Kumar, Vivek Oberoi, Riteish Deshmukh and Aftab Shivdasani. Indra Kumar is the man whose film Raja is eternal proof of what a live wire Madhuri Dixit can be in an over-the-top, out-and-out comedy. Given the right material, Riteish is capable of being inexorably funny. Remember Vivek from the pre-Salman-Khan-press-conference days? Remember the buzz around that young actor brimming with potential in Ram Gopal Varma’s Company? And Aftab… my god he was once a Farex baby! Look what life and Bollywood have reduced them to. Grand Masti is a Grand Embarrassment.

Rating (out of five): -10 stars 

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	2 hours 15 minutes

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