Ra.One – Bullet Point Report

• All the scenes involving Ra.One – except for the climax – are well executed. Sadly, the movie has other scenes too.
• This has to be one of the worst opening sequences in any film, ever.
  Its official; SRK should not ever do long hair again (unless he plays Lizardman or something similarly reptile-like).
• The special appearances are yawn inducing. Rajnikanth looks old and haggard – did Red Chillies run out of money to apply the Photoshop touchups ;)?
• What is it with SRK and Tamilian spoofs? He did a terrible one is OSO, and the one here is only marginally better – at least, in terms of Tamil dialogues (expecting the right accent is too much, I guess). The noodles scene was gross, though.
• The child acts reasonably well; just the fact that his emotions registered under that hideous wig says a lot.
• Kareena is terrible here – reminds one of her Khushi days. The sole saving grace is the “Chammak Challo” number. She still delivers that one moment, where she turns and smiles with the red in her eyes.
• After Cash and Ra.One, it is evident that Anubhav Sinha should stop doing any kind of humor and concentrate only on songs & action sequences. Designing video games would be a good career option as well, IMHO.
• As for SRK, he tries hard to make the movie work, but succeeds only to some extent. As the bumbling game developer, he is a bit endearing despite the hamming and the Tamil stereotyping etc – especially in the sequences where he tries to reach out to his son. However he screws up G.One by playing him as a mixture of Terminator II and Rahul.
• It is when you watch the forced humor here that you get to appreciate what someone like Karan Johar can do with his screenplay and dialogue-writing skills.
• SRK seems to be alluding to the rumors of his being bisexual as he cups Kareena’s breast and Arjun’s balls – both scenes were downright silly.
• To me, Ra.One was marginally better than Krish and Drona, as it seemed to be spoofing itself most of the time. However, it isn’t even in the same planet as Enthiran. To put things in perspective, Ra.One is sort of the like the mosquito episode in Enthiran.

Tees Maar Khan – Review

Much has been talked about of SRK’s split with Farah Khan (heck, SRK even did one of his famous quivering eyebrows teary-eyed act on Koffee with Karan that predictably had Karan sniffing and shedding a few tears of his own – one of the more nauseating television acts I have had the misfortune of seeing), but if all of Farah’s future films are going to be scripted / lifted by her husband, then SRK has probably done the right thing. Kitsch as they might be, MHN and OSO were smart, and had some genuinely funny moments. TMK has (maybe) one LOL moment, and predictably this is a scene without Akshay Kumar in it. But then, even SRK could not have salvaged TMK. SRK definitely has the last laugh here.

The first 10 minutes are fun, and that is about it. The next 2.5 hours leave you reeling with the agony of watching an impossibly painful movie. Don’t believe me? Take one of those mindless Priyadarsan remakes (Hungama, Hulchul etc); multiply the inanity and screaming by around 75%, and substitute Paresh Rawal (who for all his faults can definitely conjure up at least a grin in an hour) with a bunch of un-funny non-actors – you would pretty much get something similar to TMK.

For a non-actor, Akshay Kumar has had a pretty good run at Bollywood. However, he needs to select his scripts with better care. A smart-aleck act and a gummy smile can only be tolerated so far; a few slick action flicks are the want of the day. Frankly, AK is intolerable in TMK.

Katrina Kaif looks hot, and acts as if she is acting badly – not that she has to try too hard. However, all is forgiven with the Sheila Ki Jawani number. Akshaye Khanna hams it up to the hilt; he makes the most of what is really a role meant for Johny Lever. Arya Babbar looks interesting. The rest of the cast deserve to be spoken about (nay abused) in the filthiest of epithets.

Farah Khan has clearly lost her edge; perhaps she cannot do a film that is not a Bollywood spoof. At the very least, she should desist from any future collaboration with her husband (for films!), and write her own scripts. Eating humble pie and teaming up with SRK again would probably be a terrific idea as well.

Verdict: DO.NOT.WATCH.

Sideburns and Bellbottoms

‘Om Shanti Om’, widely touted as the tribute to the kitschy cinema of the 1970s, features the re-union of SRK and Farah Khan after the hugely successful ‘Main Hoon Naa‘. SRK, a lot like Sreenivasan in ‘Udayananu Tharam’, plays a supremely untalented junior artist who wants to make it big. And make no mistake, this is a role tailor-made for the trademark mannerisms of SRK the star (as opposed to the actor, who reigned supreme with effective performances in ‘Swades’ and ‘Chak De’) – the stammer, the arched quirky eyebrows and the omnipresent hamming rather make sense in a movie like this, really. And his bubblegum-chewing modern star-son act, though irritating, hits the mark all too well – I mean, I can all too well imagine a Fardeen Khan or Tushaar Kapoor doing the same things!

However, I have to admit that I very much preferred the cheeky ‘Main Hoon Naa’ to this bloated, bursting-at-the-seams star vehicle. Yes, OSO does have some great in jokes (my personal favorites are the by-now-infamous Manoj Kumar sequence, the throwaway Govinda bit and of course the delightful ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’ reference), the awesome spoof on Filmfare awards, and also features the original ‘Om Shanti Om’ song sequence from one of the greatest masala potboilers of Hindi cinema ever. However, it also has a rather boring plot, inadequate music (despite the catchy six-pack ditty), an over-hyped 31-star song where one is forced to hear (for the first and probably only time ) admiring oohs when the likes of Arbaaz Khan, Sunil Shetty, Dino Morea etc enter the frame, and worst of all, a complete letdown of a climax ‘inspired’ from the above-mentioned ‘Karz’ (and another classic too, revealing the name of which would probably spoil what little novelty the climaz holds). ‘MHN’ managed to pay the same kind of homage, with a lot more tongue-firmly-in-cheek humor, and more importantly, without the conceit and pomp associated with this film.

The supporting cast comprises chiefly of the delightful Kiron Kher (who does the melodramatic Nirupa Roy kind-of role with just that amount of cheesiness), the under-utilized Shreyas Deshpande, and the surprisingly-sleazy-looking Arjun Ramphal (who, judging by his past few films, has firmly hitched onto the SRK bandwagon to make hay even while the sun does not shine). Deepika Padukone looks fantastic, and emotes well with what little she is entrusted with. Farah Khan’s song picturizations are, surprisingly, lackluster. She has been claiming in quite a few interviews that conventional Bollywood choreography bores her nowadays, and believe me, the dis-interest shows. However, the rest of the film is super-grand technically, visually and aesthetically.

What does Farah Khan do next, though? She already has two films that pay homage to the bygone era of Bollywood, and appears to have exhausted the nostalgia factor. The litmus test for her would be whether she can make a completely different film next time – a whodunit perhaps?