Aamir Khan – The Bach

I was late for the party; I watched Dhoom 3 after the entire world and his wife. When I reached here, the Internet is filled with contents by Bhakts on how Dhoom 3 fulfilled their lives and without which Holidays would have been so dull. Twitter is trending with trends and screenshots of trends and tweeting why Twitter is trending with it. Box offices are shouting that this has broken all the records in Nepal, Pakistan, Somalia and Papua new-guinea; before this, we did not know movie industries existed out there. Oh Boy! Aamir Khan Movies are festivals on their own. You must be living under a rock if you haven’t bought one of these overpriced tickets and enjoyed the performance of Bollywood perfectionist.

Aamir Khan Bhakts who did not sense sarcasm above, this is when you close the browser.

Okay, let’s start. Within the first five minutes, the message comes out – loud and clear. A) Revenge is must whenever a banker does not lend you more money considering your ideas are nuts. B) never ever beg or plead in front of a gora. Instead, it’s cool to shoot yourself in front of kids. The Entire movie is built around these two principles – Aamir’s character(s) live for a) and dies with b)! Oh, joy! There is absolutely nothing else worth noting – it’s a regular masala flick – a formula with a half cup each of humiliated parent, extreme poverty, 25 years of revenge, cabaret for masses, surprise twins twist, shattering brick walls and flying rickshaws; add salt and pepper as per your taste.

Something must be said about Katrina. It appears like her entry to the movie is choreographed by a horny 17-year-old kid. The only good song in the entire film – Kamali, is a mix of two most popular adult movie genres, strip-tease and casting-couch. !!

Having expected as a heist movie, I thought it would show something smart like Ocean’s eleven. But No, robbery starts with him running away rather than a planned execution of theft itself. It was also told this movie is about magic. Which is also called circus for some undisclosed reasons, there isn’t any magic as well. Listen to this – for a magic trick, they keep one of the twins hidden for his entire lifespan – without even social security number Obamacare! How cool is that?

Okay, then it must be a race movie like its predecessors. Apparently, it isn’t that too, in fact, it does not even have a real race. While rest of the crowd follow in regular vehicles, Aamir rides on the second cousin of Optimus prime – youngest member of Autobot transformers. Apparently, riding it on the road is one of the boring things one can do with it when it can assemble itself as hovercraft and motorboat as well (did I miss helicopter?).

Abhishek and Uday are said to have enrolled under BharataRatna Sri Rajiv Gandhi Rojgar Yojna, even then this is Uday Chopra’s career-best performance. US characters in the movie are like never ageing vampires. The only person in the entire film with some acting experience is Aamir and him.

Aamir Khan smelling the fart screws is up. I don’t know hot explain but let me give a try – Aamir is “selectively differently-abled”. One of his characters cannot tie shoes. Still, note, he can operate an Autobot bike also can do acrobatic dances at par with Katrina. His character is very similar to “my name is Khan…”, King Khan messed it up, so did Aamir’s now.

The Most Annoying part is, he pulls out random expressions at random places. I was told Amir does Joey Tribbiani’s “smelling the fart” throughout the movie, allegedly intense acting. But I could note some more: ‘did I leave the gas on?’, ‘did I change my undie today?. And when he places an occasional smile in between all these intense souls searching questions, it looks like ‘That fart smells like cinnamon’.

Sorry about so many fart jokes, If you can explain it a better way, be my guest.

The movie itself has so many loopholes that you will be confused about ‘Saans Kahan se lein aur…’. (too many fart jokes eh?). Several posts are listing all the things which went wrong in this movie. Here, one of the most hilarious among them, by Mumbai boss.

Those who accused Aamir Khan as a perfectionist, please eat your shoes now, or that hat he wore.

An art film, to me, falls into either of two categories. One kind strikes audience with a brilliant sigh, making us wonder how a complex thought can be so simply put (E.g. Black Swan). The other kind is a folder of scribbles thrown at you, which does not make any sense even if you arrange in any order. Dhobi Ghat belongs to second category. It’s a high profile, big banner, “star” cast, much anticipated commercial-art movie which makes you feel you are reading few torn pages of someone else’s dairy. Probably, that’s the reason wise say you shouldn’t read someone else’s dairy. It’s so freaking boring!

Dhobi Ghat is not a traditional Bollywood commercial-art movie; hence my comments are also not regular ones. Movie is attributed with fine acting and brilliant direction. Bummer – it is pointless and boring. It neither does the justice to the time spent in cinema nor to the pop-corn bought. (Just a thought: Movie like this is the reason why Akshay Kumar in industry, to bring pointless but not boring movies). Dhobi Ghat revolves around a modern art painter Arun (Amir Khan) obsessed with video letters of Yasmin. At the same time NRI investment banker Shai (Monika Dogra) stalks him while successfully manage to get herself obsessed by Munna (Prateik) the Dhobi, whom she meets on her clichéd poverty trip. Arun changes houses! That’s all – I dint miss anything to explain on the plot!

All newcomers (all of them except Amir) have done nice job, justice to their roles, while Amir still struggles with “new age” acting – the natural one. Amir acting still stuck in mid 90s standard of great acting, I feel he was weakest link in acting department. Kiran Rao’s direction is great, even without considering this is her first presentation. Actually this is a relief! Since for a long time now Farah Khan was taking all the sympathy votes for being the only female Bollywood mainstream director. Now Farah can retire and Kiran can take her place with an understanding that her first movie is a mistake and she won’t be making a pointless movie again.

After Dhobi Ghat, I went into depression for a while and was actually looking for an Akshay Kumar kind of movie to undo this effect. We don’t run out of options do we? I chose Vijay’s Kaavalan over “Yamla Pagla Diwana”. As anticipated it was crapy one and boom! I am back to this world again, Thanks to Vadivelu!. Anyways, here are some options; if you would like undo the hangover after watching Dhobi Ghat (I used all three):

Kaavalan: Vijay is a kick boxer, student, body guard, dancer, comedian, singer, honest but innocent, most eligible bachelor as usual! Basically he is almost all the things I dreamed I would become when I was 12.

Black Swan: Amazingly brilliant movie. Watch it yourself, I am running out of words to explain it.

127 Hours: Another brilliant masterpiece by Danny Boyle. It surely will bring you goose bumps (as “The way back” did). Again, I am running out of words to explain the movie. One note on AR Rahman though! One more evidence to show he copies tunes, from his own work! Or, do we call it reuse? Some part of this movie has background tune of Raavan (Behene De to be specific.). Probably he thought the crowd that watched Raavan and watching 127 Hours are mutually exclusive. He is obviously wrong isn’t it?