Farah Khan – The Bach

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?

If Farah Khan thinks she can make a stupid movie with a fantastic item number and make it a biggest blockbuster, she probably is right. It works for Indian audience, and me. Tees Maar Khan was a houseful show in the middle of the week; probably it will remain so for rest of the holidays, unless a miracle happens. Her logic was simple, it’s feeling freezing out here and all we need is a racy raunchy number for this winter! 😉

Sheela Ki Jawani is totally fantastic! It has the same effect as some of the legendary items songs we had in this industry. I remember boys hostels going crazy over Babuji zara Dheere chalo, because there was a Bijli standing there, now it must be crazier since it is matter of Sheela’s Jawani! Whole movie can be tolerated to see this dance number. One more thing – the lyrics – semi-X rated “What’s my name…Ooh… Say my name”. 😉

The rest of the movie is plain simple stupid, it made little sense as any other Akshay Kumar movie and this can be easily counted as worst movie of 2010. It’s almost obvious that the movie was made for a bunch of 8 year olds, who giggle for anything jumping and running on the screen. They don’t need much explanation, do they? It’s like any cartoon network show; Tom loses his face for something Jerry does, and in the next scene Tom is alright and chasing Jerry again! There is little or no explanation why things are happening in the way they are happening. Those three stooges resemble penguins in the movie in Madagascar. I can go on, but in summary movie is a complete cartoon show – a bad one!

Plot was lifted from a disastrous Hollywood movie “After the Fox”. An international criminal plotting to rob a train filled with antiques, and does it by fooling an entire village. From an international thief, who apparently escaped every time he was caught; you would expect a lot of wit and skills. You would expect to see another Ocean’s eleven or Italian job, but no! There is nothing more than a Govinda from early 90s. Nothing in a Genius thief film leaves anything to your imagination – nothing smart.

Movie moves with a millions of technical mistakes, but there is no point complaining about it. It’s like any other holy book, filled with impossible stuff which cannot be questioned. If you need one example, the whole village scene was shot in a single camera – 200 actors in close up! And superstar Athish Kapoor does not find this odd!

Director Farah Khan is up against all those Indian or western movies with Indians those wanting to earn an Oscar (references to Amir Khan and Anil Kapoor). This movie looks like a campaign against them, like someone attending a social cause, in facebook. Every part of the movie tries to humiliate Oscar wannabes, or those who already got them. One more thing is, Bollywood’s idea of Oscar is to show poor villagers story (slumdog, Peepli) plus historical story (Lagaan). At end of the movie some European girls (new obsession of Bollywood) distribute fake Oscars to all camera-shy crew of this movie, including spot boys and light boys. Finally Farah arrives on stage and gets a real one and rubs it on buttock! BTW, have you heard the story about Fox and sour grapes?

Akshay Kumar is at his usual worst. I beg these directors to give him action role which he hasn’t done in decades. He is over used as henpecked coward, wetting his pants and running away from a headless ghost (Yes, you guessed it right – Sleepy Hollow.) Akshay Khanna with his usual irritating over acting, natural choice I would say. Only tolerable actor was Katrina Kaif, but her role itself was to overact! She is a wannabe-actor and a foxy bimbette, also Tees Mar Khan’s (aka Tabrez Mirza Khan) love interest. There is nothing much to discuss on acting department.

Good

Sheela ki Jawani
Just two hours of non-sense, not three.

Bad

All departments.
All the technical mistakes (a million of them)

And Ugly

Director’s of Idea of Oscars.
Cheep humour. Taking crap behind the bushes (literally) etc.

Talking about references, there is a guest appearance by Chunky Pandey who is presented as irresponsible narcissist, which I heard about him in real life as well. There is one more scene where Anil Kapoor dances on stage like a child, which also seems to be true. Come to Salman Khan, who gives a guest appearance in Tees Mar Khan’s (international criminal) Mohalla for a dance on a casual invite over a phone call, Now does this have any relevance in real life ? Just looking for some significance, symbolism etc. that’s all.

My advice – Please avoid. Watch Sheela ki Jawani on YouTube.