A Tale of 3 Hindi Movies

Recently I watched 3 movies in a row, each a cult classic in distributing misery and I believe its now time that I wrote a blog about them. If Bollywood keeps churning out such movies in the coming months and years, we will definitely be a force to reckon with in World Cinema and especially on Razzie nights.

It's for you to choose which movie is the best of the worst of the lot.

1. Aap ka surooor -

This movie has it all, a bearded, nasal singing, cap clad HR whose attempt at acting would leave everyone cringing in their sits pulling out their hair in sheer frustration. This movie is definitely not for the faint hearted and could be used in the future as a torture device that would get even the most hardened of criminals to start singing like canaries.

Some of the classic scenes of the movie include:

1. The story goes that HR heroically performed a couple of stunts on his own. These included 1. smiling for the first time on camera and 2. removing his cap at the end of the movie revealing his coiffure. The best kept secret in Bollywood is finally out of the cap.

2. The brilliant sequence in the movie where a group of auto-rikshaws in 'Germany' manage to over power a bunch of cop cars to help HR escape and prove his innocence.

3. The scene where the cops come to catch HR after his performance and he yells out Sunny Deol style, "This is a mistake".

4. His phone conversation with wannabe Dimple when HR barks out, "Jhooooot !!!!!! (lenghty pause) I love you !!!!!" after every sentence that she says.

5. Trying to out-sing Kishore in "Dard-E-Dil" and RD in "Mehbooba Mehbooba" as well his own unique rendition of the Gayatri Mantra.

6. When he looks at his FIL and asks him to judge him as a person from his eyes (it took all of 30 minutes for the FIL to locate HR's eyes hidden somewhere in between the beard and the cap).

7. Also check out the ishhtyle in which he works up the crowd in his initial performance in the movie.

8. His scene where he turns down Mallika Sherawat. If my sources are to be believed, they had to re-do the take for this scene around 100 times since Mallika ended up bursting into laughter every time he rejected her. Finally they had to tape her mouth shut to complete the scene.

If nothing else, at least this movie as well as the music in the movie has some originality that is unfortunately lacking in most of the movies being released these days. However if originality means coming up with a script like AKS, only god can save us. But the news is that HR is making a sequel to this movie which he says will explain why he wears a cap in the first place. One of the great unsolved mysteries of the world ranked alongside the Bermuda triangle and the Abominable Snowman will finally be revealed.

2. Jhoom Barabar Jhoom

Movie number 2 on our list is a madcap comedy from the not so able hands of Shaad Ali. The movie features Outlandishly garish costumes, colorful locations, Amitabh dressed up as the cross-bred of an Ostrich and a Pirate and an over acting star cast which includes a loud Jr. Bacchan, a not so pretty Zinta, an over-acting Deol and a french Lara Dutta. Yash raj films and Shaad figured that with their splendid cast, they probably did not need a script.

Highlights of the movie include

1. Someone came up with the brilliant idea that Amitabh would play a musical sutradhar wearing a hat with an Ostrich feather and armed with a double barrelled guitar. Everytime the director would run out of ideas, which is quite often, AB comes barging in with a 100 extras singing the title track. Kudos to the director for making the greatest superstar in Bollywood look like an old crazy fool.

2. Jr. B for his "oh blimey" Punjabi accented English and Lara Dutta for her French accented and then later gutter hindi. They have actually done a pretty decent job with whatever scope they had. If only apna director saab had given them a decent script.

3. When Lara Dutta says "Mujhe ticket nahi, Thukral chahiye" in her french accent and later when they break into a dance in front of the Louvre and Eiffel Tower.

4. Bobby Deol childishly saying "I hate you" to every other person.

5. Preity Zinta over plastered with make up. She has started to look too old to keep on doing all those cute cuddly bubbly roles that she's famous for.

6. The jazzy clothes in the movie, put even Puff Daddy and Snoop Doggy Dog to shame.

7. The stories that Rikki Thukral (Jr. B) and Alvira Khan (PZ) make up about the respective fiancés Anaida (LD) and Steve Singh (BD) and how they met each other are so over the top that no sensible person could have possibly believed them. So are the tastless jokes about Princess Diana's death.

Watch this movie at your own risk if you have 3 hours of your life to waste. The effect of the movie is that when I was watching Bourne Ultimatum this weekend and there was a tense thrilling scene based at Waterloo station (where Rikki and Alvira exchange stories and Amitabh keeps making his crazy dance appearances in JBJ), I half expected Matt Damon to start exchanging love stories with an assassin trying to kill him and for Amitabh to pop out of nowhere and start singing.

3. Partner

If watching 2 movies wasn't enough, we ended up watching a hat trick of movies. Partner is the third movie on the list. It is yet another "comedy" movie from the able hands of David Dhawan starring the "definitely needs to slim down" Govinda and the "Take of your shirt at the drop of a paisa", Salman Khan. Unlike the first 2 movies on our list, the producers of Partner had a successful script to work on. The movie is based entirely on the hilarious Will Smith and Kevin James comedy "Hitch". This movie is the perfect example of how to mess up a movie even with a ready made script.

Highlights include :

1. Salman Khan plays his usual role of a topless Body Builder who wears a shirt only as a prop and famous alumni and founder of the "Primate" school of acting. On the brighter side Sallu is a lot more tolerable in this movie as compared to his roles in "Mujhse Laathi Maarogi", "Maine Yeh Movie Kyooooon Dekha" and "Bye bye Brother".

2. Govinda is back and back for good. It took him around 3 years to realise that politics is not as easy as acting in a David Dhawan movie. Theres always been something likeable about Govinda but this movie sees him getting onto our nerves just a little. He definitely needs to slim down and start demanding some sensible comedy scripts like "Deewana Mastana" from his directors.

3. The scene with Sallu's 6 yr old nephew and his voice activated heat seeking missile. This kid is going to be the next missile man, APJ Kalam can rest easy. As unbelievable as that may have sound, there is a 10 minute scene which involves Sallu dodging the accidently activated missile.

4. Sallu taking off his shirt at the airport and everywhere else, he just needs a reason.

5. Katrina looks gorgeous; but then she doesnt have much of a role in the movie. (Watch her in Namaste London instead.)

6. All the scenes with Rajpal Yadav as "Chhota Don" a satire on SRK's don. By all means make a satire on SRK's don but the entire substory is completely unfunny. Maybe when you re-make a Hollywood flick, just stick to the original bunch of characters.

The bitter irony being 2 out of the above 3 movies are among the biggest hits of the year in India. Both Partner and AKS have made a lot of money for their producers and would inspire directors to make similar kind of movies. I wonder if we can handle any more crappy HR movies. Probably AKS3 would be about why he has a beard and AKS4 about why he does not smile.

At least I am sure JBJ being a flop would ensure we dont have any more of those. But thanks to the success of Partner, David Dhawan will make a zillion more bad remakes of popular Hollywood comedies and Priyadarshan will continue churning out a similar kind of over the top comedies. But on the brighter side, if they didnt make such movies, maybe we wouldn't be able to sit down, watch them for free and criticize them. :p

Sigh ... God save Bollywood !!!!