Trash-an - The Terrible !!!!!

Its been a while since I saw a completely trashy movie. 2008 has been good so far and the horrors of 2007 including RGV ki Aag, Saawariya and JBJ seemed to be a thing of the past. But this changed on Sunday when I sat down to watch a cam print version of Tashan, the latest from the once reputable stables of Yash Raj Films. To say Tashan is a bad film would be the understatement of the year. The movie is so horribly torturous that I would rather watch a 3 hour "Bold and Beautiful" marathon special on SOAP network or for that matter watch a documentary about mating goldfish on Discovery.

Here is what you realize after watching Tashan:

1. Bachchan Pandey (aka Akshay Kumar) is Spider-man, Jackie Chan, Rajni-kanth and John Rambo, all rolled into one. He can single-handedly defeat a whole flock of Shaolin monks (who appear out of nowhere) while precariously balancing himself on a TV antenna tower. Sending a hundred commandos after him isn't the solution either. Bachchan Pandey can jump over buildings with finesse, climb walls with his hands, dodge bullets with ease and take down all 100 of them with a single dagger. Hail the new Kanpuri super hero.

2. Bebo looks like a starving refugee from Somalia. Someone better give her some food to eat otherwise I fear that one day she will lose so much weight that she would simply disappear (not that I mind that happening). In this movie, she is at her skimpiest best, from prancing around in a bikini on a yacht to an item song in the middle of Ladakh wearing a blonde wig (duh) and a tiny red dress that was sewn from the producer's hankie. Only a punch drunk Saif and an old bull in the Ladakh Zoo were mesmerised by her gyrations. In spite of all this, Bebo has the stand out moment of the movie at the climax in which her expressions (of satisfied prolonged sheer ecstasy) at having killed Bhaiyyaji are priceless.

3. The makers of Tashan have invented a new language that is an amalgamation of Bhojpuri, Hindi and English; for example the lyrics of a song go something like this "White white face dekhe, dilva beating fast, sasura chance maare re". The makers have named it as the Tashani and the latest plans include adding Punjabi, Urdu and Gujrathi to the mixture. They assure us that this will be the national language of India within the next 5 years.

4. It is possible to find a "Jet Ski" in the villain's adda located in the middle of the desert and then ride the jet ski thru a naala (gutter) and jump over a bridge while performing a sumersault and forcing the bridge to collapse. All this from a guy who works at a call center. Spectacular.

5. The best way to hide from people searching for you is to hide in the trunk of their car. Brilliant plan. The only problem is when the guys looking for you get into an argument about the music playing on the radio and plunge the car over a cliff into a lake.

6. When you are trying to get away from 3 people who have just destroyed your adda and killed 1000 of your goons, ride a cycle rikshaw yourself and try to run over them.

7. Akki Narula is a fashion designer, extra-ordinaire. If you want your heros / heroine to look like they are a cross between a garish African tribes-man and Snoop Doggy Dog, he's the man for you. From JBJ to Tashan, he's the Manish Malhotra of trashy wear.

There are a lot of other things completely illogical and crazy about this movie. But the worst is the absense of a script. The story just goes from one place to another without making any sense at all. These days I believe that RGV and Yash Uncle are in a rat race to make the worst movie of all times. Either that or as Rajeev Masand says, they are arrogantly taking their audience for granted. Sign up 2-3 super-stars, shoot at some exotic locations, get the actress to expose, throw in some "Matrix" style action sequences and hope that the "dumb" audience laps it all up, script be damned.

Jungle Mein Mor Naache .... k.k.k.k.k.k.kisne Dekha

1. Jungle Mein Mor Naacha - Kisne Dekha

Kisine dekha hai kya, Jungle Mein Mor Naacha. Agar nahi dekha toh jarooor dekhna. This is choreography and Bollywood at its hilarious best. An Absolute classic. Whoever thought of this video and the entire concept deserves a special award for promoting the national bird. This is Bollywood's F-worded (feathered) answer to Cats the Musical, Mor the Musical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwaHNC15u8M

Its kind of surprising to see Waheeda Rehman prouncing about making wierd faces, with a silver Mor as her headgear with a super long feathered tail and getting kind of cuddly with the other mor. Probably a video she wouldnt want to show her kids and grand kids. Later I found out its from a movie called Shatranj with Rajendra 'Jubilee' Kumar, the epitome of non acting. The only words that come to mind after watching the video is,

"Yeh Dil Maange No Mor".


2. Main Big B banana chahta hoon

Well I havent taken up SRK's case in a while. But if some reports are to be believed, the Bad-Shah of Ham and Cheese has just crossed the limit of his obsession with trying out Big B's humongous shoes. After bumbling with AB's Don, SRK intends to remake the cult classic 'Deewar', which I think is AB's best acted out role till date.

Now its time to call him Shah "Ab Ruk Jaa" Khan. I have no problems with him trying out films with original storylines, but remaking all of a living legend's films just to prove to the world that you are better than him is toooo much. Stick to being chocolate boy Rahul or a Kabir Khan but thy can never be an angry young Vijay.

Talking of remakes, news is that Bollywood is remaking (read massacring) 'Karz' with Himesh Reshamiya as Rishi, 'Padosan' with Govinda as Mehmood and Sanjay Dutt as Kishore and 'Amar Akbar Anthony' by David Dhawan with Sallu and his 2 brothers.

AB: Tumhare Paas Kya Hai?????
SRK: Mere pppppaaas (huge pause) Rrrrremake Hai !!!!

3.

Well you know what could possibly be worse than the 2 points above? If some enterprising director tried to cross points 1 and 2 and remake Shatranj with SRK.

Jungle Mein Naache Mor ... k.k.k.k.k.kisne Dekha.

God save us!!!!!

Johnny Gaddar !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. Johnny Mera Naam

Its been a while since I saw an original Hindi movie which was neither a uninspiring copy of an old Hindi/English/Tamil/Korean movie nor a butchered remake of a classic. It was just a very smartly made movie which didn't shy from revealing all the inspirations behind it. Johnny Gaddar is a must see.

Don't get me wrong, the script is not perfect, it does have its flaws, bullets fired in a crowded Mumbai society are not heard by neighbours nor does the fight sequence in the train wake up the other travellers.

But then the rest of the script is completely unpredictable and totally captivating. I wasn't able to guess any of the sudden 'kahani mein twists' in the movie ... not a single one and there are many of those ... this is such a rarity in Hindi cinema. The best part is that the director/writer cleverly shows us all of his creative influences interspersed thru the movie, Johnny hatching his plot while watching Amitabh's 'Parwana', the hotel receptionist watching Dev Anand in 'Johnny Mera Naam' and the James Hadley Chase novel that Johnny is reading on the train. Very smart. (Ajit style)

Let me end it here before I get carried away with my praise for the movie. Its just that its been a while since I saw a completely original and intelligent movie, the first since 'Lage Raho Munnabhai' that came out last year.

2. Themes in Movies

Each decade usually has a recurring theme in the movies. The 50's and 60's usually dealt with the evils of society, the 70s were the decade of a particular angry young man and stories about long lost brothers, the 80s continued the revenge trend while the 90s were the decade of the candyfloss SRK romance. Here are 2 of the most concurrent themes of the current decade:

1. The Adultery: SRK justified it in 'KANK', Neil was fired by it in 'Johnny Gaddar', Tushar Kapoor and Shreyas were each at it in 'Aggar', Emraan Hashmi has mastered it as an art form in all his movies, Amitabh was seduced enough in 'Nishabd', Salman was the guru in 'No Entry' and 'Biwi No.1', Anil Kapoor got rocking in 'Musafir' & 'Salaam-E-Ishq' and was drawn to it in 'No Entry', the entire male cast of 'Masti' wanted to but couldn't, Zahid Khan in 'Shabd', Vivek was suspected of it in 'Omkara' so was Salman in 'Hum Tumhare Hai Sanam'. The entire Kay Kay-Kangana-Sharman Joshi sequence was all about it in 'Life in a Metro'.

In fact I have seen so many movies with this theme that this decade seems to be the decade of the extra marital affair. But then producers only have to look within Bollywood for loads of inspiration on the subject. From Saif to Aamir to Boney to Dharampapa to (reportedly) Aditya Chopra.

2. The Super Casanova: This is the kind that sleep around so much so that even James Bond would need to take sanyaas in the Himalayas. From Akki versus Jon in 'Garam Masala', Sallu in 'No Entry', Akki, Ritesh and the other guy in 'Heyy Baby', Amitabh "puff diddy" Bachchan in 'KANK'; they are the kind that make women of all nationalities go weak in their knees. These 'super cool dude' are like an unstoppable force, and only a baby or a sati savitri heroine can act as their kryptonite.

Anyways thats it for this post. I have nothing else to say this week. Phew. In short, go watch Johnny Gaddar while its still in the theatres. And lets hope Bollywood producers get a load of reality soon and come up with some different themes. :)

JAANE BHI DO YAARO - Mahabharat

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron

If only the directors today could make comedies even 10% as good as Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, we would be laughing our guts out. Priyadarshan, David Dhawan and Inder Kumar, are you listening?

This is a cult classic and I must have seen this like a million times. I even know most of the dialogues by heart. Here is the poster of arguably the funniest Hindi film ever.

SRH ke Cholaaaaaaay - Part 2

Continuing my post from last week, here’s more inside scoops on how some of our distinguished directors were planning on re-making the classic Sholay.

4. Farah Khan:

The focus shifts on-campus. Jai and Veeru played by SRK and a long haired Zaheed Khan are young freshmen at a colorful high school located in Panchgani but filmed in Malibu, California. They work part time in the school cafeteria and are just able to afford the bare necessities in life, a Rolex watch, a new red Enzo Ferrari and clothes designed by Versace. Popular with girls they are the life of every singing dancing event in school. This film has everything, a forgetful Thakur who’s the ex-school principal, his hard core party going daughter in law, Gabbar who’s the head of an evil Fraternity that wants to put an end to World peace using Kryptonite and a Merc cab driving Basanti. Also features, a parallel story line about how Jai and Veeru are in reality not only long lost brothers working undercover as students but also miraculously turn out to be the Thakur’s sons.



5. Sanjay Leela Bhansali:

Radha (Rani) is deaf and blind, Basanti (Aishwarya), the Thakur’s daughter drives an old Rolls Royce, Jai (Amitabh) is a forgetful aged teacher, Veeru (Salman) almost drinks himself to death for the love of his life, Thakur (Vikram Gokhale) is an old generation classical singer living in a grandiose haveli and Gabbar (Devgan) was Thakur’s ex-student who fell in love with the Thakur’s daughter and thus was banished from the haveli. At the end of 100 glycerin bottles and being hurtled thru the time-space conundrum from one lavish poetic set to another, the audience is left befuddled and in tears. The movie ends up winning the best filmfare and is India’s official entry into the Oscars.

RGV ki Aag

Anyways, I did end up watching RGV ki Aag last weekend. And believe me when I say this but it definitely is the worst film ever made. RGV came close with his remake of Shiva as well as the irritating James but he has topped himself. This is a cult classic, almost comes close to the Gunda, the epitome of everything that could go bad in a movie. However at least Gunda entertains with its inert stupidness and cheapness, RGV ki Aag does neither. Its the one movie that I could not even watch beyond 20 minutes, and the very fact that RGV had the insolence to claim its a remake of the best hindi movie ever made is sheer blasphemy. The camera angles that RGV uses as a director is an insult to film-making. Whatever happened to the guy who once made Rangeela, Satya and Company.

Heyy baby

Well since we could not tolerate RGV ki Aag beyond 20 minutes, we ended up watching Sajid Khan's disaster so called family comedy "Heyy Baby". Now this is a guy whose only fame to claim beyond being Farah Khan's brother was the show that he hosted in the 90s making fun of hamming in movies. Heyy baby was one of the worst comedies I have ever seen in my life. A cheap re-make of the excellent 3 Men and a Baby, this movie is both cheap and un-funny. The actors do a decent job, but the scriptwriters were probably on vacation. Imagine a movie about a baby, featuring item girls and stressing thru the movie on one night stands. Family film my foot. Besides this he's made it into an emotional melodrama towards the end. Sigh, the Karan Johar influence never stops does it.

Dhamaal

Another remake of an English movie and inspirations from a dozen other. Creativity is dead in Bollywood. Maybe they could just release the dubbed versions in India, they would at least be good. Fortunately I wasnt able to watch till the end of this movie but this movie was way over the top, almost as much as Partner. I still want to watch this movie till the end.

1. Basic Premise - Its a Mad Mad Mad World.

2. Scenes Copied Frame by frame from - Road Trip

3. Zip It scene - Austin Powers

4. Scenes of Mr. Bean

5. 3-4 jokes were popular Sardarji jokes that you must have heard as a kid

And all this was within the first hour of the movie. This is the first movie ever that I have differed with Rajeev Masand's views.

Phew, thats enough of Bollywood for a month, I need to recover some of my senses after watching all the nonsensical fare dished out. Well the Indian team is doing pretty well in the World Twenty20 cup as we speak, so will have something on that front next. ;)


ps: * SRH -> Sourabh R Herwadkar

SRH ke Cholaaaaaaay - Part 1

It’s finally here, the most un-awaited movie event of the year. RGV (Ram Gopal Varma for the uninitiated) finally released his version of “Sholay”. Its one thing to be brave (read crazy) enough to remake a classic but to be audacious enough to remake the best Bollywood phillum of all times is sheer foolishness. But then for his staunchest fans, there was always the slightest hope that if the Godfather had inspired RGV enough to come up with Sarkar, perhaps Sholay would inspire him to come up with an effort that if not close enough to the original, at least would be worth a “dekho”. But that was before he announced the ‘mis’-casting and the name of the movie, the narcissistically titled “RGV ki Aag”.

Now this release got all the Gen Next of directors thinking. In an industry which works entirely on inspired creativity, all of them got a creative jolt at the same time. Why not attempt to make their own version of Sholay, in their own inimitable styles, a certin recipe for success. The scripts were written and the casting was done. Shooting on each of these projects was scheduled to begin shortly.

However yours truly managed to get an insider scoop on the projects and the highly secretive scripts. (Yup, this time these directors were not taking any chances and actually did have page long scripts) So here we go.


1. Karan Johar

Dharma Productions was one of the first to get the cast ready. Karan didn’t have to look too far to get his usual stellar star cast. SRK promised to play the role of Jai, Saif plays Veeru. Unlike the original, Jai and Veeru are a couple of young NRIs in Manhattan clad in Gap jeans and Tommy tees. Their usual job is to con the wealthy single women in NY out of their riches and go party at a local desi night club. As with previous Karan Johar movies that do not have a shred of violence in them, the character of Gabbar Singh played by Amitabh has undergone a radical shift. He’s no longer a violent man. Gabbar Singh and his associates play a team of goons who own a restaurant in Queens that regularly fleece customers.

On the other side of the block there is a friendly Punjabi family living in the vicinity who sing and dance at the drop of a hat. Anupam Kher plays an ex-principal named Thakur and Jaya Bachchan his wife live with their kids, Preity Zinta and Abhishek (in a guest appearance). One day to celebrate his green card, Thakur takes his family to the restaurant mentioned above. At this point there is a kahani mein twist. Gabbar and his cohorts charge them a 25% tip on an already overpriced menu. Abhishek is deeply affected by this atrocity and gets hit by a car in his moment of anguish, while the principal loses his pinkie toe trying to save him. Thakur plots revenge. How he gets his emotional revenge with the help of Veeru and Jai forms the rest of the story.

As the tag line says, it’s all about loving your neighborhood Principal. The film also deeply explores the relationship between Jai and the principal’s newly widowed daughter Preity and the story about Veeru and a garrulous desi NYC gal cab-driver Basanti, played by Rani. Heavy on emotions, this is a surefire hit for the summer.

Ps: The sequel will explore the tensions and relationships that occur when a married Veeru gets tired of his wife Basanti’s continuous chatter and falls in love with the quieter re-married Preity.


2. Ram Gopal Varma

RGV was saddened when critics slammed his film, RGV ki Aag. So he decided to make a remake of his own remake of Sholay. Since he was confident about his direction and his script, he decided to change his cast. Abhishek was asked to play the role of Jai and Viveik Oberoi, the role of Veeru. Urmilla was cast as the chatterbox rickshaw wali while Ramu’s favorite pin up girl Nisha Kothari gets her 25th lease of life as the widowed mini skirt wearing Radha. Amitabh is cast as Don Gabbar Ibrahim and the movie is based in the heart of the Mumbai underworld. Gabbar is a more realistic ruthless don this time around and shows no mercy to the commissioner or his family. The commissioner plots revenge with the help of Jai and Veeru.
Needless to say, the critics slammed his film yet again and as of now, the buzz is that he is planning a remake of his remake of his remake of Sholay with Amitabh reprising his role of Gabbar. He also has plans for the sequel and plans to cast the entire Bacchan family, Shweta Bachchan and Aishwarya Bachchan included. His few staunch fans keep hoping that third time is lucky for remakes.


3. Ashutosh Gowarikar

Now this is a surprising development since Ashutosh is known to make original movies. Common, I am sure he hadn’t watched Die Hard before he made Baazi. Just plain ugly co-incidence. Anyways Ashutosh himself decided to make his own version of Sholay. Aamir, his best friend was immediately cast as Veeru and Hrithik as Jai, while the rest of the cast was handpicked by Aamir himself mostly featuring new comers since the other actors don’t usually prefer working with him.

The film itself is set in the 19th century and Gabbar Simpson is played by a sadistic British Officer. He defeats an Indian team led by Thakur Singhji, India’s first great cricketer by using unsavory tactics like bodyline permanently injuring him. His son, a promising young cricketer is killed when hit on the head by a beamer (we are not talking about the BMW here), widowing Thakur’s daughter in law, Radha played by the girl from Swades. Thakur plots revenge by hiring Jai and Veeru who are a couple of fodder stealing villagers. Jai and Veeru train the villagers with the help of a bail-gaadi waali played by the girl from Lagaan and challenge the British to another match, captained by the handless Thakur himself. In the end, Thakur manages to hit catch Gabbar Simpson out of the last ball latching on to the ball spectacularly with his mouth.


(to be continued)

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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 !!!!

Kasablanca

Recently saw the classic Casablanca, one of the best films ever made in Hollywood. For those who havent seen Casablanca, click here.

SO this got me thinking, what if at the very moment as I am writing this blog, one of our creative struggling Bollywood screenwriters has just watched this movie. After one of those "Eurekaaaaa !!!" moment, he spends the next 2 hours jotting down an original screenplay and calls Dharma Productions the very next day. Karan Johar falls in love within minutes of hearing the script, already casting SRK, Preity, Hrithik, Amitabh and Kareena with plum roles in his mind. The music would be by Shankar, Loy and Ehsaan and a guest appearance by Rani and Kajol. Production begins in full earnest, the songs are shot on location all around the world and the movie is now based in New York. Even the name of the movie was simple enough, replace the C with the K and you have a movie blessed by his own personal numerologist and astrologer.

Anyways before we go further off track, yours truly managed to lay hands on a copy of this script. Here's how it goes.

Rahul's is a dhabba cum upscale club located on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, NY. Our protagonist Rahul played brilliantly by the effervescent SRK owns this joint serving awesome Punjabi food to rich NY based designer clothed desis. His usual customers include the friendly Punjabi uncle, a promiscous aunty, their bespectacled motu daughter whos constantly eyeing SRK, a young Gujrathi couple and groups of college girls and guys hanging out and leching at each other. SRK is a jocular yet cynical man dressed up in his fav Tommy Hillfiger. He even sings and dances with the college kids.

Amitabh Bachchan plays a local Police Commisioner who parties by night and is surrounded by a bevy of beautiful women, a desi Puff Diddy. Hes corrupt and is constantly accomodating a strict NY mayor played by Boman Irani whos trying to clamp down on a resurgent FOB resistance for green cards.

At this point, Rajpal Yadav arrives in Rahuls with 2 Green Cards documents that hes managed to steal from an intoxicated INS official, the first white guy you see in the movie. He manages to pass on those documents to SRK for safe keeping before he's arrested by Commissioner Amitabh in front of the Mayor. He's plan is to sell this to a customer whos going to come into the dhabba later that night for a high price.

Soon after, Hrithik Roshan and Preity Zinta walk into the dhabba, hand in hand seemingly in love. When Preity and SRK are introduced to each other, you can sense that they have a history and know each other from before. Hrithik seems oblivious to this flicker of recognition. Meanwhile Atif Aslam sings a sad song in the background about lost love. A change goes thru SRK, from the normally jocular and seemingly friendly he goes to his office and starts gulping down copious amounts of Alcohol.

Its then when we are shown a flashback, based in Paris almost 2-3 years ago. A young SRK and Preity meet each other for the first time. 3 songs and half an hour later they are madly in love. However SRK finds out the French hate his acting and that Parisian police are closing him on him. Preity promises to meet him at the railway station to go with him to London but doesnt turn up. A dejected SRK boards the train cursing the god of luck.

Back to the present, we realize that Hrithik and Preity badly need the green card to stay back in the US and Preity confides in SRK that shes still in love with him and the only reason she went back to Hrithik was that she didnt know he was alive and had managed to survive the 11 flops that he gave in a row. 3-4 more songs and an hour of emotions later, and 12 cartons of Glycerin bottles later, SRK decides to make the ultimate sacrifice. He holds Amitabh captive and helps Hrithik and Preity get their green cards and live happily ever after. Meanwhile in the melee, SRK shoots Mayor Boman but Amitabh saves him from the police.

And they all lived happily ever after, except sadly Boman.


ps: In the remake of this movie made 20 years later by Farvez Akhtar Jr, SRK plays the role of Amitabh.