Review

• 

  Manisha Lakhe

  -January 11, 2013

  FilmOrbit

  Clever Writing Phir Bhi Man NAHI Dola

  Fanbois and gals forgive everything. We suspend logic and accept a skimpily dressed Anushka Sharma in the middle of a khap ridden Haryana. We accept nattily turned out Pankaj Kapoor who has impeccable English even though his drunken self is as desi as they can get in Haryana, invectives et al. We accept Imran Khan’s double life without wondering how he gets things done even though there are no unexplained absences to show us he is leading a double life. We are okay with the fact that the story of the avaricious politician vs the poor villagers is as old as the hills.
  
  But when you realise that the delightful drunken scenes are going nowhere, they add nothing to the story, you begin to feel impatient. The repetition actually drives you into looking at loopholes in the story. That’s when you realise ‘Shakti bhog atta’ must have been nothing more than a ‘kewl’ thing to use in a fit of desperate need to create new kitsch. You laugh when you hear the names of real life politicians being used casually in clever lines, and jokes on Mao. But they are too few and far apart. The story is so wearisome, you actually think of the horrendous Joker.
  
  
  What could have been a politically incorrect really funny joke about indirectly calling a horizontally challenged woman a buffalo, became irritating when the gag was used again and again and again. And then to add insult to everyone’s intelligence a horrendous stereotype of a whole lot of black South Africans is produced to dance and sing, and an asinine explanation offered: ‘We bought them, and they don’t know it’ (yes, ‘bought’ as in ‘khareed liya’). We have seen black entertainers in song situations in multi starrer brainless comedies, and we have allowed it as a tasteless forgettable experience. But from the director of Maqbool and Omkara, this was simply unforgivable. And the explanation that the heroine from Haryana enjoys African folk music is just ridiculous.
  
  So it starts out to be irreverent. I loved that. But in half an hour into the movie, it becomes outlandish and ridiculous. You wish they had hidden the identity of the ‘saviour of the people’ better. The cringeworthy change of identity in Shahenshah is better, you begin to think. And if the identity of the ‘saviour’ is hidden from the villagers, why would they listen to someone who works for the baddies? It’s just not cricket.
  
  
  And that brings us to the ‘diving-for-the-ball’ scene where the skimpily clad Anushka Sharma makes an entrance. It’s not funny, it’s not even sexy (the villagers crowded around the pond look so bored, you know they have seen the same brainless dive scene in Jab Tak Hai Jaan).
  
  Shabana Azmi is super fun when she is witch like, and her son Arya Babbar is delightful as a stupid son. Although poor Imran Khan has been given the role of someone who aids the punchlines offered to Pankaj Kapoor, he does a decent job. But the star of this crash and burn movie is Pankaj Kapoor. He holds this disaster in his capable hands and gives his two- faced Harry a great character.
  
  
  If you take numerous naps during the crap this movie has to offer, then maybe you will think this movie is camp. But if you manage to sit through the ghastly story, maybe both the stars should go to you rather than one each for Pankaj Kapoor and Shabana Azmi. I am a fan girl, and went in eager with anticipation, but the much abused script by not so kosher substances and backpatting committee of the director’s durbar have left me bruised. Am compelled to call the anti-smoking song in the beginning of the movie just that final nail in the coffin of cinema killed by ‘sho-sha-bazi’.
  
  

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