RajasTHAN’S LABYRINTH.

Remake-raja Priyadarshan’s ‘Bhool Bhulaiya’ well and truly lives up to its name. After a spate of hit funnies, the director gets well and truly lost with this one. He tries to mould a serious Malayalam oldie that had managed to put together a psycho-paraphernalia-courtesan-dancer-ghost-rebirth-mystery-drama into a tempered down comic Rangilo–Rajasthan avatar and flounders miserably. He pushes his coconut cart ( Manichitrathazhu) one mile too long from the Padmanabhpuram Palace (where the Mohan Lal original was shot 15 years ago) Kerala to a Rajasthani hawali and loses all his coconuts on the way. By the time he’s reached its Aangan for an Exorcist like finale where Vikram ‘Udaan’ Gokhale makes Vidya Balan barf green mucus- the audience’s already feeling confused and cheated. What was that rap-remix title song and red-chilly Antenna-choti Rajpal yadav character for? This isn’t the funny film the promos promised!
Nothing epitomises the blunder more than Vidya Balan possessing Shobhana’s (National award winning) dancing girl act. Ditto goes for fall girl suffering-sarrie(sorry) Amisha Patel. Both the belles smile a lot and stand aside to watch the village goof-balls (Asrani, Paresh Rawal, Rajpal yadav) get their lungis pulled off to the tune of ghaastly ghungroos in the dark. For a farce, the film is shot amazingly well but it suffers from bad characterization and lack of reasoning for all its pata-nahi-kya-ho-raha-hai. All its characters are either running to catch a ghost or away from its chimes and grunts (depending on its mood swings). The one redeeming scene is the climax when Vidya is induced into a vengeful tandav. That beats Sunny Deol’s foot-pounding into second place and is bound to have the audience in splits(personality) .There’s the laugh you were looking for !!
Shiney Ahuja is wasted as the liberal, bewildered and high collared hubby who encourages her bad bengali accent and insane mid-night dancing habits till it really starts getting on everyone’s nerves. He’s a rough jawed scion of a cursed pariwar-after all. Half way through the film, a slim-shady psychologist (Akshay Kumar) pops in to help focus his wife’s energy for a boogie-woogie contest. But that’s only because all of them are from the phoren. Shiney thinks boogie-woogie is a bhooton ka muqabla on Sony that his wife must win. So he chooses to over look all the ‘shraap-paap-pret-atma’ gibberish and blames all the Poltergiest activity on the bashful Amisha. Kulta aurat! His lady love can’t be at fault. Then its up to Akshay Kumar to put on his Freudian glasses and remove all the ‘laalchan’ on the girl he’s been eyeing (and flashing) and bring the affair to rest.
Was it Dissociative personality disorder? Or Multiple personality Disorder? Who’s bothered? The Intersection set was Disorder (only).

JAB WE WET

Imtiaz Ali’s Jab We Met is another re-hash of DDLJ(Shahrukh+Kajol) with some scenes scraped in from Pyar toh hona hi tha(Ajay Devgun+Kajol~French Kiss) to tie up the loose ends and bring the insipid drama to an end. What speak of story or characters, even the costumes and camera angles are the same. Wohi sarson ke kheton mein phudakti hui kudi aur unke beech mein baitha banjo bajata hua apna reluctant raajkumar. Its been ten years since DDLJ was released and which great film doesn’t deserve a few deferential remakes ? Ali’s strategy can be gauged from the fact that the title was picked from an SMS competition and then positioned to target the teens who are tapping in Hinglish now but were still in their nappies when the original was released. Get the talk-of-the-town couple into a film and what do we have? Voila! You get- Jab We Wet.
If Shahid Kapoor is a reduced xerox of Shahrukh and bears one tenth of his talent and charisma then the runaway tart Kareena is twice as large as Kajol and ten times as irritating. Needless to say, he looks like her chota bhai instead of she looking like his lugai. As better sense would dictate, the bechara boy tries to keep safe distance from her after bumping into her in a running train and having to stick to her for the sake of developing some chemistry and keeping the story going. Kareena Kapoor’s antics in first twenty minutes of the film are admittedly interesting but how long can u blow one measly strip of bubblegum before it bursts and sticks to your cheeks like nosey goo? The chalk and cheese duo keep meeting and parting by chance for two hours that zips back and front over a time period of an year to justify the impact that gems like ’Tum mujh par line mar rahe ho?’ have on a young bairag industrialist (Shahid Kapoor).
JBW has precious little going for it apart from one superhit Shreya Ghosal song (Yeh Ishq hai...jannat dikhai ) and more scratch-beneath-the-surface-proof of the degeneration of Bollywood’s precocious genes. Shahid Kapoor isn’t a phati-chaddi patch on his father(watch Pankaj Kapoor’s Dharam) and Kareena Kapoor doesn’t even have to look that far back. Her sister Karishma was dignity and poise compared to her-even when swinging from Govinda’s technicolour Taanga in-‘ Maine cycle se ja raa tha-tumhe paidal se aa rahi thi.’
Time for a nappy change, perhaps.