Wednesday 14 January 2015

Right Film, Wrong Characters


Today, I did the ultimate crime for which this world might never forgive me. I finally watched PK....ON MY LAPTOP AND NOT INSIDE A THEATRE. And this is after I have managed to watch Gunday, Tees Maar Khan, Aap Ki Khatir,  and Karzzzzzz in multiplexes.......SORRY.......Wait... I said I’m sorry... I can explain... It’s not what you think....Please let me..... *Kaboom* *Dhishum* *Crucio*...
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Now typing from the hospital bed. What else could have I done? By the time I returned from a vacation, my parents, brother, cousins, friends, FB mutual friends, enemies, teachers, hostel-mates, the rat living under my bed, the ants outside my door... Everyone had already seen the movie and no one was willing to go for a second watch. Perhaps the only option was to invite PK himself or Jaadu because apparently, the movie could not be released in their planets due to Aamir’s distribution network still not being that perfect. But Alas! I didn’t even have his locket. Hence, the offense. Also, I had to compensate for my Dhoom-3 money.
                                  
*Final punch from the nurse...OW*

Anyway, let me get back to my worthless and useless opinion about the movie. Nothing matters and of course shouldn’t matter when something has already grossed ₹ 600cr worldwide and everyone from the actors to the spotboys (Ok! Not the spotboys) are swimming in the cesspool of money.

The movie starts off with a typical Hirani cliché, where a sidelined narrator (Anushka here, Madhavan you know where) describes Aamir Khan’s character and entry. It then moves on to the weirdest and the most hurried chemistry between a lead pair ever, which terminates faster than terminator (Ekdumahi LULL joke tha ee to). It then goes on to prove that two people in the same world can have the same independent original idea at not so distant time intervals (In other news, plagiarists and Pritam heave a sigh of relief; Annu Malik says Are Baba Are Baba from Auzaar was an original composition). The only difference here was, that like most good movies, OMG was sidelined even after releasing earlier because of a lesser popular star cast (read: Not Aamir Khan).

Let us come to the more interesting topic now. The Protests. I am a student of Statistics (my marks might continuously laugh at this statement but I keep convincing myself otherwise). So let us talk numbers and proportions. Percentage of Hindus in India? 80. Percentage of the film focusing on Hindu ceremonies and superstitions? 80. Maybe you’ll get the gist now. They made PK enter a mosque with wine in his hand. Christianity conversion was condemned. Terrorists conveniently bombed a train in the name of religion. The ‘Haye Hassan hum na hue’ Moharram practice was criticised. Other religions were more or less ignored as they generally are (A Parsi is a ‘dheekra wala’ language na?). Ab kya Alien ki jaan loge?

But after writing this, I asked myself, isn’t all this very obvious? Why would anyone in their right mind get offended at such petty things, when they have been shown before as well? Unless......Unless...... (*devilish smile activated*)..... the people involved with the movie benefitted from all this and deliberately..... *hush hush hush*
Now, I’m not implying that all this might have happened or generally happens in situations like these...... But let us assume for the sake of a little political incorrectness that it did happen.... So let us break up the money for every ticket purchased.

The pattern would in fact be pretty much the same as all the other ‘controversial’ movies. One person gets ₹50 for getting his sentiments hurt publicly. The other one gets ₹ 50 for opposing him publicly and urging people to watch it. The audience member pays ₹ 500 for the ticket. Rest of the money is distributed in different pockets. Paresh Rawal silently cries at home seeing only ₹ 20 in his wallet even after starring in a much superior film. Almost everyone laughs off his/her way to the bank.

Coming back to the film now, the fact that everyone noticed but hardly anyone has reported that this is actually Rajkumar Hirani’s worst film to date. It is another matter that it was better than most of the other idiocies round the year. But Mr. Hirani has a standard. That’s just like saying that the Australian cricket team of 1999 was worse than the one in 2003 or 2007, even though all three won the World Cup. It was strictly a one-time watch unlike his previous movies.

As far as the acting department is concerned, Aamir Khan is really good yet again but him surprising in every other movie of his has actually become kind of boring now. Perhaps he should do a regular movie which is not Dhoom. That might surprise the audience. Anushka, as my cousin very aptly described, looked like Bulbasaur from the Pokemon franchise and is rapidly going downhill now. Sushant Singh Rajput had nothing to do and Parikshit Sahni was one frame away from saying ‘Ja beti! Jee le apni zindagi’. The biggest disappointment and casualty of this movie was Saurabh Shukla, who despite being a very good actor, should be compared to Mithunda from OMG who was light years ahead in terms of acting and the pragmatism of the character. The only relief was perhaps finally seeing Boman Irani in a positive role in a Hirani movie. He’d have been relieved too....till he realised that it was a nothing role. After all, you either play a timeless, legendary antagonist or you play a good guy and get so sidelined that people might forget that you were Dr. Asthana, Lucky Singh and Veeru Sahastrabuddhe. But what was really disheartening to see was a certain Sanjay Dutt performing better in his 5 min role than all the others combined. His expressions in the scene where he lifts up his shoe to beat up the locket thief show that he is at his best when he is in Hirani’s expert hands.

Raj Kumar Hirani with his 4 films has created two major characters. A flawed Munnabhai with a heart of gold, and a better than perfect Aamir Khan. People adore the former, and find it difficult to digest the latter. With all respect to Aamir (which had decreased a lot after his seeing him tap dance in Dhoom-3), just imagine what the quality of this movie would have been, had this subject been handled by Munnabhai and Circuit. Oh! Hirani Sir, please start making another Munnabhai as soon as Mr. Dutt is released. Rest assured, you can earn the Rs. 600 crores on your own merit. Maybe the spotboys will get some share of the profits this time.

P.S. - I would've mentioned the unnecessary amount of songs, but since I had the liberty of forwarding them, I'll pass.

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