After depicting the typical alien with the standard specification conical head and bulging eyes, Aamir Khan here gives the voiceover to Pluto, the sage and equally alien dog of the Mehra family. What do you make of a movie where the narration is in the voice of the family Mastiff? One might reasonably believe such an animal to have a cap placed on his range of comprehension of human foibles and emotions, but no, our dog, aptly named Pluto, narrates the tale of the Mehras with the resigned melancholy of an astute philosopher who has seen it all, and more.
Like his teacher, Socrates, and his famous disciple, Aristotle, Pluto makes profound a priori observations on fickle human nature. Given the eccentricities and vainglories of the rich and the famous elite, taking a leaf out of his famous book: “The Republic, ” Pluto launches on a trajectory of metaphysical speculations and epistemological theories of the immortal soul and afterlife. Luckily, he stays short of advancing the notion of a Republic, an ideal state where only philosophers are fit to rule.
The voids in the plot are filled up with background information by the dog, who can not only clear the muddle in your mind about what is going on, but why it is going on, and what happened in the past, and possibly, a theoretical deduction on what will possibly transpire in the distant future, into which he can peer with eerie precision like a sci-fi precog.
For me, I wouldn’t like to have a dog around in the house that can crawl inside my head and fathom my deepest motives and tut-tut at my behavior, admonishing me with a liberal spray of saliva when I stray.
The Mehras invite friends over on a European cruise they can ill afford, ostensibly to celebrate their anniversary, but in truth, to reinforce an image of financial standing in a disbelieving market where creditors suspect the days of their heady business are close to an ignominiously bankrupt end.
The movie is set on an opulent scale, taking you through the lives of the rich and the famous in plush locales of Europe and Turkey. Somehow, it becomes difficult to resist the nagging déjà vu feeling one gets of sitting through an Indianised episode of the “ The Bold and The Beautiful” series that used to come in Star TV.
The players operate on a superficial level, and life is an unending game of drinks, party, song, pubs and sightseeing where the young are sacrificed in matches made not in heaven, but in the boardroom for convenience and for furthering business interests. In this upper class society, behind the glittering façade of modernity and all its accompanying branded entrapments, lays an uncompromising entrenchment in conservative and regressive mindset that is no different from what the rest of the Indian bourgeois have.
The actors have done their job of simpering, puckering, scowling, dancing, smiling reasonably well; after all they have been paid for it, isn’t it? So I shall not gush over how Anil Kapoor is such a professional or how well Anoushka has melted into the personality of a bar dancer- it’s the least we expect when we empty our pockets of the hard-earned change. When you pay for a service, such as a driver or a cook or a musician or an actor, you expect value for your money. And you tip if you are pleased with the extra effort, and if you think I am going to reward the dog for novelty with an extra bone here, you are mistaken. There have been enough dumb dogs on the silver screen to waste accolades here.
Anil Kapoor is a man quaffing anti-anxiety pills because of a failing business. He is also an incorrigible flirt with many affairs under his belt. Ranvir is a loser son who dislikes the mantle of the crown prince and would rather suck Anoushka’s swollen lips and fly a plane. Anoushka, I notice, has become the female Emraan Hashmi of Bollywood, given her penchant for swallowing the mouths of random men. Ranvir’s parents plot his betrothal to Nuri, the only daughter of Suri, a businessman who can buy into the shares of Anil Kapoor’s company and save it. Nuri is a serially spurned, sexually attractive bimbette, who falls for the next man that would have her, and therefore, as expected, Ranvir too forfeits her match. Prianca, his sister, a walking poster for birth control pills, can’t get over a past affair with an uncouth Farhaan Akhtar, who gave up on shaving after getting exhausted with so much running he did as the Flying Sikh. It takes a suicidal jump by the prodigal son into the Mediterranean to bring the family, and the philosopher dog together again, and they lived, happily ever after I am sure.
Many posters have labeled the Mehras as dysfunctional; I would say that is cliché. For I find them perfectly normal: a helpless wife watching her libidinous husband scoring with other women, a rich good-for-nothing loser kid who can only fly a plane and fall in love with a bar-dancer, his sister, with a past affair, coping in an unhappy marriage, society women gabbing about immaterial things, glossing over trivia, idling as chatterboxes, gibber-jabbering of bunkum and balderdash, sugarcoating their worries- I mean, what’s new?
The new-age kids try to defy their helicopter-parenting parents and break out of the mold of convention and listen to their hearts- is that the takeaway here? Take a pill because you don’t want to give birth to the brood of the man you don’t love? Spurn a perfectly good match from a known, decent family just because you covet a bar dancer who is rude to you? Sounds strange to me, but not if you are a loser, and losers is what this movie is about. I find nothing inspiring or uplifting or joy-giving in this story.
The dialogues are as witty as a rusty doornail.
The movie is lighthearted entertainment that flippantly skims over matters of family bonding, fidelity, and dogs that think too much, without making any serious, pedantic issues out of them. No one takes themselves, or life very seriously here, nor should you.
Zoya Akhtar made this movie, and cast the current crop of actors only after unsuccessfully knocking at the doors of Karenna, Katrina, and Ranvir Kapoor, who wriggled out of commitment, citing- well, the usual date issues. The mastiff was free, so he came along without a murmur, and got the chunk of the meaty dialogues.
The music is catchy, thumping, and enjoyable.
A one-time watch is where I would place this movie. If someone wants to show me the sights of Europe and give me pulsating music, popcorn, and coke for 500 bucks on a weekend when it’s raining and I can’t golf, who am I to say no?
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