Nov 01, 2015 11:39 PM
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(Updated Nov 03, 2015 01:12 PM)
Karan made fine movies – once upon a time. Runaway successes, alas, also ran away with the tick tock of time. He has tried to recreate what he once used to be the best at: the magic of the fat Indian wedding replete with Mehendi, endless song-and-dance routines, blinding flashes of revelers turned out in full bling-bling, flirtatious affairs on the side that fizzled out faster than old champagne, and dark undercurrents of matches made out of the convenience of commerce among families tottering on the edge of financial ruin. In the background, soulful melodies stirred the depths of our emotions leading us serenely away from the drudgery of our daily lives into something dreamy, perfect and impossible.
Here, in a lazy obsession with shallow technicality, with superficial setting, with creating a graphically generated false magical world that reeks of nothing more than a comic or a Disney anime, Karan has let the storytelling become the drudgery of graphic designers, choreographers, music directors and software nerds, rather than the poignant crusade of the driven artist, who here seems to have taken the backseat, and is snoring away.
Technique cannot replace soul – Karan, the Master, should know better than anybody else. No amount of chalk and paint can hide an ugly face underneath. No glitzy bows, no amount of bedazzling may conceal drab merchandise inside. Karan bedazzles you, with his tricks; with little feints he’s mastered over time, with little balls that sway in front of your eyes like a hypnotist’s, and cleverly tries to conceal the complete absence of any worth in his offering – in his deal.
A deal is struck between two bankrupt families, for an obviously incompatible match between a retarded, six-pack striptease, and a sweets-loving ball of corpulence, in the mistaken belief that it will yank them out of monetary despair. Yawn – now how many times have we heard this?
The mismatched couple grows to dislike and berate each other in full public view, much to the discomfort of their bust cousins. On the sides, a predictable romance blooms between our hero and heroine – and it doesn’t take much guesswork to ‘guess’ who they obviously are. In the end, a happy ending ensues, and all shaky parties emboldened with the scriptwriter’s dictat are dispatched on their respective paths to deal with their lives. I sure dunno why they had to kidnap the moron groom – as ransom – from an insolvent father? The humor is as bland as a rusty nail in my stepney on a highway.
The complete ‘Kapoor khandaan’ – no, not the Kapoors of ‘Prithviraj’ fame, the Kapoors of ‘Pankaj Kapoor’ anonymity – was there, out in full livery. Shahid hasn’t shaved since ‘Haidar, ’ and Alia hasn’t grown any hair since ‘Highway.’
As is usual with Karan, he extracts confessions about being gay from at least one of his characters, and we hope that one day he will come out himself as well. Like Hitchcock, he is vain enough to make cameo entries in his movies, and here too, you will see him handling a very lame, clumsily scripted episode of ‘Mehendi with Karan!’
There is no arc of character development – Shahid and Alia are placed there to fall in love, and they do – effortlessly, without struggle. They get what they want from the start – there is no conflict. Nor is there any resolution. The script seems to have been written by a blind man groping in the dark – adjusting himself to the bumps and dumps as he goes along, conjuring up one pretty scene in his dark head after another. The dialogue is stilted and the story limps along like a lame man with a blister on his good foot, while crawling on a bed of rusty nails.
Who sold you this story, man, Karan? Are you scrimping on the writing and dialogue? And soul?
No amount of cuteness or simpering will save you from the audience’s thumbs down if you don’t have sincerity and integrity behind your storytelling!
Alia may be the butt of all jokes, but she has a screen presence that you cannot deny. I am giving three stars and a recommendation to watch just because critics can feed off it and it does have some time-pass and watchable quotient - chalo, free mein London ghoom lo!
