Nov 24, 2014 11:06 PM
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The only thing happy about the ending was the expiration of three very painful hours spent in a hall dark with the constant sound of popcorn being crunched and coke being slurped.
Kids sitting next to me were probably grown on another planet as they refused to switch off their mobiles even after being requested. The glare of the phone was distracting and irritating, to say the very least. PM Modi needs to do something about first cleaning this country of uncivilized, badly brought up kids with no regard, consideration or respect for others. These are the guys who will think nothing of throwing their garbage out the car window, even if it splatters somebody in the face.
Enough about ill-mannered youngsters- after all they must have learnt it from us, or from our peers- their parents!The movie is a tacky patchwork of sitcoms, or situational comedies. One scene after another is pegged to the story line like dirty, dripping laundry laid out to dry. The line itself is broken and clumsily knotted at many places. The dialogues are remarkably trite, and run of the mill, and unoriginal and uninspiring like a dhaba menu. Govinda gets the best dialogues to speak. I have a deep suspicion- for good reason too- that he might have penned them himself, after seeing the stale dishes being served up. The rest, neither so lucky nor so ingenious, get to mouth inanities that get your tummy all of a flutter.
Don’t worry- all the good stuff you’ve already seen in the trailers is about all that there is! There’s nothing left in the movie after that. So save those pennies for a beer somewhere, where you can have a cozy chat with your friend or fiancé.
The plot- already well flogged- is this. Saif, a one-book-wonder author, has numerous affairs- 6 1/2 to be precise(the half comes from Chetan Bhagat- I wonder?) All goes well in each of the liaisons till it is commitment time. Then our hero chickens and runs; his fiery, fluffy plumes pressed back in the wind. This goes on for scene after scene till he meets a budding author, who has the same views on relationships as he himself. Hackneyed poetic justice demands that it should now be his turn to fall for her, confess his love, and seek a commitment.
But she, obviously with an unwavering eye on the plot, gives him a taste of his own medicine. So he pursues her till… till a happy ending takes place.
The ending surprisingly, is the most confused and badly conceived part of a story that labels itself on it!
Saif has a weighty, earthy, alter ego, a fat inner voice, like a pudgy white angel always drinking beer or licking candy, to engage him in verbal and emotional duel and gently poke him in the right direction. Given a choice, I would vote the burpy, burly, and bushy Saif over the real one.
I did not find Ileana d Cruz, his romantic and erotic interest, at all sizzling. There is no chemistry between her and Saif- not even biology or physics. It was only math- one man and one woman equals a couple! She is slim in the upper body, and dense in the lower limbs. She needs to invest some money in an appointment with a good dentist too.
A dentist perhaps like Kalki Koechlin, who while obsessing over Saif, seems utterly wasted. She is given the worst lines to speak and has the worst expressions to boot. Hindi seems to be a distant fourth or fifth tongue for her, and so does acting- as the chosen medium of artistic expression. Preity, Saif’s good luck charm from yesteryears, has faded, fatted, and frayed.
Govinda is the masala curry in this otherwise bland, nutrient-filched hospital cuisine.
If this was supposed to be a feel-good movie about uber cools living the high life in New York, well, it sadly just doesn’t turn out to be so. Nor does it give us a paisa-vasooled trip into the dream world of the big apple. We Indians have been there and done that, okay? Grow up Bollywood! Glitzy backdrops that camouflage the blank scenery in front no longer fool us.
As usual Nidhi walked away with the punch line. She said, ‘wasn’t one Saif enough that they had to give us two of them?’
