Damsels in Distress!. Review on Metro - Bollywood

Anurag Basu loves damsels in distress. Murder, Gangster and now Metro. Here, you have not one, not two but three damsels in distress. They are joined by men too. The city plays the villain. It throws in opportunities and dreams galore. But forces one to dump virtues like ethics, morality, hardwork and fidelity in the backyard.

Synopsis:

If Shilpa Shetty is trying to find some meaning in her life with her marriage with Kay Kay Menon on the rocks, younger sister Konkona Sen Sharma(KSS for short!) is a plane jane past 30 and desparate to find some ideal match for herself. Her flat mate Kangana Run-out works in a call center and sleeps with her boss who happens to be Kay Kay Menon. Never mind. Almost everyone is sleeping with everyone in lieu of professional favours done. Sharman Joshi is a typical DBCD(Desi born confused dude) working as an agent in the same call center. He has an apartment left over by his uncle who is settled in Dubai. He rents his flat keys to everyone up the ladder for their sexual escapades. In return, he is promised promotions and perks.He secretly loves Madame Kangana Run-out but is unaware that she is already being clean bowled by the boss Kay Kay Menon. That too in his(DBCD's) own apartment. Uh oh!Poor chap.Somewhere, there is another confused chap by the name of Monty(played by the inimitable Irrfaan Khan) who has a rendezvous with KSS courtesy their respective profiles on shaadi.com. Did I forget Shiney Ahuja? Well, he is a struggling theatre actor in whom Shilpa Shetty finds a soulmate - someone who doesn't call her a paki and doesn't ask her where her hands have been. Wait.There is more. An ageing Dharmendra in the final years of his life revives his love with old flame Nafisa Ali.

Direction:

To Anurag Basu's credit, he has managed to keep the viewers hooked despite nothing really innovative in the story line. He has written teh movie too and it shows. I would say the title of the movie was very clear -(Life in a) Metro. So, one knows what the film wants to show. Goes with an expectation and comes back more than satisfied.

The characters seem believable and almost everyone is a metro city would be able to identify with one of the characters. It could have fallen flat with so many characters thrown in.But thanks to a slick editing, some good dialogues and commendable performances, the movie delivers.

I am told the movie's basic premise is lifted from 'The Apartment'. To me, it hardly matters. Anurag Basu comes from the Bhatt camp where he learnt that'nothing in this world is original - everything is a recycle bin'. So.

Scenes that amused me:

# Madame Kangana Run-out and Kay kay Menon's scenes after they finish off their chores. Why did they choose the window seat in the apartment to do all that they wanted? Perhaps, the director wanted to remind us all the time that all this is happening in a metro city and not in some Jhumri Tillaiyya.

# Shilpa Shetty introducing herself to Shiney Ahuja as'Mrs Ranjeet' and Shiney asking her'real name' awakening the woman of substance in her. Inappropriate and cliched depiction.

# The gay scene between KSS's crush in her office and another male. That whole premise was very Bhandarkarish and did not have any shock value which it intended to carry. For the records, KSS had an exactly same'shock' scene in Page 3.

# The mundane tiffs between Shilpa Shetty and Kay Kay Menon. The tu tu main main.'Main bhi kamaa sakti hoon aur kamaati thi'- she tells him. Seen that umpteen times before.

Trivia:

I went to watch the movie to check whether Anurag Basu has again used his trademark voice over scenes of any damsel in distress and YES, he has! In Murder, you had Mallika's biographical voice in the background when she describes her predicament. Again, in Gangster, Kangana Run-out did it. Here, you have Shilpa Shetty describing the orgasmic failures of a marriage which has gone from bad to worse.

Scenes that deserve an applause:

# ALL the Irrfaan and KSS scenes. In an otherwise grim movie, the couple provided some light hearted banter and their idiosyncracies.

# KSS's shot of trying to put contact lenses on her pupils had me in splits!

# Madame Kangana Run-out's outburst in the hospital when she refuses to take Kay kay Menon's call. The scene was written very well and brought out all the angst that she felt.

# Sharman Joshi telling his life story to Kangana. All the DBCDs living in metros can somehow relate to that.

Music:

Pritam crops up intermittently with a decent looking lad and another one who looks like a cross between apes and human beings.They sing to bring out the mood of the characters and the movie at that point. To be honest, other than'In Dino', other songs where a lot of hoo haa and indistinguishable.

Performance wise almost everyone has done a decent job. But Irrfaan takes the cake. He is simply awesome. How I wish he had some more screen space.

All in all, worth a dekko.

*PS:

Madame Kangana Run-out has exhausted all options of committing suicide in all her movies. In this movie, she attempts suicide by gulping down an entire bottle of phenyl. What next? Any answers?