TERAA SURROOR: The Himesh ‘Horror’ Reshammiya Show! [1/5]

The most ironical part in Himesh Reshammiya starrer TERAA SURROOR is also the most amusing part yet so not an agreeable statement to make. Himesh gets to play a ‘Bharat ka beta’ with a heart of gold. He used to sell Chai once in his childhood while battling with poverty. He involuntarily gets enraged with so much aggression that he pierces the chest of a gangster with bullet-driven holes when the latter makes lewd remarks involving his Maa.

Years pass. Himesh is now a Modi-fied young man with newly developed chiseled body and all expressionless wooden face. He’s seen giving tough time to ‘gore angrej’ in a verbal spat over India and Indians being targeted as the incredibly incompetent. He flaunts his Desi Tamancha made in Azamgarh smugly in Dublin to represent and rest his case; and leaves the premise in such swag that most pseudo nationalists will rise up and start saluting and waving Indian flags if allowed. Wait, there is more. He never forgets to make his enemies citing ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ before he could take his final shots at them. What the puking patriotism!

TERAA SURROOR is apparently being pushed as a sequel to Reshammiya’s AAP KA SURROOR (2007). It is not but only when Reshammiya uses some of the head-thrashing songs from the previous. Tara [Farah Karimee] has been booked by cops for the act of drug possession in Dublin, Ireland. Her beau Raghu [Himesh] needs to find a way to rescue her and to trace the unidentifiable man behind all this. Enter Elle Jordan [Monica Dogra]- a lawyer, an Indian official at the embassy [Shekhar Kapoor] and a seasoned conman in prison Robin Santino [Naseer Saab] fondly called as ‘the bird’ for his 14 successful attempts at prison break! Together they all try to help Raghu in his mission and also the film in getting some kind of gravity. I wish they had not been overshadowed by the one and only Himesh Reshammiya!

While tasting your endurance for nearly 2 hours, you often find yourself in a tight spot to decide who irritates you the most; Himesh- the actor or Himesh- the composer. Both have their pros and cons to their individual (ir)responsibilities. Himesh never really bothers you as an actor. He certainly is not one at the first place. He never tries to wear too many varied emotions on his face to impress, though the shades on his lips do magnetize your attention. His self-possessed tunes and the background score by the master himself make sure you don’t miss out a single frame in the film. I made serious efforts to take a quick refreshing nap in between but the hammering beats, earsplitting sounds and eerie singing will never let you be successful in your thoughts.

In rest of the cast, Karimee has nothing to impress. She is smartly given a lesser number of dialogues to mouth and it appears bliss in many ways. Shekhar Kapoor charms as good as Naseeruddin Shah. Where Kapoor shows off his ease and delightful presence on screen, Naseer Saab does quite a job as an interesting cameo. Shernaz Patel and Kabir Bedi are good. In an attention-grabbing portrayal, the villain of the film [He only surfaces at the end] plays a new musical instrument every time he appears on screen. Each time I wanted and wished him to be a real life competitor of Himesh disapproving his success and guts to bounce back with an unabashed self-praising attitude! Could have been a real joke!

Overall, I might have gifted you many spoilers from the plot of the film but the real spoiler is the one who spoils your very idea of entertainment i. e. the unstoppable, the unbearable and the uniquely annoying Himesh Reshammiya. He can seriously trouble you for nights with his hugely haunting ‘O huzoor, tera tera teraa surrrooor!’ Beware, he’s there waiting for you in the dark! Visit at your own risk! [1/5]   

THE XPOSE: One of the cheesiest suspense thrillers, aka unintentional comedy!! [2/5]

Fans who have had regular access to gossipy magazines like ‘Mayapuri’ and ‘Stardust’ would agree more that bollywood film industry has always been blessed with cheesy, salty and spicy ‘inside’ news pieces on link-ups, break-ups, regular tiffs between stars, catfights in parties and rivalries that run longer than the film on box-office. Now, if someone from those unsighted admirers would have made a film like ‘THE XPOSE’ taking references from here and there, it would have been easily an ignorable offence…but coming from Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, a veteran himself from the industry, it is a shameful cold-blooded crime to present all of it in a hasty, half-baked and horrifically bad light.

THE XPOSE, set in glamorously stylish 60’s, is a fictional memoir inspired by real life incidents happened in bollywood. So you have a moody, egoistic and bigmouthed superstar Ravi Kumar [Played by who else? The Himesh Reshammiya], a character modeled on yesteryear Actor Rajkumar famous for his attitude and many regular interferences on set suitable to his self-proclaimed image. How can you not find the connection when he compliments one of his co-stars on her dress that he could use the same for his house as curtains??

Then, there are a couple of sex-symbols who catfights in parties and bears strong resemblance from real-life contemporaries Zeenat Aman & Parveen Bobby. There is also a top music director KD [India’s latest sensation Yo Yo Honey Singh playing someone like RD Burman] who can sell the same tune to two different filmmakers. If you could do an elephant-eyed examination, you will also find visible suggestions of Sunil Dutt saving Nargis’s life from a fire mishap on set, a publishing house giant replicating Nari Hira of Stardust and hidden interest of underworld in the business. All that and an unfortunate death of a leading actress [Divya Bharti?? Who knows!!]! Everyone is under scanner and the frisky & frolicky fiction takes over the touch of reality!

THE XPOSE is stylish and sensational but cheaply designed, undeveloped ‘insider’s view’ to encash people’s thirst for scandalous ‘behind the curtain’ news. It gets easier if you already in sync with those intimations and indications before hand in order to relate and rejoice but as an outsider, you will always miss the punch here. Watching Himesh delivering lines like, “Main jo bol deta hoon, wohi script ho jaati hai” and “Style pe aap kaam karo, attitude pe maine bachpan se kaam kiya hai” makes you giggle and chuckle at the first but soon you will feel the juice getting either too sweet or too salty to enjoy. Baby-faced Yo Yo Honey Singh looks fresh for the screen and bearable when lip-syncing his own songs. Newcomers Sonali Raut and Zoya Afroz do it as been told and predicted. Adil Hussain brings some credibility in his shorter but smarter performance. By the way, the story gets narrated by Irrfan Khan playing a blackmarketeer at cinema-halls. No explanations would be enough to understand why this special appearance??

With nasal-toned singing, ‘ice-dream khaoongi, Kashmir jaoongi’ kind of inanity in lyrics, average performance, distasteful writing and a suspense that falls more in the grid of unplanned-unintentional-accidental comedy, THE XPOSE is one of the cheesiest suspense thriller that can be watchable if you are allowed to make loud comments on its idiocy in theatre. It’s the only way out to relieve yourself of the load it throws on your intellect. Sadly, multiplex culture doesn’t pursue that any longer! So, better leave it for a home-viewing! [2/5]