BANG BANG: Mission Entertainment, Failed! [2/5]

Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz starrer KNIGHT AND DAY wasn’t an extraordinary action movie outing at the first place; so when Bollywood has come up with an idea to officially remake it, expecting anything better to come out of it is surely our fault and not of the makers. Since Bollywood has now become quite an expert with remaking their own classics into the most forgettable ones, you can only imagine what would have they done with an average Hollywood action thriller. Siddharth Anand’s BANG BANG is a regular bollywood junk suitable only to those who crave for quick, forgettable and mindless adrenaline rush for their dose of entertainment.

Rajveer [Played by the delectably charming Hrithik] is a daredevil wanted for stealing the historical Kohinoor Diamond from a museum in London and can frequently be seen in Shimla roaming with the ‘diamond’ in his pocket. In a ‘written as in the script’ incident, he meets a middle-class desperate girl [Katrina, of course] with starry dreams to tour the world someday. And now the both should be together in the hide & seek game with cops [Pavan Malhotra, wasted] & the international crime syndicates [Danny Denzongpa & Javed Jaffrey] to save each other’s lives. But there is a twist, Rajveer is hardly who he pretends to be.

Problems with BANG BANG never really end. Where the original Hollywood flick had its own share of logic behind every action and plot developments, this Bollywood version hardly tries to be imaginative or logical. One action sequence leads to an abrupt song & dance number followed by another action sequence and another song & dance number! This goes on & on until the intermission. You take the loo-break, join the movie and it starts all over again. The most irritating transitions between scenes are Katrina waking up in the bed, in a new location, in a new country. 2 hours 35 minutes and you hardly see a smart espionage moment. Yes, there are brilliantly performed action thrills but no moment of shock even in the climax. If you could not see it coming, that’s never because of their excellence but your inattentiveness.  

Siddharth actually doesn’t leave any stone unturned to make it a proper Bollywood film. A bollywood film that never doubts on the moves of its hero, in fact it tries to cover him up. BANG BANG does exactly the same…with all of the film. So, more than 25 films in her name and we still have to give reasons [read: excuses] for Katrina’s accented vocal presentation. So she might possess ‘Harleen’ as her name, she is a Canada born child whose parents are dead in a terrible road accident [as convenient as swimming is to a fish] and now she is living with her grandmother in Shimla from last 10 years or more. Established in first half an hour, now do not you dare to ask why she can’t talk in proper accent?

My two favorite moments are probably the only moment I had an effortless smile on my face. When press asks the grandmother about Harleen’s whereabouts, she tells them that she had to consult her lawyer first and one media-person reacts, “Dadi, American serials dekhna band karo!” In other, Hrithik makes faces and pun about Katrina’s boring single life and her search for boyfriend on dating sites. Genuinely funny and natural!

On the performances, Hrithik manages to keep everyone hooked with his ease at action, silkiness in dance and the big screen charisma of the heroic chiseled-oiled body muscles. Deepti Naval & Kanwaljeet mark their presence felt. Rests in the supporting cast are either wasted completely or extremely regular. Watch out if breathtaking locales, hard to imitate dance moves, some good action sequences and your favorite stars are enough to make you spend [read: waste] your precious time and hard-earned money. It deserves nothing less than a place in the list of AAP MUJHE ACHCHE LAGNE LAGE and KITES! [2/5].

MR JOE B. CARVALHO: ‘Errors in comedy’ & a case-history in the ‘worsts’ section of Bollywood [0.5/5]

Playing a detective, when Arshad Warsi comes to take the brief of a ‘runaway daughter’ case from Shakti Kapoor playing the father, Warsi investigates if he has any clue where his daughter could be. And you really can’t hold yourself bursting into giggles when Shakti Kapoor gives him an absolutely definite & detailed address in reply. This is a good example of black-humour and most importantly, it is one of those few gags that really come out well on screen. I wish other jokes would also have the same luck!

To be pronounced as ‘Mr jo bhi karwa lo’, debutante Samir Tewari’s ‘MR JOE B. CARVALHO’ is rather ‘errors in comedy’ than ‘comedy of errors’. The characters and I mean ‘each & everyone’ credited here acts and reacts like mad cows trying to eat as much grass from the field as they could.

Arshad Warsi plays a detective who’s hired to solve the mystery [???] behind a daughter running away with the cook of the house. In other plot, there is a cold-blooded killer [the less-wasted Javed Jaffery] out on loose to kill another couple responsible for a self-proclaimed don-cum-lover’s heartbreak. Vijayraj plays a green-eyed, envious goon who’s looking for chances to kill his rival Carlos-the killer. Soha Ali Khan is in role of a ‘Lady Dabangg’ cop who misunderstands his ex-boyfriend Warsi as the same contract killer, God knows why often addressed as a terrorist. Himani Shivpuri as the blind mother to Warsi gets trembling around everywhere without much reason. Rest is the series of happenings, mis-happenings and not-happenings.

With a completely immature, faulty and terrible work of writing, neither the film takes itself serious nor the actors. Everyone races against each other to win ‘who’s worst’ title in the performance. Javed Jaffery shows some relief as the master of disguise Carlos. Arshad Warsi was the biggest bet in this and though he never really disappoints you, he should take accountability for choosing such bad film. For the rest, you will find lots of improvisation from actors taking place in many scenes but even that also don’t help any better. Watching actors mumbling just anything before leaving the frame or camera getting zoomed in to a face to get some reaction and after realizing that it’s not gonna happen, ending it with a late-cut is hilarious but only if you are into the tricks & trades of filmmaking.

Dialogues are pathetically pedestrian. So if there is a talk about bad stomach, be ready to hear Soha starting her sentence with ‘I gas’ only to rectifying it soon after with ‘I guess’. The songs are penned down to tickle funny bones but fall flat only for a well-needed break to visit loo or the cafeteria in the theatre premise.

At the end; if you laugh ever in the film, it is not because of the gags but the situations that are not funny at all. Filmmaking is a serious business and people who think they can have fun with it in trying to make it funnier, should need to learn-unlearn few basics. Cinema lovers can consider it a strictly ‘No-No’ and a case-history in the ‘worsts’ section of Bollywood. Come on 2014, don’t dishearten us! Give us something really good soon! [0.5/5] 

WAR…CHHOD NA YAAR: Leave it! Go for your favorite comedy TV shows instead. [2/5]

No one wants war. No one likes to participate in something that harms common people’s peace, prosperity and harmony. We all believe that. At least, we tend to believe that. So when it comes to our ‘not so sweet’ political relationship with our neighboring country, we all at some level have tried to imagine what if the circumstances at the border were not as tensed as it may look sitting in our drawing rooms. The very same is the premise on which first-time writer-director Faraz Haider tries to build nation’s first war-comedy WAR…CHHOD NA YAAR!

On the very first scene, we see our Indian army commander Rana [played by Sharman Joshi] and the chief of Pakistani army outpost [played by Javed Jaffrey] secretly leaving their bases in the darkest hour of the midnight, only to meet at the ‘no man’s land’ not for some revenge seeking war but a card game [Later, they have been shown playing Antakshari also with their respective teams]. The intention is very clear. Make every situation funnier that you think it could be but the problem is the writing lacks originality and innovation. The gags and wits are as if taken from either common man’s raw understandings and presumptions about issues and the mechanism or from an old book of anti-Pakistan jokes. You really can’t be biased with showing most of the good-hearted smart people at your side and the dumbest ones on the other [exclude politicians; they are all the same everywhere]…especially when at the end, you are heading towards a solid meaning message to all the humankind.

Film sure shows a humorous take on the political intervention of other countries [China providing innovative weapons and artilleries to Pakistan, Uncle Sam giving a generous financial aid to India to launch the war] and the caricature-ish low-IQed politicians from both the sides. There is also the TRP-hungry media that masters in how to fabricate regular News feeds to make it large enough for grabbing more eye-balls.  

Performances are strictly average and very conventional & unsurprising. Sharman Joshi and Soha Ali Khan Pataudi are just as you expect them to be. Javed Jaffrey is confident and looks the most promising of them all. Sanjay Mishra repeats himself roles after roles and offers nothing new. Dalip Tahil plays multiple roles of politicians from all sides but if anyone can really make you laugh whole-heartedly is out of the question. Mukul Dev plays an intruder terrorist from Afghanistan who always gets caught by an Indian intelligence officer in disguise patrolling over border-line.     

At the end, WAR…CHHOD NA YAAR is comical but only in its concept & the aspiration it dreams to achieve. I wish the gags would have been fresh and a little matured in nature. Being loyal to your country is one thing but demeaning others by attacking continuously on their state of financial crisis is completely other. Wait for the satellite release and you may like it on a lazy Sunday but as of now, it is not better than a 1-hour episode of comedy shows on your popular TV channel. [2/5]