Scandals has always been tabloid fodder and celebrities lives are like honeypots for the paparazzi, which I detest personally. But that’s what has made journalism a lucrative job in the past few years, thanks to the falling ethics in the profession. Following the lives of a dysfunctional actress has been a hot topic in Bollywood and this movie brings you such a story again albeit with a soft spot for the actress. But let me warn you, the story is nice but the movie ends up to be an hour and a half of watching two immature adults sink down to the lowest for no reason and hurl bile and vitriol at each other.
The movie is about a political correspondent who is asked to cover the life of an actress at his editor’s insistence even though he does not like it and is pissed off at his boss. Jackie shroff plays the disgruntled journalist, a washed up political journalist and the person he is interviewing is the actress played by Sheena. This movie moves slowly as it tries to uncover rather painstakingly the life of the actress, her relaitionships, her addictions , her weaknesses. Etc. Etc. Etc (a la ‘Heroine’). But will the actress divulge everything? Who will win in the debate? Will the journalist now be pissed off at the actress too. Both the lead characters are somewhat in the same mould and end up sympathizing with each other.
This movie is completely a two-header movie and a more of the “lets sit down a talk“ kind. The lead actors have played their role well but the real question is whether the whole tabloid fodder is necessary or not. Whether in real life any actress, much less any journalist, would reveal their deepest secrets to a total stranger is highly questionable. But then part of the plot here is that we never quite know how much of what they say is the truth, and how much is manufactured. This is very much a story about how the media and celebrities use each other to attain their own ends. So what we come out with in the end is people who are smarter than they seem, but maybe a little less ethical than we would like them to be. And first and foremost in that category is the journalist, who we come to realize is not only capable of stretching the truth when it suits his needs, but also of betraying confidences if that will further his career
Despite the interesting - even if extremely pessimistic - argument, "Cover Story" suffers too much from empty, meaningless and stagnant dialogue. The essentially trivial questions of ’who betrays whom’ and ’what is the "truth" about the characters’ grow into excessively important motives for the narrative that quickly starts to repeat itself. The result is an unpleasant and contradictory watching experience. In the end, it is is hard to like in spite of some serious effort.
One time watch