Farah Khan’s interests have always been rather more superficial in terms of’re-igniting’ the genre(and it is by no means clear that the word’genre’ can be used for a cinema which was really a’pastiche’ of genres or a bleeding of one into another, much as in Shakespeare).Once again one witnesses’parody’ as the’safe’ option. There is hardly any authenticity in Farah Khan’s spoofing of masala in OSO. The initial portion of the film is set in 1977. Karz was not being shot at the time. Nor were Rajni-like Southern stars known in Bombay circles at that point. In fact Rajni’s eventual iconic avatars were still in the future even in Tamil cinema of that period! Similarly Shahrukh refers to Kamal Haasan in the same breath as Gemini Ganesan in 1977 when this kind of juxtaposition would have made far more sense some years later when Kamal had made more of a mark in his career. Shantipriya(the 70s actress who is the first incarnation of Deepika Padukone) appears in a film looking strikingly like the Aishwarya Rai of Devdas. That kind of Bengali look was again not very current in 70s cinema.The Pakistani actor Javed Shaikh plays the late, somewhat pathetic Rajesh Khanna, and he seems completely wrong for the part. A very young Rajesh Khanna and an older Jeetendra that show up in the song with Shantipriya seem to belong to very different eras. A Mithun-like figure shows up who again was not known in the period represented in the film and gained prominence later and was really a truly 80s phenomenon. One is even more surprised to see a Govinda figure here! . The 70s and 80s are combined into one period in Farah Khan’s imagination when there is a world of difference between the two decades in every conceivable sense.
Even a spoof must have a certain authentic relation to what is being spoofed. Otherwise the spoof falls flat. Or at best is a collection of gags or curiosities. The more interesting element that emerges from this entire first half of the film is the extent to which Farah Khan’s representation of the 70s tradition is really a parody of B or C grade films of that period. Or at best a parody of the campy elements of masala cinema. This is not a homage to a glorious tradition but a pastiche of the worst excesses of the period. Not surprisingly Manoj Kumar occupies center stage or Dev Anand crops up. These are soft targets. Leaving this aside one of the most important features of the 70s tradition was the city of Bombay that appeared in film after film and whose topography was linked to a greater degree with the films of that period than any before or since. Unfortunately all of Farah Khan’s homages take place on one or two sets and there is little sense of the city outside. The director fundamentally offers no more than the pastiche equivalent of jokes that later generations often made about the tradition. The older Rajesh Khanna or Dev Anand or Manoj Kumar were always the’bad’ 70s as opposed to the good 70s of a younger Rajesh Khanna, a Dharam who was transforming himself from 60s romantic or family film hero to action star, and of course Bachchan. Dharam shows up briefly in the film and thankfully Rishi Kapoor is represented by his Karz clip that begins the film.
The framing device for this film is of course the reincarnation angle and the director is on firmer ground here in terms of homage as she’refers’ to Karz in the opening sequence and then more obliquely to Madhumati and even Kudrat in the closing moments. But otherwise the director completely mishandles this aspect of the narrative as well. The theme is never approached with much seriousness and simply becomes a casual plot device to bookend what are essentially a series of gags in both halves of the film. The reincarnation idea which has always appeared dramatically in earlier films, has always retained a degree of’uncaniness’ even in a very masala venture like Karz, is completely diluted in OSO by the constant spoofing in both halves of the film. It is hard to marry comedy with drama as any good student of Manmohan Desai ought to have learnt. Sadly Farah Khan is not that student. By introducing the reincarnation plot device and aligning this with a parody she doubles her bets and completely fails to do justice to the former. The film simply does not have the gravitas to deal with the demands of such a subject.
The much advertised song sequence with 31 stars is another remarkable letdown with everyone from Jeetendra to Arbaaz Khan showing up as if on the Barjatya stage(Hum Saath Saath Hain) to endless musical non-transitions where the musical track just rolls on and on. The moment hearkens back to Manmohan Desai’s Naseeb number. Even otherwise the song sequences have on the whole been poorly done and certainly do not add to the experience of listening to these on CD. The soundtrack deserved better handling.
A word on the performances-Shahrukh Khan by his own standards is terrific, exploding with energy in the first half but by anyone’s standards is awful in just about every frame of the second half.The much hyped Deepika Padukone is curiously passive on screen, lacking both the expressivity and presence of a star(much less suggesting anything that stands up to the showstopping quality that a stunner like Aishwarya Rai brings to something like Kajra Re).Oh, and what a terrible voice!The standout remarkably is Arjun Rampal.He is mostly cold and wooden in most of his films, but here I wished the film had more of him.