?Aur waise bhi ek mahine mein zee tv mein aa jayegi flop ho jaane ke baad.? (Thank Premjit for the Bhavishya-vaani.) Well, this dud did show up on one of those channels, not sure if it was Zee or something else ? actually doesn?t make a difference.
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Paap ... Plot
A guy (Mohan Agashe) decides to live a life free of sin and so takes his daughter and himself off to a monastery in Spiti - Himachal Pradesh, where he proceeds to pretend that the outside world does not exist. The daughter Kaya (Udita Goswami) however isn?t one to subscribe to daddy?s overly simplistic approach to life. She writes poetry, swims au naturelle in her underclothes and feels a sensuous breeze (every time the wind fans are on full blast). Then she?s sent on a man-hunt ... sorry, Lama-hunt ... and she?s about to return with the ?lil Lama when the small guy sees someone getting their ticket punched.
Well, of course the baddies now want him. So enter the beefcake cop (John A) who?s now playing guardian-angel to the ?lil guy and the repressed female. He gets shot, she drags him back to their mud-cake lair in Spiti and then proceeds to pant in wide-eyed pseudo arousal when she sees his bare chest (literally bare of everything ... lol ... that?s beside the point here). Some song and dance later, the duo are madly in lust and daddy smells something (lol). Dad warns the predator off, but he seems to have other ideas. After some baddie-bashing and sermonising soliloquies the girl is convinced that if she wants to pant some more, she has to follow the rock home. She does.
Cast performance
Mohan Agashe: I remember watching this man in some splendid Marathi acting and also in that disastrous Subhash Ghai flick ? Trimurti. He?s wasted. All does in here is sermonise (which is so corny, you?d rather prefer to down some bland sweet corn soup) and that too in such an obvious ham performance. Maybe the cold got to him. Put A K Hangal in there and you?d have a better and more convincing performance. Practice does make better, ain?t it?
John A: I?ve said this before and I?ll say it again. He looks good, but acting is another matter. Or maybe the script ain?t right. Or maybe the moon wasn?t high enough in the sky. Or maybe the Lama dress was tripping him and making him hit his jaw on the mud floor too often. Whatever the reason, all J A had to do in this movie was play the unruffled cop and lie bare-chested for the better part of this movie. Well, why pay people to do what they do in normal life? He?s supremely UNRUFFLED even when he?s supposedly kissing the hell out of that idiot girl. (I?d better stop, he?s fast becoming one of my pet rants.)
Udita Goswami: I was right about the promos telling all. I saw, I assumed, I was proved right. She can?t act, she shouldn?t be asked to. Poor girl. She ramp-walked all through the movie. And the end scene nearly took my breath away and made me blue in the face at 12 in the night. Why? Coz I was laughing so hard and trying not to wake my sleeping parents and sister. She did exactly what those twigs on F TV do when they don those see-through slips and assorted rags posing as undies ? she swayed, sashayed and slid towards J A in the last scene when she goes with him to Delhi. Hoooowwwwlll!!! I still have tears in my eyes!!
The cops, the Lama, the lil Lama: These were some examples of people acting or at least making an effort to act. The bad cop person, I don?t know his name, appears in a lot of commercials on air. The guy playing the wise Lama Nobu was pretty alright in his performance not to mention, he appealed a lot more to me than that ham-bo in the lead role. And of course, you don?t need me to tell you how kids make wonderful actors. The ’lil guy was good. Pity, he didn?t have more scenes.
My take
The film had just one thing going for it, according to me. Spiti and its barren-landscapes plus the few intermittent glimpses of life in and around a monastery. Those monks have always been a mystery to me.
I can?t help but feel that the movie made a mockery of the monastic life.
? The movie is about a man who comes to the fold with his daughter after facing some hardship in life. As any monk or nun will tell you, the holy life isn?t a refuge for those who have lost everything and have nowhere to turn to or for people who are afraid to face a life outside the safety of the monastery walls. Its for people who are brave enough to give up what they most desire out of life and devote a life to God and service. Its not a sanctuary from yourself and your inner being, its where you know your flaws and work through them.
? Secondly, if a child is brought up in strict seclusion - no outside influences at all, where did she get ideas of sensuality? There?s no medium that I could see there, and I don?t think any monastery sports TV or Radio and books are probably of the holy kind. So that?s another flaw.
? The movie hangs its crux on the nail of girl-meets-perennially-undressed-hunk. Well, as far as I know even in normal homes where we unholy beings dwell, if there?s a guy around without his shirt on, its probably someone the girl knows very well. Even if we do happen to see a half-dressed someone, we don’t make a grand 20-minute production out of it. I can?t believe a parent as rabid as Mohan Agashe (in this movie) leaves a girl to look after an injured stranger all by herself. Its too corny for words! That?s called manipulating and I can understand if the girl contrives ways to be with the guy, but what father who keeps yelling about chastity all the time leaves his girl alone with a stranger every single day that he?s there? Please!! Who on earth wrote the silly screen play?
Last Word
There are other things in life worth going to hell for. Don?t commit the paap of watching this Paap. Not even once.