The Dead Men are back in D(h)oom 2. This time one of the dead men ‘John Abraham’ whose face is stiffer than a stick is replaced by a Dead Greek God – ‘Hrithik Roshan’ who professionally jumps up from a gutter, down from a mountain and moves his legs and hands to the left and right and vice versa in perfectly coordinated fashion.
This is YRF’s answer to increasingly Hollywoodized Indian youth. They have realized the compelling need to create a brand of movies with fast bikes, jazzy action, great bodies and youthful music! The attempt is decent as the stakes are high. It worked like a magic. The story is already known. So, let me concentrate on my experience, musings, discoveries and conclusions.
*Class act
*Abhishek meets Bipasha in the police enquiry room: Watch the brilliant method of non-acting followed by Abhishek and Bipasha. He vaguely stands there with an unanimated face and tunelessly reads out the lines written somewhere out of reach for the camera, so does Bipasha.
It sounded exactly like the recorded voice of an Interactive Voice Response(IVR) System which does not betray even a stint of emotion. Guess, Bips and AB baby have never ever heard two people speak before. They can earn better money by outsourcing their voices for IVR based information sharing.
In the same scene, Uday Chopra stands stunned apparently shocked by the brilliant display of extraordinary ability to under perform! Since there is no Kajol around to re-introduce to the audience the meaning of acting, they escape.
*Splendid Discoveries
*For some reason Abhishek gets irritated whenever Uday speaks. When he looks at Uday with that solemn expression of disgust, his lips curl; he snarls and over all his face becomes significantly disgusting. Dunno why he needs to do that. But, with that expression I discovered Abhishek can express that one expression perfectly.
I discovered that Hindi is not the natural language of Bips Think she speaks a mixture of Bengali, Inglish and Hinglish. She doesn’t know to modulate her voice while speaking in Hindi. My tip to her is to practice Hindi or start acting in English movies. Spare my head from headache please.
I discovered that the problem with Aishwarya is that she is over-aware of her own beauty. For starters she knows that she is beautiful. Then, those years modeling including strenuous hours spent before the mirror, had provided her with ample chances to examine and re-examine her best features. Now, she is well acquainted with her own face. Hence, she possesses an uncanny knowledge about when to use which expression in that list of expressions which will make her appear even more beautiful.
I also discovered that Hrithik makes excellent guttural noises. Guess there is a leak in his wind pipe that a little bit of air rushes out of his mouth whenever he speaks, there by creating a whoosh sound. May be, that is why there is a ‘Woofer’ effect background music whenever he walks by.
*Drop dead Gorgeous - Pencil thin Ash and Greek God Hrithik!
*Ash as always looks stunningly beautiful. I remember a comment made by a reputed Hollywood critic that Ash is much of a classic beauty that she cannot become a sexy vamp. Guess that hurt her so much that she has made a desperate attempt to be labeled sexy. Regarding her performance, she tried. She definitely tried. And that’s what I like about her. She always tries. She, at least tries. She dances like a rubber robot moving to the music with decimal point precision. Perfect! Too Perfect!
Now about the Greek God Hrithik: Never knew that Greek Gods had oblong rugged faces, abnormally long noses, thin pink lips, Green eyes and huge bumpy muscles(called Abs) all over. Sorry, I prefer a sensitive looking boy-next-door. With respect to performance, Hrithik no doubt is going the Aamir Khan way. This is not one of those who will be the next who type of predictions. I do not intend to say Hrithik is the next Aamir. Unlike Aamir Khan, Hrithik would not become the poster boy of Neo-Indian acting. I meant and only meant the increasingly popular short-cut to fame, ‘The Get-up hype’. Atta boy! He learnt the trick.
*Saving Grace
*Uday Chopra. Thankfully that guy is not as confident as Abhishek to give a non-performance(and still manage to survive in Bollywood) and he is not as much a compulsive perfectionist as Hrithik to give a robotically precise performance. So he made an attempt to act. He tried comedy. It did appear like comedy.
*Shock Treatment
*I watched the movie in a normal theatre(not one of those swanky, costly multiplexes). I had the chance to meet a bunch of ‘Common men’ who are determined to keep the nation in deepest pit. They whistled and whistled every time the lead stars dressed in skimpiest possible costumes unnecessarily cat-walked from here to there.
It was a terrible shock treatment. I was forced to realize the shocking truth about how much some people love all that meaningless sheen and gloss. One thing that gladdened me is that none of them seemed to like Abhishek. For once I felt sorry for Abhishek. Poor guy, he unknowingly landed in a movie which in spite of individual efforts, could serve only to enhance Hrithik’s star appeal.
*Best of it
*a) Jazzy Action b) Decent Professional Touch c) Perfected stars d) Limited Melodrama
*Worst of it
*a) Abhishek Bachchan b) Bipasha Basu c) Several Goof ups and inanities
*Conclusion
*If you watch it with ‘First Time in Hindi cinema’ kinda positivism, and if you love Hrithik’s Greek God looks, you’ll love this.