I was really stark raving mad at myself for taking the day off and spending an obscene amount of hard cash just so that sis dear could have her wish of seeing a goofy Hrithik Roshan and an even goofier clothed Kareena Kapoor. What was worse, the lovably staple Pomeranian of HAHK (Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, for the uninitiated) is now a droopy beagle who is so bad he has to be animated to show emotions!! What a let down.
Let’s take it one at a time...
The Plot
Small-town Sundarnagar (HA!!) boasts of scenic opulence – but ask me where in India this place is and I’ll tell you someone’s got their Geography all mixed up in a fantasy. Daddy dearest is a small-time publisher who has a 2-storey palatial house (I’d rather call it a mansion) complete with snazzy interior décor, an animated popat (parrot, in slang Hindi – it also refers to someone who has been cuckolded) and the aforementioned beagle-turned-Spike (of Tom and Jerry infamy) and the worst animation of the lot – a harsh, shrieky contraption – Himani Shivpuri (in her worst role to date, I believe that fervently). Publisher-who-doesn’t-publish dotes on daughter 2 (the ubiquitous Sanjana) when he is not reading out emails from daughter 1 (Rupa) – ‘pyaari behena’ from America (not me, ask the popat – he keeps calling her that!). At the arrival of such mails, everyone from daddy to daughter 2 to the popat keep shrieking ‘Rooooopa Jeejee ka email aaya hai’ (loosely translated to ‘we have mail from Rupa Jiji) like email’s just been discovered. What? One Mr Barjatya thinks the rest of the nation has no clue as to what email is??? (What was he doing when we were being splashed all over the news as a country with IT prowess? Oh, sorry! Maybe he was animating his popat! And the dog; lets not forget the dog.)
Sanjana prances around a wooden stage crooning ‘Papa ki pari hoon main’ (I’m daddy’s angel) at (hear, hear) Sophiya College (in Bombay Hindi ‘vaat laga diya Sophia’s ka!!’ Loosely translated, it means they sullied the image of the famous Sophia’s in Mumbai). And then they talk to a wheel-chair ridden professorie (Farida Jalal – absolutely, absolutely wasted – she must have decided to sit through the movie rather than suffer standing) about life and poems (ahem, Sanjana composes (!!!) poems). Daddy dearest receives mails from Rupa about a prospective groom for Sanjana, one of the top industrial names in the US of A (doesn’t make a whit of difference if we don’t believe that). What I don’t understand was why Sooraj Barjatya did not hear of a thing called ‘email attachments’ (sorry Premjit, I would rather blame the captain for this flaw), otherwise as I know, people usually exhibit the good sense to send along a pic of the prospective bride or groom when sending across proposals via the Net.
Prem Kumar (AB jr) is coming to Sundarnagar in a few day’s time and Sanjana is supposed to like him, love him and marry him in a hurry! (Love in the Computer age?) 4 days later, a Prem does fly in (Air Sahara? The airlines went international, like Premjit said, but the rest of the country does not know that yet?) Daddy dearest brings him home, Sanjana makes faces at him and at the screen and shrieking mommy tries everything but push her into his lap in an effort to snag a rich hubby for her second daughter. After all the song and dance routines interspersed with some shots of an out-of-control speedboat on some white water somewhere, horses, hay bales and wooden fences around a cherry orchard (tell me again, where in India are we??) and screaming lead teams jumping out of a chopper manned by a maniacally grinning pilot (I felt like screaming myself by this time and this is just 1 hour into this megathon), mommy discovers it’s a case of mistaken identity. Moneybags Prem is not the one who is wooing her daughter at midnight on sandy beaches, it’s his employee. Mommy sniffs at the low pedigree and then decides to do the vamp bit.
The rest of this trauma is spent in untangling all the hair tangled on my head by the countless times I ran my fingers through it, tempted to pull it but stopped at the thought of any more physical pain. Actually, the movie after the intermission tries to pick up some slack but ends up falling flat.
The Acts
Kareena Kapoor delivers again – the usual load of disappointment. I wonder how she managed her act in Refugee? Fluke? Flash in the pan? I don’t wanna waste space on something I intensely dislike (sorry guys, it’s a catty thing). Abhishek Bachchan valiantly tries – to imagine that he is really losing the girl and to act accordingly – it seems even real-life experiences can’t help AB’s baby (he did lose the girl – Karisma Kapoor, remember?) Hrithik Roshan excels – at be the pin-up guy for pimply girls who lack that essential survival instinct – common sense. He bats his eyelashes, pouts and prances even more than the Kapoor tempest! That is saying something and oh, he loses his clothes even more than she does!!
Pankaj Kapur is the only one who tries to act in this mega-headache. He is properly concerned and worried at the right parts and does not come across as someone who forgot his lines and is hamming to save his life – an act that seems to be institutionalised in this Barjatya movie by the rest of the cast. Himani Shivpuri - the less said, the better. She is true to form – over the top (well, the sides and below too if you really wanna be precise) and loud (oh my, how loud – clothes, mannerisms).
Add to that a vapid Tanaaz Currim and simpering idiots like the 4 gigglies who make up Kareena’s choir of ghoulish monstrosities, you have a multi-coloured, multi-layered gargantuan HEADACHE. I don’t remember ever having come out of a cinema hall with a headache before this.
The Technicalities
While the Animation specialists must have charged an arm and a leg (and half of Sooraj Barjatya’s brains, since they are at it) for the effects, the effect on the audience was…(yawn) let’s say, not one child in the whole hall even twittered at the popat or at the dog for that matter. And as far as I know, beagles are not aggressive. What were they thinking?? Methinks the money would have been better spent on lending some morphed expressions to AB jr’s face – that would have made sense, right?
The Editing department took a long break while this movie was on the editing table and when they walked in, they thought ‘Hell, why should we be the only one to suffer – let those people have a look at what happens when editors have a break, the stupid whinging lot, all of them!!’ So that’s what happened.
The Direction was as lost as a lone bed bug in a colony of fire ants (sorry, couldn’t come up with a better metaphor). Sooraj Barjatya had a good idea but he spent 4 years on the screenplay (what was he doing? Writing it by hand and making copies at the same time?) and just see the dud he came up with! The idea of mistaken identities was a good one, provided it happened a bit more believably.
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