Bol Bachchan: When Shetty gets woozy, don’t get choosy

Bol Bachchan
Starring: Ajay Devgn, Abhishek Bachchan, Asrani, Asin, Prachi Desai & Krushna
At: Delite & others
Rated: 6/10
When Rohit Shetty gets woozy, don’t get choosy. Ones with a stiff upper lip can go take a walk in Hyde Park. The others, like you and me who don’t mind the rip-roaring mindlessness, are going for a laughathon with the totally unapologetic lot whose, well, headgear is gone to the sides (ata maajhi satkeli)!
This being a Rohit Shetty film, there are no pretensions of serious, even sane cinema, or for that matter even a single moment of sanity. In fact, the little bit of sentimentality that comes in unannounced turns out to be quite an unwelcome intrusion. Because in Ranakpur, there is no time or space for anything serious.
Even honesty and dislike for falsities come with a flip side. And that’s where you have a rollicking Ajay Devgn (don’t miss his elaborate tattoo peepshow from the chest) who talks English, walks English and makes English a very funny language!
Most of the film and its hilarity are pillared on Devgn’s English-raping translations of Hindi adages. Only Shetty has the potential of turning bizarre into absurd and yet catching your imagination.
With Shetty, as we all know by now, everything lies in a heightened zone of ridiculous hypersensitivity. So, the film begins with a medley of colours (one should organise spot-which-colour-is-not-there-in-the opening-shot quiz) with Amitabh Bachchan doing things of yore. It churns your insides — this cacophony of colours (imagine Amitabh in a polyester shocking pinkshervani!) but at least you know what to expect from the rest of the two hours.
The rollercoaster through unabashed lunacy gets to your funny bone rather than your nerves and that’s why Shetty is uncontrollable, incorrigible Shetty. Why would anyone with even a modicum of brains attempt such a crazy movie is a question only Shetty is equipped to answer but this one does score and that’s what matters.
Besides Devgn being a co-producer, there are some other new things in the film — like Abhishek Bachchan who flowers in Shetty’s rambunctious mount after a series of duds. Forced to become Abhishek Bachchan instead of Abbas to save a Rs 35k job, the junior Bachchan lends a swagger to the film in a double role. His medley of dances as a gay other brother, starting off with Dil Dola Re, was the film’s showstopper if, that is, you can get over the well-punctuated English translations by Devgn.
Shetty also is brave enough to give adequate footage to his Comedy Circus connections in comedian Krushna and Archana Puran Singh. Though Krushna fails to tickle you too much despite being in almost every other frame, Archana in a double role of Zohra Bai and Abhishek’smataji, rocks.
Really Shetty, by having the gumption to make such an utterly brain-challenged film, yourchhaati aur bhi chaudi ho gayi hai — your chest has become blouse. So get set to roll in laughter bubbling in a cauldron of car-shattering, muscle-rippling, mindboggling dose of buffoonery. And if you do deign to protest, Devgn is there to make you remember Milk No 6 — chhati ka doodh,and to tell you that your brother-in-law will die Tommy’s death — saale ko kutte ki maut maarunga!
Source: The Sunday Pioneer,  8 July, 2012

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nil Battey Sannata: Endearing, real and simple

Cast :  Swara Bhaskar, Ratna Pathak Shah, Pankaj Tripathi Rated :  8/10 Nil Battey Sannata is a confusing title but an endearing, simple, gentle and real film. Besides, the title confuses only till Swara Bhaskar as Chanda explains it to you with endearing simplicity much ahead in the movie. It literally means zero understanding and zero marks — in her and her daughter’s case, in Mathematics. But this one is not just about the mind-boggling numbers that have become the bane of students and parents alike. It is about the maths, algebra and geometry of life itself — an equation that director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari puts on the blackboard in an engaging, simplified format. Nil Battey Sannata  is a film sitting on a very real firmament, a very you-and-me story about the in-your-face problems that everyone encounters. In here, it is about misrani  (cook) Chanda and her full of life but anti-studies daughter Apeksha Sahay’s daily churn. Thankfully, it is not the drudg...
Read more

Criminal: Arresting memory transplant

Cast : Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds, Jordi Mollà Rated : 6/10 Big names, big imagination and good execution make this memory transplant thriller a good one to be with, especially with Kevin Costner doing a pretty good job with a character he has never played – that of an emotionless, incarcerated, brutal killer in whose brain a do-good, wife and daughter loving dead CIA’s agent’s (Ryan Reynolds) remembrances are inserted for a trail that is important for the organisation. The underdone role has been handled well by Costner, much like a successful experiment. As he gets acquainted with emotions of love, caring and affection that have been alien to him, he starts turning from a monster to a human being but the director does well to not completely erase his original personality. So, there is a mix and match, there is brutal violence as also gentle gestures, like battering a man to death in a car hijack and saving a hair brush for the little one. The f...
Read more

Mission impossible: Rogue nation -- Ethan Hunt back with bang

Staring:  Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Jeremy Reyner & Rebecca Ferguson Rated : 8/10 Last time Ethan Hunt had your jaw dropping and you praying fervently for his life when mounted the sky scraping Burj Khalifa in Dubai to dangle from dizzying heights. This time, he does the same — and in all earnestness — when he dangles from the outer door of a military aircraft carrying nerve gas all those 20,000 feet high swaying with terrifying winds, hanging on to dear life literally with his finger nails. This is the fifth time since 1996 that Tom Cruise, as the inscrutable Ethan Hunt, has kept his promise of entertaining his loyal viewers with thrills, fills, kills and a little bit of unsaid romance — of course with a fellow agent. Rogue Nation was initially being touted as the last of the Mission Impossible series but seeing the youthfulness of Hunt, and probably the meticulously ‘kept-high’ entertainment value that this James-Bond lookalike series always delivers, C...
Read more