Humshakals: Shock lagaa, shock lagaa, shock lagaa

Starring: Saif Ali Khan, Riteish Deshmukh, Ram Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Tamannaah Bhatia, Esha Gupta, Chunky Pandey, Satish Shah

Rated: -1/10

Forgive me people — ladies, gentlemen and, of course, dogs — I apologise for being a fellow human of Sajid Khan. Also, forgive me if I recede into spluttering expletives. It’s just a hapless reaction to this incorrigible director’s brutal rape of both human and canine proprieties through his latest mountHumshakals.

Really, Sajid needs some dog training. He needs to learn — and learn quickly — that you don’t pee on other people’s head from rooftops if you are human, and you certainly don’t do a man’s leg even if you are a dog on heat. And, most importantly, whether human, dog or of any other species, you don’t bring a dwarfed and henna-ed English prince into the picture receding into insane Punjabi and saying that even his first marriage made more sense than the proceedings around him!

But then, as the courts would have ruled, if you were with the movies in Himmatwala, and you still deigned to go to Humshakals, you should be charged not with insanity but with attempt to suicide and spend the rest of your life in a prison manned by, well, none other than Satish Shah, the worshipper of Hitler, Gadaffi and Idi Amin all rolled into one — one who is so over-the-top as Humshakals’ Ward B jailor that he carries a shock-lagaa shock-lagaa shock-lagaa expression throughout the movie.

One doesn’t still know if the Anchor switches will be withdrawing their advert after this on-screen slight, but one thing is for sure. Sajid needs to apply for asylum, out of Bollywood, out of the cinemas — some faraway comedy rehab where he is made to sit with eyes taped wide open, watching the two ‘H’ movies of his recent life again and again till he realises how he has vilified this alphabet through his two titles.

Till then, the industry should devise a self-regulating mechanism, something like parental guidance of Hollywood, wherein directors are not allowed to cross certain lines in the name of genres. The Ram Gopal Vermas and Kaizad Gustavs may run for cover along with the Sajid Khans after this but it is an essential step to save our nation’s cultural integrity.

Yes, in a scenario where it is all but certain that Humshakals might get to go to the Oscars as India’s nomination for ‘meaningful’ foreign cinema, there is urgent need for above mentioned cordons.

Really, this is no campaign against Sajid. The humour in the movie is so puerile that you are embarrassed to be Indian. I mean, was this why the portly Ram Kapoor killed a perfectly middle-aged romance on TV? To desecrate his carefully built persona over the 1,000 episodes? To ditch Priya Ram Kapoor for his own disgusting image in a sarong? To get his fat cells expanded 70mm and emerge not as a romantic hero you so loved despite the fat, but as a twisted advertisement for bariatric surgery not for gross men, but grosser women?

And then there was Saif. The only thing he can thank Sajid for is to have given the tips to Kareena about Saif’s secret desires — turn him over his back, make him raise his hands and legs in the air and tickle him you know where! Sajid shows you how that makes the nawab of Pataudi go all lovey-dovey!

Coming to Riteish, the lad, besides peeing from rooftops in his bid to stay on in Bollywood, also brings out his wife Genelia’s micro mini, waxes his legs and wriggles his boobies helluva lot. Conceded that he turns out to be a good-looking babe, and takes more screen space than the bimbette trio led by an out-of-work Bipasha Basu, but was he here for this?

I don’t know how Saif-Riteish-Ram will face themselves after seeing themselves in Humshakals, but I am done with Sajid, for all times to come. And if this film goes to make even one of those Rs 100 crore, I am suing the nation! 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 22 June, 2014