Main, Meri patni aur woh : Missing greatness by a mile

Main, Meri Patni aur Woh starts with a bang. And ends with a whimper ....... The redeeming grace is Rajpal Yadav. He once again proves that he is the best actor around AND one of the very few actors around who can speak Hindi. A welcome relief from movies with moony-faced, chocolate hero making dreamy faces and saying stupid and strangely mixed language monologues like "Main tumhare liye exist karta hoon".

The rest of the movie disappoints though. What starts out (intentionally or not) to be a satire and a commentary on the insecurities of the Indian male degenerates into a confused tale of a man who is actually a wimp.

The movie plot is simple enough : Mithilesh (Rajpal Yadav) holds on to his bachelorhood as long as he can. He finally breaks down and decides to tie the knot when he meets Veena (Rituparna Sengupta), a ravishing beauty. He is impressed with her as a person and she is impressed with his simplicity and shy demeanor. They get married and things start getting complicated because of Mithilesh's suspicious nature (quite justified considering that he has married a beautiful woman). He believes that everyone is out to have a go at his wife. That includes his friend Salim (Varun Badola), her friend Akash (Kay Kay Menon), the doodhwala, the sabjiwala ......

The movie starts quite good with very funny sequences and humorous interludes. The emotional mom, the intelligent and caustic uncle (played excellently by Vinod Nagpal (damn, I still can't stop thinking of him as basesar-ram !!)), the geeky librarian who lands a real beauty..... and sundry other characters are introduced, ready to play out their parts and their stereotypes. But then, unnecessary time is wasted with stupid, meaningless songs, too many sequences of Mithilesh acting suspicious and some sequences which are ... pointless (case in point - a loooong chat sequence on the terrace with Mithilesh and Akash)

After the second half one almost begs for the movie to get a certain direction. Astonishing sequences follow -reminiscent of 80s DD soap operas where snatches of conversation are heard and the characters, in a dumb, slow-moving dance, make magical inferences , re-inforcing what they actually want to hear. An amazing sequence in the movie -> Mithilesh sees Veena come out of his uncle's office. Mithilesh goes in, hears snatches of a conversation where his uncle is discussing a divorce on the phone .... and concludes that he is discussing his (Mithilesh's) divorce !! "You F*&k, why don't you just ask him, he is your goddamn uncle !!" I screamed at the TV. I agree that the buildup to this scenario is there. Enough sequences in the movie are designed to plant a suspicion in Mithilesh's mind. Maybe Mithilesh is even justified in thinking that his wife is contemplating divorce. But the way Mithilesh pussyfoots around the idea of a confrontation makes the viewer lose all respect for him.

The interminably long restaurant sequence at the end where Mithilesh's circumlocutory conversation had my fists all balled up. A sensitive hero is fine ..... but this guy is just plain gay! Maybe such a weak guy really does not deserve this girl. The inevitable and predictable ending has Mithilesh weeping, tears in his eyes ... and ours too, in relief. Sigh, such a waste .....

Towel bandobast

The usual intern writers are queuing up at major websites to review the two biggest movies of the year "Saawariya" and "Om Shanti Om" . From what we are told by the Bollywood publicity machines, they are playing to "packed" audiences.

Courtesy of these morons, comes this awesome WTF moment. Sample this review in the Times of India ... which is a bit decent except for this one line.

.... The boy can dance, emote and win your heart, the Rishi Kapoor way. The boy has bright future (sic) with the girls already wowing his butt-flashing towel bandobast .....

The butt-flashing part makes sense because, from what I know, this guy has decided to provide some eye candy for the gay guys by flashing his tucchus (appropriately hidden by a towel) but WTF is a "butt-flashing towel bandobast" ? Is "bandobast" some slang term that Nikhat Kazmi pulled out of his/her ass .....

Salam-e-Ishq

Salam-e-Ishq tries to copy "Love Actually" and fails badly ..... It's sad , a pretty decent movie by Bollywood standards and f-ed up because Salman Khan f*&in had to be in there somewhere. Priyanka Chopra sucks ass ... not totally her fault because of a malignant disease that causes Bollywood directors/producers to assume that a lady with a nice ass can act too. Govinda is top dollar and steals the show easily.

All things Amitabh

Continuing with the new fascination of all things Amitabh is the new headline in the Indian Express. You would think it is another article by some BA (Arts) intern that Indian Express regularly hires to fulfill its daily quota on Amitabh news. But it is an article about a book -Bollywood, A History by Mihir Bose.

Now, inspite of the assholes in the media, who will probably lead us to believe that nobody exists in Bollywood except the Bachhans (and , in addition, maybe His Supreme Assholeness Sriyut Salman Khan), Bollywood did have a rich history before it descended into the garish chutiyagiri that we see these days. And so , it happens the real stars of the book (you know "ordinary people" like Dadasaheb Phalke, Salunkhe, KL Saigal) have to wait till the latter part of the article to be condescendingly mentioned.

Note that in the article, the webprint for the greats of yesteryears put together is approximately equal to that dedicated to Mr. Bacchan.

Utter stupidity reigns, I tell you ......

Guru - a missed opportunity

Guru is (supposedly) the life story about Dhirubhai. And you will be convinced about it if you can believe that Dhirubhai (and Kokilaben for that matter) was capable of doing a mean dance step. Actually, I am quite sure that they were quite incapable of it and hence the fact that “Guru” is asininity presented on film.

First of all, the movie does not have the balls to present Guru (Dhirubhai) as the master manipulator that he was. The various ways that he screwed the system are mentioned only in passing and in ways that are more accusatory (even laudatory at times) than based in fact. Eg. The way in which Dhirubhai scammed the government by importing empty boxes and claiming excise exemption is mentioned by a reporter while trying to shoot a false sequence implicating Guru and even there it is interjected by a laudatory line (“Kudos to Gurubhai for making money off of empty boxes”) by a disabled Meenu (Vidya Balan).

Dhirubhai was born to run, he did not know the meaning of “No” and was probably the most arrogant of all businessmen. Bill Clinton was once rumored to have spent 45 minutes talking with him but Dhirubhai himself said that he was willing to fall at the feet of the lowliest government servant if he could get his work done. To truthfully present such a complex character would have taken, at the very least, a dedicated study of the man himself and at least a modicum of honesty to present things as they were. Neither was possible here because mani Ratnam did not even attempt to involve the Ambanis (probably he knew he was making a bollywood movie not a biographical) and ... well, good luck trying to find honesty in our movies regarding powerful people.

Anyways, this would have meant showing Guru as a person who is so obsessed with his goals that he may as well be mad – The movie pretty much kills this by unnecessarily wasting time making Guru dance to forgettable tunes and try to steal kisses from Aishwarya Rai as they share a rented room with her brother.

Can a hero be portrayed as ruthless and still be good? Probably in an Ayn Rand novel. Not in “Guru”. Guru only tersely remarks “The more they try to stop us, the faster we will go”. Even the effort to silence a newspaper owner is pinned on one of his managers. The real Dhirubhai, as everybody know, was much less forgiving towards his enemies and much more proactive in crushing them.

All in all, the movie justly deserved its “neither-a-flop-nor-a-hit” status in spite of great acting by Abhishek and Mithun-da. A movie, which does not have the balls to be honest, deserves a kick in the ass.