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Film: "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom"; Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Bobby Deol, Lara Dutta; Director: Shaad Ali; Rating: * Everybody in "Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom" (JBJ), including the director, is an impossible imposter. Abhishek
Bachchan poses as a small-town guy in love with a very poised and sexy
Pakistani-French mademoiselle from Paris. Preity Zinta poses as a
modern-day Cinderella with a very posh British-Indian fiancйe. Bobby
Deol, a nerd-optician poses as a cyber-Superman.
Lara Dutta, god bless her luscious presence, is a tart masquerading as a prima donna.
Director
Shaad Ali poses as an auteur with the wickedly audacious sense of
humour of a comic-book aficionado. While the audience, not to be left
behind, is supposed to pretend that they find the bizarre goings-on
hilarious.
But sorry, this is Bunty without bubbly. The joke,
if any, is on the creator of this musical travesty where the four main
characters behave as though they are so impressed with themselves and
their humorous circumstances that they would rather not have the
audience along for the joyride, thank you.
Nasir
Hussain-meets-Baz Luhrmann in Shaad Ali's weird-and-wacky
fun-and-frolic homage to the spirit of backslapping bonhomie. As in
"Bunty Aur Babli", (we won't count "Saathiya" part of Ali's oeuvre
since it was more Mani Ratnam than Ali), Shaad shows a distinct
affinity to old-fashioned masquerades ... You know those potboilers
from the 1960s where the hero pasted on a beard and pretended to be the
heroine's professor?
JBJ sticks the beard on to its characters and lets them run wild in Europe. Alas, what we see is what we regret.
This
is "Moulin Rouge" with too little meat and too much rouge...The
love-versus-flirtation masquerade gets lost in too much masti,
masquerade and mascara, so that at the end of the chic charade you're
left looking at a film that is epic in design (big extravagant song
sequences) and cartoon-strip in characterisation and content.
What was Shaad Ali thinking of when he designed this celluloid confectionary?
Did
he want to show us how far he could go with his sense of the
outlandish? The screenplay and dialogues (Habib Faizal) are terribly
un-smart. Each character embraces cockiness like a 'laugh' boat in the
simmering but shallow sea of silliness.
"If you don't come back,
I'll be screwed," says Lara in her funniest Pak-French accent. "I won't
let anyone screw you," retorts Abhishek.
Abhishek gets to smooch
both his heroines, one of them under the Eiffel Tower. Sorry, the
adolescent kiss under the Eiffel Tower in "Mera Pehla Pehla Pyar" last
week seemed much more heart-warming.
JBJ is like a long
stand-up joke that goes from bad to worse as the narrative gets longer
and longer. Shadows fall on the frisky flamboyance with ominous
opulence. Not that there are no genuinely funny and bright moments. But
they get drowned in self-congratulation.
Everyone is busy
listening to his or her own words flow out in an incessant downpour of
absurdity. The characters neither connect with one another nor with the
audience even when they talk or sing directly to us.
A large
part of the overall design of this in-house joke is occupied by songs
and dances. All four protagonists dance the dance of the dunce
spiritedly.
Bobby surprisingly steals the frame quite often
specially in the "Kiss of love" sequence. Here's one actor who is
finally getting out of his lazy career.
Abhishek and Preity do
"Bunty Aur Babli" 2, replete with a saat phere in front of the Taj
Mahal. It was funny between Abhishek and Rani the first time. This time
the whole post-interval chunk where Abhishek and Preity imagine
themselves transposed from London to Agra is clear evidence of the
leisurely lather running out of froth.
Abhishek and Preity,
though given the thankless task of making the lines appear funny when
they are often not, lend an illusory energy and effervescence to the
proceedings.
But it's Bobby, with his twin-shaded stud-and-nerd
look and Lara with her luscious tart-to-diva makeover who come as the
surprise element. Really, what's keeping Lara from superstardom? Maybe
wrong choice of films?
In the quest for comedy, Shaad Ali pays
homage to old film songs and films as disparate as "Sholay" and ahem
ahem "Bunty Aur Babli". But "Namaste London" did it with far more with
grace and affection.
By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News Service
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