Friday, July 23, 2004
Julie
Moral of Deepak Shivdasani’s Julie is that men want women’s bodies anyway, so they might as well profit from prostitution. At the end of it, you can also get to marry the country’s most eligible bachelor!
Difficult to tell what is worse, B-grade directors cashing in on the current ‘sex’ fad with girls like Neha Dhupia willing to bare skin for success? Or such cheap, regressive films being passed off as “feminist”. A little sermon at the end is supposed to justify all the vulgarity that went before!
Miss Julie (no surname) is ditched by her boyfriend (Yash Tonk) after he has been to bed with him. Heartbroken, she comes to Bombay and quickly gets to be a partner of an interior designer Rohan (Sanjay Kapoor)—because, hear this, she suggests that the walls of a Mumbai flat should be blue to give an impression of open sky!
Rohan wants her to go to bed with a client, at which she throws a tantrum calls him a worm and leaves. She walk right into the sympathetic arms of a female pimp, who gives her the sage advise to become a call girl. Miss Julie, who had such severe objections to sex with a man to get an assignment, has no qualms at all about becoming a prostitute.
Since this is not a documentary film, the director Deepak Shivdasani does not go into the problems a call girl might have, from all accounts she is a happy and prosperous hooker. Then a celebrity industrialist (Priyanshu Chatterjee) propose to her and Julie reacts most strangely.
Instead of telling him what she does, she decides to give a sensational interview on a TV talk show, which the whole country watches with bated breath. What could possibly be the justification for embarrassing the man and his family on prime time television? Julie believes she is unworthy of him, but if she told him he would still accept her; on the other hand if she did a kiss-and-tell on TV, he might back off. Ever heard such cock-eyed logic?
Prince Charming flies down to the studio, gives a speech about how we are all such hypocrites that we want (want??) prostitutes in society but not in our homes; we want our daughters to be doctors but not prostitutes. What is not explained is whether Julie will continue to be a prostitute after marriage, since, according to her husband-to-be, it is a profession like any other.
Pity that the high flesh quotient of vacuous and blatantly exploitative films like Julie gets good ‘initials’—even pornography is preferable this, at least its intentions are honest.
Difficult to tell what is worse, B-grade directors cashing in on the current ‘sex’ fad with girls like Neha Dhupia willing to bare skin for success? Or such cheap, regressive films being passed off as “feminist”. A little sermon at the end is supposed to justify all the vulgarity that went before!
Miss Julie (no surname) is ditched by her boyfriend (Yash Tonk) after he has been to bed with him. Heartbroken, she comes to Bombay and quickly gets to be a partner of an interior designer Rohan (Sanjay Kapoor)—because, hear this, she suggests that the walls of a Mumbai flat should be blue to give an impression of open sky!
Rohan wants her to go to bed with a client, at which she throws a tantrum calls him a worm and leaves. She walk right into the sympathetic arms of a female pimp, who gives her the sage advise to become a call girl. Miss Julie, who had such severe objections to sex with a man to get an assignment, has no qualms at all about becoming a prostitute.
Since this is not a documentary film, the director Deepak Shivdasani does not go into the problems a call girl might have, from all accounts she is a happy and prosperous hooker. Then a celebrity industrialist (Priyanshu Chatterjee) propose to her and Julie reacts most strangely.
Instead of telling him what she does, she decides to give a sensational interview on a TV talk show, which the whole country watches with bated breath. What could possibly be the justification for embarrassing the man and his family on prime time television? Julie believes she is unworthy of him, but if she told him he would still accept her; on the other hand if she did a kiss-and-tell on TV, he might back off. Ever heard such cock-eyed logic?
Prince Charming flies down to the studio, gives a speech about how we are all such hypocrites that we want (want??) prostitutes in society but not in our homes; we want our daughters to be doctors but not prostitutes. What is not explained is whether Julie will continue to be a prostitute after marriage, since, according to her husband-to-be, it is a profession like any other.
Pity that the high flesh quotient of vacuous and blatantly exploitative films like Julie gets good ‘initials’—even pornography is preferable this, at least its intentions are honest.
Labels: Cinemaah
Asambhav
If anyone comes out after a show of Asambhav not feeling befuddled, annoyed, bored and headache-y, they deserve a medal for valour.
Rajiv Rai has made some satisfactory entertainers before so such a turkey was not expected from him. Besides, there are so many espionage thrillers to copy, why do a botched-up job of imitation? The biggest laugh, of course, is Rai taking credit for ‘story and original concept’ both of which are conspicuous by their absence.
It takes too much effort to figure out who is who, what is what, and why any of this is happening on screen. There is the kidnapping of the Indian President (Mohan Agashe, deadpan), some 50 million dollars floating around, a gang each of mercenaries, Afghanis, ISI operatives, Indian Embassy staff in Switzerland, plus Swiss and Italians extras and so many others that the screen looks like Kumbh Mela at any given time.
To add to these are the official ‘heroes’—Captain Arya (Arjun Rampal), Sam Hans (Naseeruddin Shah), an Indian club owner in Locarno, Bhargava (Jameel Khan), a RAW guy in Switzerland plus Priyanka Chopra and Dipannaita Sharma, presumably for the glamour.
The President and the dollars keep changing hands, can’t keep track or why or to whom. Priyanka Chopra keeps dropping by to dance, Arjun Rampal to do his commando number and Naseeruddin Shah to just go ‘boom boom.’
Ten minutes into the film and you are cowering under the assault of too many words and too little action. Someone spouts poetry, someone spouts Pashto and everyone In Locarno speaks high-falutin’ Hindi, as if they just studied Sanskrit in Benaras.
Like a lot of bad films, this one’s not even unintentionally funny. It’s just brainless and clunky and absolute torment to sit through. The ‘misuse’ of Naseeruddin Shan and the excessive use of split screen should be enough to debar Rajiv Rai from film direction for a couple of years!
Labels: Cinemaah
