Cinemaah

If you blink, you might miss it, but the makers of Ugly Aur Pagli have actually given credit to Korean film, My Sassy Girl, from which it has been adapted. Though, strangely it also has other writers on board, who are credited with story and screenplay. Kabir (Ranvir Shorey) has failed four times in engineering college, which seems to bother his mother (Bharari Achrekar) more than him. Surprisingly, the mother and a mysterious "Sandhya Aunty" are looking for a bride for this loser. After an evening out with friends, Kabir saves a drunk Kuhu (Malika Sherawat) from falling on to the railway tracks, and then, is somehow saddled with her. Instead of finding out where she lives and calling her folks, he carries her to a hotel, and ends up in jail. (This happens twice, and you wonder why in a city like Mumbai, Kabir can't get a cab, and why Kuhu's supposedly conservative parents don't worry about where their daughter spends her nights). For some reason, Kuhu (a college student, if you can believe that) gets a vice like grip on Kabir and makes him do the most outrageous things, slaps him around and tortures him, all of which he endures without question. Because Mallika Sherawat does not, or cannot, project a vulnerability that would suggest that she is a soul in pain and Kabir wants to help her; neither does she throw off an evil kind sexuality so strong that Kabir would be helplessly in her thrall, these antics simply irritate after a point. Kuhu's comes across as demented and needlessly sadistic, badly in need of a shrink. In the second half of the film, there is a half-hearted explanation for her crazy conduct —if a man were to behave like this, he would be called a pervert and probably jailed for violence, but Kuhu is supposed to be seen as cute and unpredictable. The film is meant to be funny, and it might even send a particularly silly kind of multiplex-haunting teenager into fits of giggles. A few airheaded females might fantasise about boyfriends who obey their every whim. Anyone with half a brain would regret getting into the cinema to see this film. Good points—Ranvir Shorey's earnestness and striving for dignity even in the most idiotic circumstances, a couple of songs and one brief scene in which Sushmita Mukherjee shows what acting is all about – Mallika Sherawat please note.

Labels: Cinemaah