Sunday, September 28, 2008
Eeks This Week!
Rafoo Chakkar
Two guys dress as women so that they can enter a beauty contest and grope girls. They see their father sitting in the audience, one of then trips, the oranges in his dress fly out, the father catches them, and squeezes them in a rage. Can any film recover from an opening like that?
BH Tharun Kumar's film Rafoo Chakkar (he should not have been allowed to use the title of the old hit) is one of the ghastliest films to have come of Bollywood, and this year was looking quite good, till this one (and the week's other release Hari Puttar) drag things down to such abysmal levels. They were better off in the cans, really! Like some of the Hollywood sex farces that this one tries to emulate, Rafoo Chakkar is not even cleverly crass enough to be offensive in a cheeky way, it's just plain awful.
Pappu (Yudhishir Urs) and Munnu (Aslam Khan) are spoit rich brats, whose father (Ananth Mahadevan) decides that getting them married will reform them. So they rob their father and run away. Millie (Nisha Rawal) and Julie (Nauheed Cyrusi) are equally spoilt bimbettes, who also run away to avoid marriage. They run into each other, all get robbed of their riches (though their wardrobes don't suffer) and supposedly get into trouble. Pappu and Munnu attempt a robbery and get caught by a corrupt cop (Tinu Anand). To be able to get out of jail, they have to marry Koena (Mita Vasisht) and Kokila (Archana Puran Singh), who need fake husbands to meet a clause in their father's will.
Koena and Kokila are martial arts expert, 45-year-old sisters, who don't want to marry, and especially not the men who manage their business (Shakti Kapoor-Sadashiv Amrapurkar), hence the make-believe wedding. Now Pappu and Munnu have to put up with a forced marriage and hide the fact from Millie-Julie. They try everything to escape, including attempting to kill the wives, but fail. They keep using foul language to describe the so-called "old women" who actually look much better than the bimbettes in tiny dresses. All they do is pop up wherever the guys are and ask "What are you two doing here?"
Rafoo Chakkar is meant to be insulting to the 45-year-old women (just revealing the biases film men have), but surely end up insulting the bunch of 'youngsters' instead, since they are totally ill-bred, brainless and clueless about anything, not to mention most unattractive and badly dressed. Most of all, of course, it insults the audience. The promos give enough indication of what this film could be like, anyone who actually buys a ticket to see it, deserves what's coming to them.
Hari Puttar - A Comedy Of Terrors
Two brains are better than one, they say, but surely two directors are not needed to make a mess of one film, and that too one as popular as Home Alone. Using the plot from the 1990 Chris Columbus film and obviously ripping off the Harry Potter name, this film is not likely to appeal to anyone, and certainly not to kids who are exposed to much better cinema, and could, if they wished, get the DVD of the far superior original.
Hari (Zain Khan) is the youngest kid of the family, whose father is away on some secret mission, and mother (Sarika) is deluged by guests at her London home. Her sister (Lillete Dubey) has come visiting with her spaced out husband (Jackie Shroff, reduced to an extra) and an army of kids, some her own and some god-knows-whose. Because it's the title of the film Hari is always addressed as Hari Puttar (though his brother is never Rocky Puttar) and like the kid in Home Alone, he left behind when the family goes off on vacation, though Hari has company in the form of his girl cousin Tuk Tuk (Swini Khara).
A weird villain with Ajit's voice, imports two moronic thieves from Mumbai (why?) and send them to the supposedly empty house to steal a computer chip. So Diesel (Saurabh Shukla) and Filter (Vijay Raaz) land up and get a battering at the hands of the two kids. Funny? Not at all? A comedy of terrors? No way! The animated Hari who appears sporadically is better than the real one, who doesn't have the star quality to carry off a film almost by himself— not entirely his fault, the film has zero merit.
A kiddie film that has bleeped out expletives and an item dance at the end (in which the kid seems to have shot up and lost his baby fat) is just not done. And would any 10-year-old today know about Ajit and Gabbar Singh to get the references?
Two guys dress as women so that they can enter a beauty contest and grope girls. They see their father sitting in the audience, one of then trips, the oranges in his dress fly out, the father catches them, and squeezes them in a rage. Can any film recover from an opening like that?
BH Tharun Kumar's film Rafoo Chakkar (he should not have been allowed to use the title of the old hit) is one of the ghastliest films to have come of Bollywood, and this year was looking quite good, till this one (and the week's other release Hari Puttar) drag things down to such abysmal levels. They were better off in the cans, really! Like some of the Hollywood sex farces that this one tries to emulate, Rafoo Chakkar is not even cleverly crass enough to be offensive in a cheeky way, it's just plain awful.
Pappu (Yudhishir Urs) and Munnu (Aslam Khan) are spoit rich brats, whose father (Ananth Mahadevan) decides that getting them married will reform them. So they rob their father and run away. Millie (Nisha Rawal) and Julie (Nauheed Cyrusi) are equally spoilt bimbettes, who also run away to avoid marriage. They run into each other, all get robbed of their riches (though their wardrobes don't suffer) and supposedly get into trouble. Pappu and Munnu attempt a robbery and get caught by a corrupt cop (Tinu Anand). To be able to get out of jail, they have to marry Koena (Mita Vasisht) and Kokila (Archana Puran Singh), who need fake husbands to meet a clause in their father's will.
Koena and Kokila are martial arts expert, 45-year-old sisters, who don't want to marry, and especially not the men who manage their business (Shakti Kapoor-Sadashiv Amrapurkar), hence the make-believe wedding. Now Pappu and Munnu have to put up with a forced marriage and hide the fact from Millie-Julie. They try everything to escape, including attempting to kill the wives, but fail. They keep using foul language to describe the so-called "old women" who actually look much better than the bimbettes in tiny dresses. All they do is pop up wherever the guys are and ask "What are you two doing here?"
Rafoo Chakkar is meant to be insulting to the 45-year-old women (just revealing the biases film men have), but surely end up insulting the bunch of 'youngsters' instead, since they are totally ill-bred, brainless and clueless about anything, not to mention most unattractive and badly dressed. Most of all, of course, it insults the audience. The promos give enough indication of what this film could be like, anyone who actually buys a ticket to see it, deserves what's coming to them.
Hari Puttar - A Comedy Of Terrors
Two brains are better than one, they say, but surely two directors are not needed to make a mess of one film, and that too one as popular as Home Alone. Using the plot from the 1990 Chris Columbus film and obviously ripping off the Harry Potter name, this film is not likely to appeal to anyone, and certainly not to kids who are exposed to much better cinema, and could, if they wished, get the DVD of the far superior original.
Hari (Zain Khan) is the youngest kid of the family, whose father is away on some secret mission, and mother (Sarika) is deluged by guests at her London home. Her sister (Lillete Dubey) has come visiting with her spaced out husband (Jackie Shroff, reduced to an extra) and an army of kids, some her own and some god-knows-whose. Because it's the title of the film Hari is always addressed as Hari Puttar (though his brother is never Rocky Puttar) and like the kid in Home Alone, he left behind when the family goes off on vacation, though Hari has company in the form of his girl cousin Tuk Tuk (Swini Khara).
A weird villain with Ajit's voice, imports two moronic thieves from Mumbai (why?) and send them to the supposedly empty house to steal a computer chip. So Diesel (Saurabh Shukla) and Filter (Vijay Raaz) land up and get a battering at the hands of the two kids. Funny? Not at all? A comedy of terrors? No way! The animated Hari who appears sporadically is better than the real one, who doesn't have the star quality to carry off a film almost by himself— not entirely his fault, the film has zero merit.
A kiddie film that has bleeped out expletives and an item dance at the end (in which the kid seems to have shot up and lost his baby fat) is just not done. And would any 10-year-old today know about Ajit and Gabbar Singh to get the references?
Labels: Cinemaah
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