Saturday, July 04, 2009
K I
Kambakkht Ishq
They have the money to sign on Hollywood stars and shoot in the US and Italy; they have the money to blow up on spectacular action sequences and designer wardrobes for the cast; they have the resources to splurge on marketing and promotion. But they don’ have the brains to get a fresh script or to use that money to create a memorable viewing experience.
All the extravagance is just a cover for totally stupid and regressive content, right out of the fifties—like a five-star hotel garnishing leftovers with caviar. It may look good, but it still stinks!
Sabbir Khan’s Kambakkht Ishq is supposed to be about the battle of the sexes—but it is a tirade against women, all of whom in this film are sorely lacking in brains or self-respect. The ‘hero’ Viraj (Akshay Kumar), a Hollywood stuntman, is such a stud, that he is constantly being chased by women, as he beds them and then flings them out of his house, his car, drives over one who has been running after him, and abandons a Hollywood siren (Denise Richards as herself) who wants to make “golden babies” with him, at the alter, without a backward glance. And then, he claims to hate women and marriage!
The man-hating ‘heroine’ Simrita (Kareena Kapoor) models to pay for medical school, and is such a bimbette that she performs surgery with a dangling watch on her wrist and leaves a part of it inside the patient, who happens to be Viraj. The musical ringing of the watch from Viraj’s stomach provides a running gag. Then, to get him back to the hospital and extract the watch, Simrita tries to drug him, dope him, and in desperation, seduce him with a dizzy (she takes the spiked glass meant for him) strip tease, but he—the Punjab ka puttar—doesn’t touch the Indian girl, because she is the kind who can be taken home to mother. Worse, she is a surgeon, but doesn’t realize that the act hasn’t really taken place.
While this moronic and tasteless tale (borrowed from the Kamal Haasan film Pammal K Sammandam by four scriptwriters!) is unfolding, Viraj and Simrita curse and swear at each other, he has a whole ‘eve-teasing’ number in Italy, as she runs about, dressed in increasingly skimpy clothing. She tries to break up the marriage of her equally scatty friend Kamini (Amrita Arora) to Viraj’s buddy Lucky (Aftab Shivdasani), just because she does not believe in marriage. Poor Kamini, constantly referred to as “Kameeni” suffers the indignity of having a man fart in her face as her wedding degenerates into pie-throwing, bottle-breaking mayhem.
Is this funny? No. Thrilling? No. Entertaining? Hardly. Meaningful? Not by a very long shot. In short, a total waste of time and money. Akshay Kumar should stop playing such creepy guys, and Kareena Kapoor deserves better than to be a skinny clotheshorse. And both of them seem to be inordinately proud of this piece of junk. This is the kind of cinema with which ‘Bollywood’ wants to woo the world? This is the kind of film that gets a huge opening? Depressing thought!
They have the money to sign on Hollywood stars and shoot in the US and Italy; they have the money to blow up on spectacular action sequences and designer wardrobes for the cast; they have the resources to splurge on marketing and promotion. But they don’ have the brains to get a fresh script or to use that money to create a memorable viewing experience.
All the extravagance is just a cover for totally stupid and regressive content, right out of the fifties—like a five-star hotel garnishing leftovers with caviar. It may look good, but it still stinks!
Sabbir Khan’s Kambakkht Ishq is supposed to be about the battle of the sexes—but it is a tirade against women, all of whom in this film are sorely lacking in brains or self-respect. The ‘hero’ Viraj (Akshay Kumar), a Hollywood stuntman, is such a stud, that he is constantly being chased by women, as he beds them and then flings them out of his house, his car, drives over one who has been running after him, and abandons a Hollywood siren (Denise Richards as herself) who wants to make “golden babies” with him, at the alter, without a backward glance. And then, he claims to hate women and marriage!
The man-hating ‘heroine’ Simrita (Kareena Kapoor) models to pay for medical school, and is such a bimbette that she performs surgery with a dangling watch on her wrist and leaves a part of it inside the patient, who happens to be Viraj. The musical ringing of the watch from Viraj’s stomach provides a running gag. Then, to get him back to the hospital and extract the watch, Simrita tries to drug him, dope him, and in desperation, seduce him with a dizzy (she takes the spiked glass meant for him) strip tease, but he—the Punjab ka puttar—doesn’t touch the Indian girl, because she is the kind who can be taken home to mother. Worse, she is a surgeon, but doesn’t realize that the act hasn’t really taken place.
While this moronic and tasteless tale (borrowed from the Kamal Haasan film Pammal K Sammandam by four scriptwriters!) is unfolding, Viraj and Simrita curse and swear at each other, he has a whole ‘eve-teasing’ number in Italy, as she runs about, dressed in increasingly skimpy clothing. She tries to break up the marriage of her equally scatty friend Kamini (Amrita Arora) to Viraj’s buddy Lucky (Aftab Shivdasani), just because she does not believe in marriage. Poor Kamini, constantly referred to as “Kameeni” suffers the indignity of having a man fart in her face as her wedding degenerates into pie-throwing, bottle-breaking mayhem.
Is this funny? No. Thrilling? No. Entertaining? Hardly. Meaningful? Not by a very long shot. In short, a total waste of time and money. Akshay Kumar should stop playing such creepy guys, and Kareena Kapoor deserves better than to be a skinny clotheshorse. And both of them seem to be inordinately proud of this piece of junk. This is the kind of cinema with which ‘Bollywood’ wants to woo the world? This is the kind of film that gets a huge opening? Depressing thought!
Labels: Cinemaah
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