Cinemaah

Yes They Can

More often than not, our cinema exists in its own alternative reality; if something in the world can be turned into a saleable element (like terrorism) then it will be picked up, otherwise the real world seldom intrudes into the reel world.

That’s why it is pleasantly surprising to see a film that has global recession as a theme. What’s more, it makes no greed-is-bad dire predictions, but turns it into a comedy.  If there are people in the audience who don’t know what the fuss about global recession is all about, and how it impacts the common citizen in mofussil India, Subhash Kapoor’s Phas Gaye Re Obama (he makes an appearance with his “Yes We Can” speech on TV)  tells them the bitter truth, rolled into a bundle of laughs. 

In the US,  Om Shastri (Rajat Kapoor) is badly hit by the financial meltdown.  His business is low, his loans unpaid, the bank threatens to snatch his home. The only way out is to sell his ancestral haveli in Uttar Pradesh.

He lands up there, without money even for a return ticket. And conditions are so bad in his home town, that his extended family is parked in the haveli,  the real estate agent is sceptical about selling in a recessionary market, his wife in the US is hysterical, and then Om gets kidnapped.

The bunch of decrepit gangsters who abduct him, are so badly hit—people can’t afford to pay ransom for their kidnapped relatives—that they have no bullets in their guns and no petrol for their jeeps.  Kidnapping an NRI is their dream of wealth and escape from the indignity of their low life existence.
You actually feel sorry for the luckless Bhaisaheb (Sanjay Mishra), the ambitious Ani (Manu Rishi) and their cohorts, who think they have hit the jackpot but end up with a victim worse off than they are.  Desperation has made Om Shastri shrewd, and he negotiates a series of ‘deals’ through a bigger gangster, to a dacoit (Neha Dhupia) to the kingpin, a crooked politician (Amole Gupte).

It would be spoiler to reveal how he does it, but is all actually ends well, and the audience gets one hell of a funny ride, even though a large-ish tract of it is repetitive.  The lines are witty, Sanjay Mishra and Manu Rishi are amazingly good, and you don’t really mind that there are no stars, no lavish production values… nothing that would tempt audiences to buy tickets.  But unless they are willing to take a chance, they are going to miss a very funny film.