Friday, December 09, 2011
Ladies vs Ricky Bahl
Women on the Verge
The plot of Maneesh Sharma’s Ladies vs Ricky Bahl is being compared to John Tucker Must Die (2006), but the origins of the character of Ricky Bahl and is many aliases probably owes its origins to Acharya Atre’s 1962 play To Mee Navhech later made into a Hindi film Woh Main Nahin.
A con man pretends to a be a different character as he works out an elaborate charade to con women across the country. It is a point of script convenience that none of the 31 women he cheats go to the police. To Mee Navhech was a satire on marriage and the games people play, Ladies vs Ricky Bahl has no such layers.
It aims to entertain todays ‘timepass’-seeking audience, and maybe it will succeed there. It is funny in parts, the lines (Habib Faisal) are witty, and the performances pretty good. The problem is that the director actually wants the audience to like and forgive the cheat. And that maybe hard to do, even though Ranveer Singh who plays the elusive trickster is portrayed as handsome (debatable) and sexy (chiselled body). Typical Bollywood chauvinism, this turning a villain into a hero. For instance, he never takes advantage of the girls’ gullibility to exploit them—all he wants is money.
Three of his victims—Delhi girl Dimple (Parineeti Chopra), Lucknow’s Saira (Aditi Sharma) and Mumbai’s Raina (Dipannita Sharma)—band together to take revenge and get their money back. Their harebrained plan is to plant the chirpy salesgirl Ishika (Anushka Sharma) as an heiress and try to con the conman.
Parineeti Chopra steals the show as the loud and querulous Dimple who feels worse about losing a handsome boyfriend than her father’s money. She has the sparkle that Anushka Sharma had in the director’s Band Baaja Baraat, and seems to have lost on the way. Ranveer Singh turns on the charm, and carries off the role as if it was written specially for him.
The way Ricky cheats the girls is too easy—everything simply goes according to plan. How Raina traces Ricky to Goa is unlikely too, and the trap they lay for him, incredibly silly. That’s why the film just never gets wickedly humorous, or achieves a sense of challenge and risk; neither does it get sympathy for the girls, so the viewer is never absorbed in the story completely. People this foolish deserve to be parted with their money—like the idiots who fall for get-rich-quick ponzi schemes. Could have done with better music too!
Labels: Cinemaah
Lanka
Another Ravan
The setting is small town Uttar Pradesh, for once not a fictional town, but a real one-- Bijnor. It’s the kind of place where machismo rules and women cower; violence and corruption is a part of everyday life. Nothing seems to move, yet there is always tension seething below the surface. This is what Maqbool Khan tries to capture in his Lanka, with limited success.
The inspiration is Vibhishan from the Ramayan, Raavan’s brother who went over to the other side, giving rise to the saying Ghar ka bhedi Lanka dhaaye. But in effect, the film is more like Koyla without the melodrama and Omkara without ever reaching that Shakespearean scale of drama, passion or tragedy. It skims tiredly over the surface, as if aware that it can spring no surprises, as cops, politicians, dons and their henchmen go on killing sprees. The only one who could have made a difference is the woman, who instigates and inspires, but she is the weakest element of the story.
Jaswant Sisodia (Manoj Bajpayee) or Bhaisaheb rules the town with a feudal firmness. He has also forced a local doctor Anju (Tia Bajpai) into a kind of captivity, to which she and her family helplessly succumb. His logic is that if he doesn’t protect her, the rest of the town will tear her apart. This is a major flaw in the script—Anju is a doctor, her family is not poor or helpless; if they couldn’t get the cops to help them, she could at least escape Bhaisaheb’s clutches by leaving the place.
She appeals to one of Bhaisaheb’s aides (Arjan Bajwa) for help, but his loyalty make him passive. The character is made to stand around staring expressionlessly, which doesn’t exactly convey his inner dilemma. A cop (Manish Chaudhary) hovers trying to find someone to testify against Bhaisaheb, and in another big flaw of the film, the cops do nothing to protect the witnesses in such an important case.
So the film plods on to a predictable end, while its slow pace forces the audience to keep waiting for something to happen and by the time the ‘Vibhishan’ moves you are past caring. Manoj Bajpayee is the only good actor among the lot, so the difference in the level of performance is glaring.
Labels: Cinemaah
