Saturday, September 21, 2013
Phata Poster Nikhla Hero
Recycling
Station
Rajkumar
Santoshi made his reputation with Sunny Deol’s actioners, but displayed comic
flair with the now cult-ish Andaz
Apna Apna and the more recent Ajab Prem Ki Gajab Kahani, the poster of which tears to eject the
hero of this lame comedy-melodrama, Vishwas Rao (Shahid Kapoor).
Phata Poster Nikhla Hero shows all signs of schizophrenic direction. Some
light touches and then being dragged back to eighties Bollywood melodrama with
the ‘Maaaaaa’ taking centrestage in the hero’s life. Back then, Nirupa Roy stitched
clothes to raise her beloved son, Savitri (Padmini Kolhapure) drives an
auto-rickshaw and makes the son promise he will be an honest police inspector. Then and now, mother lands up in hospital and lakhs are needed for an
operation. Sigh!
Vishwas
want to be a film hero. A bit of Munnabhai here—he wears a cop’s uniform for a
photoshoot, the ditzy heroine Kajal (Ileana D’Cruz) mistakes him for a real
inspector, his photo appears in the paper, mother sees it and lands up to
visit, he has to keep up the police inspector pretence and beat up real goondas. So far so tolerable,
Shahid Kapoor dutifully does the action-emotion-comedy pieces, then the film
tries to do old-style Bollywood with cartoonish villains (Saurabh Shukla-Mukesh
Tiwari), clueless commissioner (Darshan Jariwala), plots to destroy Mumbai with
“bio chemical bomb” (hah!), and all the hungama that goes with
it—kidnapping, impersonation, convoluted schemes.
Santoshi
tries hard to grab the comic flavour of his own and other Bollywood films, but
it’s hard to parody absurdity. To do it well, the insouciance of Salman
Khan is needed; he appears in one scene, sends up himself and shows an
overwrought Shahid Kapoor how comedy ought to handled—without a care.
Regular
film watchers would be able to tell which plot point comes from which old film;
maybe today’s college kid audience would find it all novel and funny. But
a “Maaaa” song? Nah! That time is definitely past.
Labels: Cinemaah
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