Saturday, May 11, 2013
Go Goa Gone
ZZZ Zombie
Now that film runs have
gotten shorter and shorter, down to just opening weekend, looks like Bollywood
filmmakers have decided to follow Hollywood on the summer trends—mostly silly,
comic films about young men not quite in their senses, having the adventure of
a lifetime. These films are obviously meant for college kids on vacation with
nothing better to do, than cackle through brainless comedies, and consume giant
tubs of overpriced popcorn at multiplexes.
It has been proved by
Hollywood teen flicks, that their target group admires drunkenness and getting
laid, gross out gags and gratuitous profanity. Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK have
to put up with Indian censors—liberal now, but not too much, or Go Goa
Gone might perhaps have been
worse than it is—funny in bits, but dreadful in the end.
The directors seem to have
gone to Goa and Mauritius, picked up every ragged hippie doping on the beach,
dunked them in ketchup and chalk to get those slow-moving, flesh-eating,
blood-sucking, brain-dead zombies. Strangely, their three ‘heroes’
(what’s with the number three fascination in Bollywood?) who seem quite clued
in otherwise to social media, porn, booze, drugs and partying, don’t know what
zombies are! They are, you are told, Hollywood imports, like AIDS. These
are not indigenous ghouls with their feet backwards.
So, the dissolute Luv (Vir
Das) and Hardik (Kunal Khemu), hijack their straitlaced flatmate Bunny (Anand
Tiwari) and go to Goa. There, a random bikini-clad girl called Luna (Pooja Gupta) invites them to a
rave party on a remote island, organised by the Russian Mafia.
The three land up there,
and after a night of debauchery, find themselves trapped on the island, overrun
by zombies-- the result of some new drug that they consumed. The Russian
Mafia, turns out to be Boris, pronounced Barees, a blonde fake (Saif Ali Khan)
and his sidekick, who have figured out that the only way to kill zombies is to
shoot them in the head. “I keel dead peepal,” he declares.
Saif’s role—he is also
co-producer—is some kind of private in-joke. He says lines like, “I’ll be
back,” with an imperceptible wink, and you are supposed to go haha or lol, or
whatever.
Anyway, the plotless film
is about keeping the three idiots plus one on the island for the duration of
the film—which means the boat they came in, floats away, promising to return in
18 hours (the boat doesn’t promise, Barees does!) They are attacked by
zombies, saved, attacked, saved and so on, with time in between, to wisecrack
and hit on the girl.
In Hollywood, zombie movies
by George Romero and Sam Raimi are a B-cult. Check your barf-metre when you
watch the Indian version, the hideousness and gore can get a bit much.
Labels: Cinemaah
Gippi
Tween Travails
If it’s a Karan Johar production, the setting
has to be pretty and picturesque—Shimla if not Switzerland. And it is the most
important thing in the world to be popular in class. A tween version of Student Of The Year, anyone?
There are many classic Ugly Ducking clichés,
in Sonam Nair’s film, as Gippi (Riya Vij), a “fat ugly loser” in the words of
the smart, thin, clever girl Shamira (Jayati Modi) finds her groove. The only
good thing is that she does not turn into a swan, but learns to deal with her
duckling-ness, with some help from friends. And Shamira is not the dumb
bimbette, but the over-achiever who wakes at 5 am every morning and never eats
ice-cream.
It is Hollywood summer teen flick, masalafied for the Indian urban teen,
whose only concern is not grades, not the dreaded ‘boards’ but boys. The
audience is also likely to comprise under-15 girls and cute wannabes.
Gippi lives with her mother (Divya Dutta) and
gay (Karan Johar film, don’t forget)
brother (Arbaz Kadwani) and goes to a school, where she hangs out with
specimens even more pitiable than herself—the bespectacled nerds with bad teeth,
and pig-tailed, no-style best friend (a very likeable Doorva Tripathi). Gippi is not particularly scarred (though her
door sticker proclaims Do Not Disturb: Already Disturbed) by her mother’s obvious sorrow, her father’s
impending marriage to a white woman, or bothered about her weight, poor
academic record or general ineptitude.
But when the chain-smoking, older dreamboat Arjun (Taaha Shah) refuses
to acknowledge her as his girlfriend at the hated Shamira’s party, Gippi’s
dreamy world made up of ice cream and Shammi Kapoor songs, crashes. (How many 14-year-old Shammi Kapoor fans can
you find today?)
Now Gippi has to prove that she is not a loser
and net a Prince Charming on the way...and does she? This is a Hindi movie--is there another
option? Mildly amusing, trying very hard
to be meaningful or real in some way (what’s all that about bras and sanitary
pads!), and staying firmly in cheery Wonder
Years territory, kids on summer break could do worse than giggle with
Gippi.
Labels: Cinemaah
