Saturday, March 29, 2014
O Teri
Dumb As Can Be
They did it again—messed with a
classic. Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron has
grown into a cult comedy, and any filmmaker with half a brain should know
better than to attempt to copy it.
And copy he does, this Umesh Bist, without
even giving credit to the original, and because he doesn’t have the ability to
tell the difference between satire and farce, he turns the gold of JBDY into O
Teri dross.
A film that has a song with lyrics going You’ve
Got Me Going Crazy With Your Butt Patlo, in which scantily clad dancers
shake their derrieres into the camera; a film in which one of the
protagonists ogles and almost gropes his female boss gets past the censors.
Two idiot TV reporters called PP (Pulkit
Samrat) and AIDS (Bilal Amrohi) are told by their boss Monsoon (Sarah Jane
Dias) to get a real scoop, so they run about trying to uncover a scam, while
two corrupt politicians (Anupam Kher, Vijay Raaz) try to trump each other to
get a lucrative contract for their cohort. A PR lady (Mandira Bedi, obviously
inspired by the real life character involved in the telecom scam) “manages the
media” as a foot bridge falls and a CD with evidence goes missing.
An inspector gets killed, and like in the
original, the two reporters keep finding and losing the corpse, not realising
that Monsoon is in cahoots with the corrupt politicians.
Wit and pace makes way for loud slapstick and
vulgarity, plus too many needless and tuneless songs. Not one actor
can match up to line-up of talent in JBDY --like Naseeruddin Shah,
Ravi Baswani, Om Puri, Pankaj Kapoor, Bhakti Barve and Satish Shah (who played
the corpse).
As elections draw closer and the political
arena is ripe for satire, what the audience gets is this limp rag of a
movie. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro is still fresh, relevant and very,
very funny. Go buy a DVD.
Labels: Cinemaah
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