Saturday, September 20, 2014
Khoobsurat
Royal Bore
Some questions Bollywood (or at least the producers of this film) needs
to answer: if a young woman is supposed to be vivacious, must she be portrayed
as demented? Must royalty always be depicted as a bunch of sourpuss
types? In fact, why must a fairytale Prince Charming be literally a
prince, when privy purses were abolished in 1971? Why is bad behaviour
considered so appealing and dignity something to be shot down? Will Kirron Kher
ever stop playing the loud, crude Punjabi matron? Who the hell told Sonam
Kapoor that it is cute to wear garish costumes? Or that getting drunk and
dancing with the domestic help to a song that goes “Injun ki seeti pe maaro
bum dole” is cool?
This Disney co-produced film is more The Princess Diaries than
Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Khubsoorat, which was a sweet comedy.
It’s not even fair that the old film be dragged into this bubble-gummy mess.
That one was about unreasonable discipline versus enjoyment of life; this Khubsoorat is
commoner versus royalty silliness aimed at a twitty teen audience and
Pakistani actor Fawad Khan’s fan-following.
Mili Chakravarty (Sonam Kapoor) is a physiotherapist, who is hired to
treat a wheelchair bound former royal (Aamir Raza Husain), the kind that still
lives in an antique-littered palace with liveried staff bowing and scraping.
The palace is controlled by Rani-sa (Ratna Pathak Shah), who, frankly, doesn’t
do anything more terrible than expecting table manners and decorum in her home,
but is supposed to be a bad person. The son Vikram Singh Rathore (Fawad Khan)
strides around carrying files and doing “business” – presumably something to do
with hospitality or real estate. He is also engaged to a girl from the same
class and social status.
Mili is excessively casual, calls Vikram “Viku,” constantly bumps into
things, sits with her feet up, dresses badly or inadequately or both, has a
penchant for drinking copious amounts of alcohol and having video chats with
her mother (Kher) whom she calls by her name, Manju, and addresses as “tu.”
(The names are from from Hrishida’s films.) The Rani is not so impressed
by Mili, but everyone else, including Vikram and his kid sister are charmed.
(In maybe the only funny line in the film Mili asks him if he became like that
after being kissed or was he always a frog.)
Except for Fawad Khan who looks nonplussed at all times (which he
probably was), not one over-acting performer seems to have asked the director
just what they were doing and why; if Sonam Kapoor had asked, perhaps she would
have toned down her irritatingly loud character, and Kirron Kher would have
turned down the role.
Labels: Cinemaah
Daawat-e-Ishq
Foodie Romance
Habib Faisal whose best work so far is his directorial debut Do
Dooni Char, and the script for Band Baaja Baaraat, comes
up with an almost tasty dish of a movie, with maybe just a crucial ingredient
missing that prevents it from tasting right.
The heroine of his Daawat-e-Ishq is Gulrez, the always feisty Parineeti Chopra, far more
convincing as a middle-class girl with upwardly mobile ambitions than Sonam
Kapoor in this week’s other release, Khoobsurat. She is studying in
college and working as a shoe salesgirl, because she has a passion for shoes and
dreams of going to the US to learn footwear designing. Her father Abdul Qadir
(Anupam Kher) is an honest court clerk, and eager to get her married before he
retires.
The biggest hitch is his inability to pay the hefty dowry bridegrooms
demand. Here’s one of the film’s problems—it does not take a strong enough
anti-dowry stand. Neither father nor daughter are against dowry per
se, they are against the excessive demands by the grooms’ families.
Fed-up of being rejected, even by the man (Karan Wahi) she falls in love
with, for lack of dowry, Gulrez hatches the scheme of ensnaring a rich groom,
then trapping him in a dowry case and making enough money to get her to
America. And here’s the other big problem, the film advocates misuse
of dowry laws, that are meant to protect hapless victims.
Gulrez pretends to be Sania Habibullah from Dubai, parks herself and her
father in a Lucknow five-star to interview potential suitors. One of
them is Tariq Haider (Aditya Roy Kapur), owner of Lucknow’s most famous kebab
and biryani restaurant. Since he is the richest, he is picked for
the con, but after the three days of courtship that he demands—and this is no
spoiler—Gulrez falls in love with him. He is incredibly generous, considerate,
handsome and smart (why wasn’t he snapped earlier?)
Faisal keeps the tone light and the romance frothy, but there is always
the undercurrent of deception that is unpleasant. If a bright and
talented girl was encouraged to fight dowry in a straightforward manner, and
not resort to crime, the film would have resonated strongly with young women. The
propaganda element is not dulled here, just made unsavoury.
Still, at least Habib Faisal tries to tackle a problem that refuses to go
away, in spite of all the progress Indian woman have made. That, and the lead
pair’s performances, make this one worth a look.
Labels: Cinemaah
