Friday, January 09, 2015
Tevar
Bad Attitude
If it’s Uttar Pradesh, it must be wicked politicians, gangsters, corrupt cops, armed hooligans running around the streets and killing people in broad daylight.
The only thing ‘different’ about Amit Ravindernath Sharma’s Tevar is that it is set in Agra, and has the Taj Mahal as a looming presence behind all the mayhem that goes in the city. Otherwise, it’s the usual damsel in distress, hero as ‘Superman, Salman Ka Fan’ coming to her rescue—the kind of thing that should have been left behind in the times when Sunil Shetty used to do such films by the dozen. Why would anyone want to remake an outdated Telugu 2003 film like Okkadu, and why would a young actor like Arjun Kapoor even think it would look good on his filmography? Why on earth would Sonakshi Sinha relentlessly pick such bovine parts?
Mathura gangster Gajendra (Manoj Bajpai) falls in love at first glance with dancing Radhika (Sinha) and wants to marry her. The ‘hero’, Ghanshyam aka Pintoo (Kapoor) Agra’s kabaddi champ and thrasher of goondas who harass girls, mechanically pulls her out of Gajendra’s clutches, but takes all the rest of the film’s endless running time to figure out that he loves her—that too with much prompting from the girl, who has spent all her time making cow eyes at him. Or picking out peas from the dish in her dinner plate. She is so stupid that with all of Agra and Mathura looking for her, she goes to a public phone booth in the crowded marketplace to make a call—in this age of cell phones!
Pintoo and Radhika, run from mobs of various kinds, and he stops often to fight Gajendra’s goons. Nothing else of note happens in the film, unless you count Gajendra swearing not to wear trousers till he reclaims Radhika, which gives the film a chance to put in product placement for a prominent underwear brand. Really! Could a reviewer make up such nonsense?
The only feeling after watching Tevar is pity for poor Manoj Bajpai, who has to parade around flashing his legs in the above-mentioned garment!
Labels: Cinemaah
