-NIMISH INAMDAR
11th june 2005.
I made did make an attempt today to watch Yash Chopra’s new comedy (or rather supposed to be comedy) flick Bunty Aur Babli (BAB). My 1st question to Mr. Chopra is, that was it really comedy? He should have at least given some hints when we were supposed to laugh. I did make few attempts to laugh during the movie time, but that sounded so artificial that the rest of the audience gave me the “Is he crazy?” look.
DO NOT and please do not go to the movie hall thinking that I’m going to have some rocking fun for three hours. Sitting in that air-conditioned hall I was thinking for ways to get out of that torture. My 50 bucks were waste- a total waste.
The plot seems all good when we here about two con people calling themselves Bunty and Babli run all over the country fooling people. But at every point the movie says, “Come on guys this plot was supposed to be funny… laugh.” And then we grin looking at each other. Don’t believe me? I can understand, with all the other critics and the review writers going ga-ga over it, what makes me sound it so miserable? Well the answer is simple; let me give you one example. There is a scene in the movie where Rani Mukherji (The babli out of them) sits on the rock all alone, then comes Bacchan Jr. to see her and notice that she is about to cry. What happens next? Well then our Bunty asks her “what’s the matter?” like any other normal person would do. Prompt comes the reply “Muzhe maa ki yaad aa rahi hai (I’m missing my mother)”. Fine pretty fair, no complaints so far. Now what happens next?? Well that’s it guys, it was a comedy plot in the movie, we all were supposed to laugh. Damn I missed it all.
If there is nothing to laugh, then u may ask what is there in the movie? Well I can say the plot is good. Two people fed up of life and the idea of living honestly sets up together to make earning out of fooling others. Babli as Binno calls herself aspires to become Miss India. But fails to do so and thus the blame obviously goes to her ‘Live with Principles’ attitude. Rakesh a.k.a. Bunty dreams of becoming one amongst the Tatas and the Ambanis but his honesty don’t allow him to do so. Both meet at this point of failure and decide to go to their Mecca i.e. Mumbai. In order to get the money to reach to their dreams, both successfully fool one person. But the money empties from their pockets soon and they make repeated attempts to make money. Soon they realise how good they are in this and now they realise the future of their career.
But obviously, it’s a Hindi movie, so they fall in love and get married (with no witnesses around). At this point comes Bacchan Sr. (mind you its second half of the movie by now). He is determined to catch these two culprits who have fascinated the whole country and lavishly robbed a few. Their crimes include robbing a shopping mall (completely), robbing a hotel (almost completely), and selling the great Taj Mahal to a phirangee (now how’s this? we need such capable people in our bureaucracy) and the last but not the least, robbing the gold out of RBI’s reserves.
But in no story do we hear that the bad wins, ditto here, except that it’s a Hindi movie, straight from the heart of Bollywood. So we cannot expect anything new out of it, and thus they get caught just when they decide to become good guys and live an honest life. But that’s certainly not the end. The climax is something a novelty for Hindi movies where the con people are used for the good of the society and not jailed for life or hanged.
Honestly and very truly there are very few moments in the movie where anyone would feel like laughing. It’s a typical Yash Chopra film with all the regular gloss. Rani Mukherjee tries to be sexy, but I must say the attempts are futile. It’s a treat to watch Bacchan Sr, and Jr, dance together in an item number. But nothing else really works even in that song. Many of the dance steps in many of the songs are completely unprofessional something that I could make.(Ha ha just kidding.)
On the whole, go and watch the movie if at all you love Yash Chopra. But if you are like me who hate him after every new movie he has made after Mohobattien then please donate that money in children’s welfare fund.
