You understand that we don’t think women can only make ladies-type films. Understand also that we don’t have problems with ladies-type films. Ah, so now all that hedging has been done let us ask this question. Why didn’t anyone tell us Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is a chick-flick?
This is a movie that has all the hallmarks of a chick-flick. It has close friendship, marriage, dappled leaves, sunsets and landscape shot like Lancome ads, long shots of moony-faced infatuation, a male character who knows enough about jewellery to identify a mummy-ring, suit up scenes in front of the mirror, fantastic settings. It has friends who will intervene to make romance happen. It has childhood pacts and superb decor. The clothes are a step below Aisha but definitely a presence.
It manages a feat that Sarah Jessica Parker and the entire SATC franchise could not manage. It made a Birkin bag an almost full-fledged character. Like classic chick flicks, the settings are clean, shiny and sensual. Like classic chick flicks, the protagonist (Hrithik in this case) is transformed by love, not merely checking off ‘love interest’ as a plot requirement. (No, Delhi Belly, go stand in your, grimy, boyish corner now)
In many ways ZNMD is better than many new chick flicks. Unlike recent Hollywood romantic comedies (also known as ways to make Katherine Heigl more hateful) the protagonists are not subjected to gross public humiliation. It does not centre around a star that necessarily makes the heroine’s best friend look bad. (Aisha was a very baffling in this aspect because it gave everyone except Sonam Kapoor fun things to do).
Of course, the very best way in which this movie beats classic chick flicks hollow is one that bends the Bechdel Test. The Bechdel test is generally a three-step, foolproof way to decide whether women have an active presence in a movie. Are there at least two women in this movie? Do they talk to each other? Do they talk to each other about anything other than a man? Big fail on all counts. Katrina Kaif is very likeable and even Alison Bechdel would think she is cute on a bike but this is not a movie about Katrina, the Spanish chick or even Kalki Koechlin. But the handy-dandy Bechdel would actually be misleading in this case. This is a movie for women viewers except that the protagonists are all male.
The women sitting next to this writer certainly didn’t need any convincing. They gasped, they sighed and they sank into the joy of the objectification of the three best looking men in Bollywood. Acres of bare chest. Lingering shots of brown, male nipple. (some terrible haircuts but let’s ignore that). Rajesh Khanna may have wanted Pushpa to stop crying but Hrithik has never looked as beautiful as he did when he was wet and teary, as sad as the Little Mermaid. Do you really care that Katrina Kaif and Kalki Koechlin did not have self-actualisation?
Now you can decide that this is a terrible political travesty because what is this film industry which has Saif Ali Khan playing a Dalit and men edging women out even in a chick flick. Or you can settle into an experience as close to a spa as cinema can get. You can almost smell the aroma therapy. You know Zoya did.
The Plot
Amy (Kalki Koechlin), unhinged by childhood trauma, moves to Mumbai from LA with her rich family. She befriends KC (Gulshan Devaiya) and debauch company, an angsty bunch with money to spend. One night, they accidentally kill some people. Then the rest.
-5 For Anurag Kashyap’s Grim Face issuing statutory warning about drugs and alcohol. Please.
+5 To Amy For Refusing To Wear Those Salwar Kameezes. No wonder she feels disturbed.
-10For The Endless Foreign Film-Style Shots: pausing objects mid-fall and the annoyingly retro entry of mystifyingly angry cop Arvind Mathur (Rajeev Khandelwal).
-5 For The Squeamishness Most Of The Supposed Bad-Asses Display during truth or dare. Oh Amy, you are so much badder than them even in your Girl, Interrupted phase. You at least joke about Tanya’s rape.
+6 For Zubin’s Casually Tossed Of ‘Suck my dikra’.
+1 Because You Are going to need all the points you have later. We won’t even bother deducting for the scene in which KC in a Hummer struggles to beat an Audi in a race.
-6 For Amy Saying her father will send her to a convent if she behaves badly. Get thee to a nunnery, LA girl. Sure. Even Madhur Bhandar - kar is more up-to-date.
+7 To Arvind Mathur for using the corpse of the kidnapped tourist as protection against bullets. First surprise in the whole film.
+2 For Mathur’s Autorickshaw kick. Meet Mathur, president of the Meter Down campaign.
-8 For The Random shifts in perspective. Mathur is running into the church to save the day but we suddenly see glimpses of the cuckoo house inside Amy’s head. Salim-Javed would brain you with a television for such sloppy story-telling.
-10 For The Worst denouement in recent times. Why is Malvankar (Raj Kumar Yadav) getting the stick and the lecture from the police force for trying to make a quick buck from idiots? Because the police force is noble or corrupt? Who knows. Pavan Malhotra as police commissioner swings between playing Rakesh Maria and one of the Borgias so that’s no help. Watch out as Malhotra struggles to say maa ki aankh.
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The Plot
A gang of little boys live in a housing society, their lives largely unruffled until young Fatka arrives. Fatka cleans cars for a living and only has a dog Bheedu to love. The boys hate him until they love him. But by then the housing society bans him and his dog (thanks to an evil politician). Now the kids must fight to keep their two new subaltern pals.
+10 To that super-senti,Surf Excel ad placed just after opening credits, in a classroom setting making you worry that this is the pap you are going to be watching for two hours.
+10 For making the preoccupations of children largely believable: annoying dogs, boring adults, being routed in cricket, bizarre nicknames, the grossness of milk.
-5 For losing a grip on the children’s dialogue swinging from pert to creepily adult and back. Fatka particularly talks in the insane ‘apun-bole toh’ retro tapori-Creole that invokes not Munnabhai and when we were young but Anil Kapoor and when your dad was young. Though it does get a little bit funny when the other kids pick up the lingo from him.
+7 For The Moment when Fatka is told that he should join the cricket team because the colony team is missing a bowler.His response — Toh main kya nachun? — is one that Che and Marx would have approved of. Bring on the revolution and let it be full of tough little 10-year-olds.
-6 For making the politician an automatic dog-hater. This is not Cruella de Vil who wants the dalmatians to make a hip outfit. This is assembly-line villainy. Frankly, dog-hating is the biggest Mcguffin in this film. The kids start out hating dogs too. And for no real reason.
+5 For not resorting to hopeless sentimentality and twisty manipulation and sticking to a little sentimentality, a little manipulation and decent pacing.
+4 For the invisible presence of Salman Khan through the incredible subtext: such as the shirt-removing macho 10-year-old child labourer Fatka. We get it man, you made this movie. It's all good.
+4 For the plot point involving the feminine- voiced man first known as Googly and then as Manisha (and the moral lesson of how being different is okay). Nicely done.
+2 For The Chaddi Revolution which was good, silly fun, we thought. But then we are very biased.
The Plot
Sincere teen cutie Rhea (Shraddha Kapoor) finds out her billionaire boyfriend Luv (Taaha Shah) is planning to deflower her and make a sex tape to get points in a rich boys’ contest. (Did anyone say frat party?) Rhea and friends plan revenge. What’s a little John Tucker Must Die between friends? Especially 13-year-old friends.
+3 For the stop-motion fun in the opening credits. Watch those T-shirts.
+7 For the most accurate war for teengirl-speak in years. Thank you, director Bumpy. Umm... minus three for same. People have to stop saying dude, woah, babes, chill. And Bumpy.
-2 For the queen bees. Those who customarily haunt corridors of filmi schools/colleges, have to stop channelling Mean Girls now.
+5 For Archana Puran Singh’s wannabe-cool mom entrance. She’s still got her fingernail scratching a blackboard quality to her voice.
+5 For Rhea’s mother’s accurate stuck-but-stoic-between-generations character. Lots of mums nodding right now.
-10 For ‘don’t lose it in the backseat of a car’ and other 30 paisa xerox copy dialogue.
+7 For the ‘enter password and da, it’s Karthik’ sequence. On such slender pleasures are our geek lives made.
-10 For laxatives and itching powder for revenge. Plus five for a car smashing the girliness of which has only been surpassed by the models’ petrol fight in Zoolander.
+6 Because Rhea smiles and bawls like a teenager. She looks so pretty when she says, “I will have your balls.” No points for boyfriend Luv because we have already forgotten what he looks like.
+2 For jugs (Pushtie S). “Come on Rhea, 50 percent India aise sadak pe sota hai.” In her abrasive fat girl role, she has many good lines.
-5 For the climatic scene for making us think of the sins of the fathers — someone threatening Shakti Kapoor’s daughter with rape. And a fake accent. Plus five for her unceasing glare and self-rescue.
+5 For film ka the end because every teenage girl must make out with Ali Zafar.
The Plot
Billionaire Kabir Malhotra (Anupam Kher) summons a drug dealer, a Thai prime ministerial candidate, a British journalist and a Bollywood star to his Greek island for mysterious reasons. He knows something about each of them. High jinks ensue.
+ 10 for creating bollywood’s first malayali protagonist neil menon (Abhishek Bachchan). This following Bollywood’s first Ladakhi protagonist (Phunsukh Wangdu of 3 Idiots) is a big thrill for our multiculti heart. He is bored, neurotic, feels huzun in Istanbul and reads Murakami, making him utterly convincing. A tired minus three for revealing he is only pretending to be a Malayali because by then we have given up.
- 5 for line after line of farhan akhtar’s translated-from-english dialogue. (Our favourite: Latin zubaan mein ek kahavat hain. Cui bono.) Minus two for those that seem to have been written by Abhishek Bachchan — a mysterious Chelsea football segue.
+ 6 for the shameless aspirations of the script. Agatha Christie meets Ludlum wannabe meets CSI meets us howling in laughter. Of course, the billionaire must say, “I’ll see them in the library” to his secretary as if it is Downton Abbey and discuss wine as if it is the Travel and Living Channel.
- 10 for creating an op ramsay (Boman Irani), a politician so useless he is unable to tell a reporter where his funds come from. He also dies because of a single sting operation. We miss omnipotent, shark-loving grand villains like Shakal from Shaan.
+ 5 to Kangana and Shahana for playing policewoman and journalist/lost daughter in ways that don’t embarrass anyone in a thriller with holes in the plot so big you could put a few Greek islands in them for safekeeping.
+ 5 to the pretty face of Sarah Jane Dias We feel bad pointing out that an exotic dancer without a posterior is no exotic dancer. However, she was nice to look at during her Monte Carlo sweater ad style romance with Abhishek Bachchan.
+ 5 for the most awesome updating of Indian technology optimism. Witness the British investigators conducting surveillance across countries in a way God would envy.
- 10 for the Kabir Malhotra has a twin number. Oy, mastermind, why didn’t you just bump off your rich brother? Why toy with our tiny minds? And most mysteriously, Kabir Malhotraji, whatever were you planning with your assembled menagerie on the island? What was the Game?
The Plot
Tashi (Imran Khan) lives in a grimy room with friends Nitin and Arup. His girlfriend Sonia (Shenaz Treasurywala) accidentally becomes a mule for diamond smugglers. Through a series of unfortunate events, the smugglers (Vijay Raaz and others) get Nitin’s stool sample instead. The boys are now on the run. Tashi’s risk-loving new pal Menaka (Poorna Jaggannathan) gets mixed up too. Happily.
+10 To Abhinay deo for somehow making , almost-impossible return to a decent, well-paced movie after the so-bad-itwas- surreal disaster called Game.
+10 To Akshat Varma for the largely relaxed dialogue in which four-letter words are merely the affectionate, social lubricant that greases the moderately competent script. This is the first time we have seen Hinglish working well.
+7 For Kunal Roy Kapoor’s Nitin: who is comfortingly furry and grouchy like a big bearded Oscar from Sesame Street. You have to agree when he says the red car looks like a donkey f**ked an auto.
+10 To the brilliant soundtrack. we are almost tempted to violate our deeply secret arithmetic formulae to give it more points.
-6 For the shit and flatulence. sure it was ‘integral to the plot and the script demanded it’ but we are old and grouchy.
+5 To the gangster gags breadstick, paper bag and all. We will soon be sick of the Tarantino-meets-Guy Ritchie variety of villain but not when Vijay Raaz says ‘chup kar Barrister Vinod’ with such barely controlled vitriol.
+8 For menaka smart, funny, slightly self-destructive and the go-to-girl when you are on the run from the mob. We would give her points for not looking like any heroine we have seen in years. Wish she had better lines though.
+7 For allowing Vir Das to be slight and neurotic. His interactions with his boss are forgettable but crown him with rubies for his oral-pleasure giving Disco Fighter fantasy.
-10 For the most lazily plotted denouement we have seen since Game. How ridiculous is the boys strolling out of the hotel after the shootout scene?
+7 For Imran Khan, who does a good job though his character is a cipher. Why does he go from being sort of a slacker to sort of a hero? You are never told. If only he could smile convincingly. Unclench, boy, unclench.
