LIFF Closing Night: Bombay Talkies

Starring: Rani Mukherji, Randeep Hooda, Saqib Saleem, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Ranvir Shorey, Katrina Kaif, Vineet Kumar Singh, Amitabh Bachchan

Directed by: Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Indian Cinema, producer Ashi Dua brought together four exciting directors of Bollywood, giving each a chance to tell a story in 25-30 minutes. Given that the four stories are essentially four separate short films, I will review them individually as well.

Bollywood Review/Rant: Tees Maar Khan

This review requires a bit of a disclaimer. It’s going to just be a long list of complaints about the film.

I’m not a fan of Akshay Kumar. He needs to retire or go back to supporting roles. I’m not a fan of Katrina Kaif. She can’t do much apart from looking good. I liked Shirish Kunder’s Jaan-e-Mann but he’s obviously gone in the wrong direction.

And Farah Khan… Oh Farah. I love her as a choreographer, and she’s a fun person. But director Farah is going down hill. Main Hoon Na was good, as was Om Shanti Om, but OSO as a film wasn’t all that, just very entertaining to watch, and that worked. But Tees Maar Khan has really ruined my opinion of her as a filmmaker. She was the female director who didn’t do the arthouse movies, who showed female directors are capable of proper fun masala movies. Now, she’s shown they’re also very capable in making very bad ones.

I like giving people the benefit of doubt, and so I say it’s not really her fault. You know whose fault it is? Shirish Kunder! And its not that he’s bad at what he does, he’s a good editor. And he can make up (i.e. copy) a good story. And the title song, however irritating, isn’t all that bad, neither was the background music. Why he had to do so many things though is beyond me. I wish he had hired better people to do some of the things he did. Even a producer – we all know Twinkle Khanna does not count. And I refuse to believe Ronnie Screwvala is more than just a UTV credit here. I would like to think he wouldn’t let things get this terrible.

The script (which is by ‘him’ and Ashmith Kunder) definitely needs work. A lot of work. The actors did what they could, but there is only so much that can be done with no real characters, and cheesy, patronising dialogue. What makes it worse is that they weren’t trying to go towards the spoof genre. It’s not even bad enough to laugh at, it’s worse.

What makes the film just about bearable is the hope of songs. The songs were done very well, and after a lot of skepticism, I grew to like three of the five songs (Sheila Ki Jawaani, Wallah Re Wallah and Badey Dilwala). But Farah Khan is a choreographer, so if the songs were badly picturized she would be completely screwed. I wish there had been more songs. Farah Khan is possibly the only person who can make a full on musical with very little dialogue (basically a feature length multi song music video) and get away with it. Instead we got barely 4 songs in 2.5 hours of shit. Also, the placement of the songs was completely random and story-wise they were completely unnecessary. I know the days when songs were crucial to the plotline are long gone, but they weren’t even trying here. ‘Wallah’ has literally no point, and neither does the Salman Khan cameo. It literally happens, because Akshay’s character calls him up to celebrate Eid, three months late no less, and so they sing a song, which starts before Salman arrives, and finishes after he leaves. And would you put your item song (Sheila) in the beginning? (I’m going to pretend like that creepy animated baby, and everything before the song did not actually happen) It’s the best song, and what a lot of people will go to see the movie for, and it’s over pretty soon.

The three songs I mentioned (by Vishal & Shekhar) are good, but I don’t know what was going on with the Happy Ending business at the happy end. I wish the projector had died or the cinema had gone up in flames before I heard that.

Its possible that I have exaggerated a little about how terrible the film is, but it was definitely not worth the effort watching. The songs will at some point be on YouTube, they might already be there. Watch them there. Don’t bother with the film. And I blame Shirish Kunder for the catastrophe. I might even dare to ask whether Farah actually directed it, or let her husband take over the show. I hope and pray whatever Farah decides to do next, she does without him, or with as little of his input as possibly. I still have faith in her, just about.