"There is Aamir, there is Kajol, coming back after a really long time, the production is Yashraj. How bad can it get?" Those were my thoughts as I marched into Chandan for the evening show of Fanaa. I seriously did not have an idea of how bad it could get! To call it fatally boring would be an understatement. The whole team of Fanaa deserves a pat on their backs. With such a rocking starcast (one which ends all requirement for any sort of publicity) and such a famous production house to boot, it would take real effort to produce such a dud. With so many things going in your favour, it takes all the sweat and toil possible to make an audience cry for mercy as the film inches towards its hair-tearing climax. We can well nigh salute them, for they have achieved the nearly impossible.
I think the Gujrat BJP had truly humanitarian concerns and economic motivations when they (unofficially) banned this movie. The hangover that comes after enduring it can render a mortal human incapable of any productive endeavour for atleast a day. And after looking at the crowded hall massaging its forehead (at Mumbai), I can safely assume that Narendra Modi is truly against all activity that negatively affects the economy of Gujrat. By the way, if you really have a grudge against someone, buy them a ticket of Fanaa. I promise you the person won't leave while the movie is still in progress, hoping against hope that it going to be good. Its really worth it. Those who still plan to see the movie and care about jokes (in Fanaa's case) called 'story', 'plot' and 'climax' can stop reading now.
The movie starts with a subtle scene introducing a blind Kajol. She has her back towards the flag while saluting it. Thats it! The subtlety ends here. And from here starts a misplaced attempt at melodrama that seeks to combine Yash Chopra style tear jerker romance with James Bond and Rambo. Its not all intertwined but served piecemeal, one at a time. So you have romance, followed by rambo, backed up by some more romance mixed with crying, then a James Bondesque spy thriller and following close on its heels, some crying while James Bond is still in action. Seems confusing? It's more when you actually get down to seeing it. First of all, you have this five day love story. Kajol, i.e., Zooni Ali Beg, lives in (Poland passed of as) Kashmir with her parents. She is blind but she is still going to be the lead dancer of her troupe for the program on 26th January. And this programme is at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan we are told, at night! This is where the inanities begin.
Anyway, Ms. Zooni comes to Delhi, and meets Rehan, the tour guide (that's Aamir Khan). Then they forget how normal people speak. Why do they do this? Thats because the dialogue writer has a cell phone and he wants to flaunt his technical abilities which involve composing and reading SMSes. To achieve this end he showcases his long archived collection of SMS shayaris as dialogue between Aamir and Kajol. When the first shayaris appear, you can appreciate those, but slowly you start getting restless and after half an hour of celebrating SMS wit, you can almost scream, "Gimme back the plain and simple Hindi/Urdu back. No one speaks like this". This was not my opinion alone. I could hear a just perceivable 'Oh God!' from the row in front when they start with the corny poetry again and yet again. Anyway, after boring us with shayaris for around one hour, the director gets bored and decides to marry the main characters off. So, you have Aamir madly-deeply-passionately in love with Kajol in five days after which he sleeps with her and brings her back from the train (when she is returning to Kashmir). As for her colleagues, they let him take their blind friend. Forget about calling her parents, its too much trouble!. In the next scene Kajol decides she needs to tell her parents about this. This is how the conversation goes:
(This is not exact. Just the approximation of the conversation which was as short.)
"Mom I am in love!"
"Who is he?"
"Rehan. I want to marry him. I want your permission."
"Yes my daughter yes. We trust you completely. We will come to Delhi shortly. You can start preparing for the wedding."
This about it.The happy family of AnK (Aamir and Kajol) goes to the doctor, who immediately puts Kajol on the table for a retina transplant and before her parents arrive, lo and behold! She gets her sight back. But poor Aamir dies (You actually know that he cannot die because they do not show his dead body anyways), before Kajol ever sees him, in a bomb blast near Rashtrapati Bhavan. Now comes my favourite part. This is the mother of all unintentionally funny moments. They actually call Kajol, who has never seen Aamir (She was blind, duh!) to identify the badly burnt body of Aamir. The doctor actually puts this in words:
"Identification main karne wala tha, par body itni boori halat mein hai ki tumhein hi identification karna hoga."
This was supposed to be a usual emotional scene, to get the lachrymals work overtime, but I was laughing my ass off. I could imagine the director laughing his ass off too while shooting this scene:
"Do you think this will actually go down people's throat? Blind girl, Identification et all.."
"Hey! Listen buddy, our viewers are STUPID. Let me spell that out to you S-T-U-P-I-D. They will swallow anything we show them."
"Oh.. but .."
"I have been in this business a long time. There are a lot of dumb people around. My audience has its IQ in single digits. They will enjoy this scene.... HA HA HA HA HA..."
I didn't feel quite right after this and stopped laughing. Coming back to the movie, the sad family goes on to their home and we are introduced to the anti-terrorist squad headquarters investigating this scene. Here we are introduced to Tabu, who tells us that the militant group IKF is fighting for Kashmiri independence. They are terrorizing both India and Pakistan. Now call me biased, chauvinistic, or simply realistic but I take a strong exception to absolving Pakistan of all crimes in Kashmiri Terrorism. I even do not agree that Pakistan today is not in concert with the militants. The movie however, makes it amply and painfully clear that the terrorists are independent of any national identity and are threatening both India and Pakistan. Since, Indian movies are already banned in Pakistan, any ideological or economic motivations behind these clarifications were lost on me. A possible reason occured to my brother later on : Paksitani diaspora pay for Indian movies!! So much for clean entertainment.
Tabu goes on to introduce us to the chief operator of IKF, who is expectedly, even for the most numb-skulled, an Aamir Khan with a different haircut. He may be a terrorist but because he is Aamir and because this is a Yashraj movie, he apologizes to Kajol's photograph, tears it and throws it down on the road with a flamboyant disregard for any civic sense that a terrorist with his chic should possess.
Like all good conventional Hindi movies, the story is picked up and dropped exactly 7 years into the future, not a year less, not a year more. Now starts the rambo like spy-thriller. Aamir the terrorist goes on to procure the last component (called the trigger) for making a nuclear missile (they have already collected all the other parts, dont ask me how!!). For this he impersonates a Captain Rajeev from the Indian army. All this while Tabu puts on a oh-so-tough look, spouts a case for plebiscite in Kashmir and decides that she wants to play chor-police (in the modern avatar of terrorist and anti-terrorist squad officer). While, Aamir runs from the commandoes and kills them one by one in the Kashmiri (or Polish) Jungle (a la Rambo: First Blood), you think he is only doing a cheap imitation of Sunny Deol. Deol is much better at this. Trust me! I have seen Gadar. Deol can atleast make me laugh. Aamir makes me squirm. As cinematic fate would have it, after killing everyone around, our zakhmi anti-hero lands up in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere. He knocks a door in the middle of nowhere. And guess what? Kajol opens the door (she lives in the middle of nowhere!!). Then they show a kid behind Kajol and this is like the second most unintentionally funny moment in the movie. He got a kid!! Like all good, dutiful and sincere Hindi movie couples, their one and only attempt at procreation had met with unprecedented success. Aamir is so shocked at this point that he goes unconscious. (The audience too gets shocked but God in all his mercy does not make them unconscious.)
Then proceeds the romantic movie part 2, by which time you really do not care what happens to the characters. Live, die, go into a coma, do whatever you want, just end this movie. (A welcome change in this part is the low frequency of the ubiquitous shayaris, there are only corny dialogues and a oh-so-cute kid thrown in for free.) It is now that you understand the whole point of Kajol's blindness in the first part. She is not supposed to recognize the living Aamir (even though she has already identified his badly burnt dead body). Anyway, here Aamir suddenly remembers that inspite of defacing the streets of some country with Kajol's torn photograph, he still loves her. Kajol fulminates and tells him of her perpetual state of mental delirium where she cut and pasted ears, noses, lips, eyes from various photographs to form Aamir's photo. (The fact that the travel agent with whom Aamir worked can give her a description and make life easy never occured to her, but then as I said before, details are certainly not the strong point of this movie.) The next day Aamir tries leaving. Here comes the third most unintentionally funny moment in the movie. Kajol runs after him and then gives him ONE TIGHT SLAP. My friend summed up the emotions welling up properly when he said, "That should have been the director!" So, AnK marry officially now and live happily ever after. Except that we still have the IKF and Anti-terrorist squad angle to be taken care of.
There's the mission too after all. At this point the screenplay turns into a word for word reproduction of the climactic scenes from 'The eye of the needle' by Ken Follet. The climax is suitably Indianized, but Kajol (quite unnecessarily) kills Aamir in the end. Logic ofcourse, is as oblivious from the finale as from the rest of the movie. Kajol gets the trigger, escapes from a mad Aamir (just a bad impersonation of any action hero worth his salt here, nostrils flaring, eyes pretty large and emotionless). She contacts Tabu who advises her to.. well.... do nothing (she has to kill Aamir in the end, which she won't be able to do if she destroys the trigger now). Keeping true to the long lasting tradition of the police coming in at the movie's end, Tabu et al come in the end and the quite dreary movie ends on a drearier note.
Aamir and Kajol try to act their best but are still confused as to what they are supposed to do. Rishi Kapoor drinks and cries for all he is worth. Kiron Kher appears again in the ideal-mother role (Am I the only one who feels she is getting typecast?). Shiny Ahuja and Lara Dutta have roles so short, that you suspect they were put into the movie for a game of find-me-if-you-can. Tabu, does mostly nothing except for frowning, ordering and coming in towards the end. To sum up, efforts of the cast are valiant but they are no match to the incompetent story, confused editing, corny dialogues and directionless lack of entertainment. The movie is confused as to what it wants to be, shifting from one mode to another, confusing the audience and disorienting any sense of continuity. Good movies are not always logically correct ones but they are always ones where the audience experiences a 'suspension of disbelief'. A state wherein he/she can vicariously experience the travails of the character. They know its all untrue but they still believe it. If the movie is funny, it persuades you to get the main idea. However, the only state Fanaa put me in was 'suspension of all belief'. I didn't care two cents for the characters, and movie does not have any central idea.
Inspite of it being such a dud, I know the movie is going to do well. Since you have no work in life (how did I find out? coz, you read this post upto here!), you are probably already making plans for the movie. I know what you are thinking right at this moment, "There is Aamir, there is Kajol, coming back after a really long time, the production is Yashraj. How bad can it get?".... Another victory of hope over experience.
I think the Gujrat BJP had truly humanitarian concerns and economic motivations when they (unofficially) banned this movie. The hangover that comes after enduring it can render a mortal human incapable of any productive endeavour for atleast a day. And after looking at the crowded hall massaging its forehead (at Mumbai), I can safely assume that Narendra Modi is truly against all activity that negatively affects the economy of Gujrat. By the way, if you really have a grudge against someone, buy them a ticket of Fanaa. I promise you the person won't leave while the movie is still in progress, hoping against hope that it going to be good. Its really worth it. Those who still plan to see the movie and care about jokes (in Fanaa's case) called 'story', 'plot' and 'climax' can stop reading now.
The movie starts with a subtle scene introducing a blind Kajol. She has her back towards the flag while saluting it. Thats it! The subtlety ends here. And from here starts a misplaced attempt at melodrama that seeks to combine Yash Chopra style tear jerker romance with James Bond and Rambo. Its not all intertwined but served piecemeal, one at a time. So you have romance, followed by rambo, backed up by some more romance mixed with crying, then a James Bondesque spy thriller and following close on its heels, some crying while James Bond is still in action. Seems confusing? It's more when you actually get down to seeing it. First of all, you have this five day love story. Kajol, i.e., Zooni Ali Beg, lives in (Poland passed of as) Kashmir with her parents. She is blind but she is still going to be the lead dancer of her troupe for the program on 26th January. And this programme is at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan we are told, at night! This is where the inanities begin.
Anyway, Ms. Zooni comes to Delhi, and meets Rehan, the tour guide (that's Aamir Khan). Then they forget how normal people speak. Why do they do this? Thats because the dialogue writer has a cell phone and he wants to flaunt his technical abilities which involve composing and reading SMSes. To achieve this end he showcases his long archived collection of SMS shayaris as dialogue between Aamir and Kajol. When the first shayaris appear, you can appreciate those, but slowly you start getting restless and after half an hour of celebrating SMS wit, you can almost scream, "Gimme back the plain and simple Hindi/Urdu back. No one speaks like this". This was not my opinion alone. I could hear a just perceivable 'Oh God!' from the row in front when they start with the corny poetry again and yet again. Anyway, after boring us with shayaris for around one hour, the director gets bored and decides to marry the main characters off. So, you have Aamir madly-deeply-passionately in love with Kajol in five days after which he sleeps with her and brings her back from the train (when she is returning to Kashmir). As for her colleagues, they let him take their blind friend. Forget about calling her parents, its too much trouble!. In the next scene Kajol decides she needs to tell her parents about this. This is how the conversation goes:
(This is not exact. Just the approximation of the conversation which was as short.)
"Mom I am in love!"
"Who is he?"
"Rehan. I want to marry him. I want your permission."
"Yes my daughter yes. We trust you completely. We will come to Delhi shortly. You can start preparing for the wedding."
This about it.The happy family of AnK (Aamir and Kajol) goes to the doctor, who immediately puts Kajol on the table for a retina transplant and before her parents arrive, lo and behold! She gets her sight back. But poor Aamir dies (You actually know that he cannot die because they do not show his dead body anyways), before Kajol ever sees him, in a bomb blast near Rashtrapati Bhavan. Now comes my favourite part. This is the mother of all unintentionally funny moments. They actually call Kajol, who has never seen Aamir (She was blind, duh!) to identify the badly burnt body of Aamir. The doctor actually puts this in words:
"Identification main karne wala tha, par body itni boori halat mein hai ki tumhein hi identification karna hoga."
This was supposed to be a usual emotional scene, to get the lachrymals work overtime, but I was laughing my ass off. I could imagine the director laughing his ass off too while shooting this scene:
"Do you think this will actually go down people's throat? Blind girl, Identification et all.."
"Hey! Listen buddy, our viewers are STUPID. Let me spell that out to you S-T-U-P-I-D. They will swallow anything we show them."
"Oh.. but .."
"I have been in this business a long time. There are a lot of dumb people around. My audience has its IQ in single digits. They will enjoy this scene.... HA HA HA HA HA..."
I didn't feel quite right after this and stopped laughing. Coming back to the movie, the sad family goes on to their home and we are introduced to the anti-terrorist squad headquarters investigating this scene. Here we are introduced to Tabu, who tells us that the militant group IKF is fighting for Kashmiri independence. They are terrorizing both India and Pakistan. Now call me biased, chauvinistic, or simply realistic but I take a strong exception to absolving Pakistan of all crimes in Kashmiri Terrorism. I even do not agree that Pakistan today is not in concert with the militants. The movie however, makes it amply and painfully clear that the terrorists are independent of any national identity and are threatening both India and Pakistan. Since, Indian movies are already banned in Pakistan, any ideological or economic motivations behind these clarifications were lost on me. A possible reason occured to my brother later on : Paksitani diaspora pay for Indian movies!! So much for clean entertainment.
Tabu goes on to introduce us to the chief operator of IKF, who is expectedly, even for the most numb-skulled, an Aamir Khan with a different haircut. He may be a terrorist but because he is Aamir and because this is a Yashraj movie, he apologizes to Kajol's photograph, tears it and throws it down on the road with a flamboyant disregard for any civic sense that a terrorist with his chic should possess.
Like all good conventional Hindi movies, the story is picked up and dropped exactly 7 years into the future, not a year less, not a year more. Now starts the rambo like spy-thriller. Aamir the terrorist goes on to procure the last component (called the trigger) for making a nuclear missile (they have already collected all the other parts, dont ask me how!!). For this he impersonates a Captain Rajeev from the Indian army. All this while Tabu puts on a oh-so-tough look, spouts a case for plebiscite in Kashmir and decides that she wants to play chor-police (in the modern avatar of terrorist and anti-terrorist squad officer). While, Aamir runs from the commandoes and kills them one by one in the Kashmiri (or Polish) Jungle (a la Rambo: First Blood), you think he is only doing a cheap imitation of Sunny Deol. Deol is much better at this. Trust me! I have seen Gadar. Deol can atleast make me laugh. Aamir makes me squirm. As cinematic fate would have it, after killing everyone around, our zakhmi anti-hero lands up in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere. He knocks a door in the middle of nowhere. And guess what? Kajol opens the door (she lives in the middle of nowhere!!). Then they show a kid behind Kajol and this is like the second most unintentionally funny moment in the movie. He got a kid!! Like all good, dutiful and sincere Hindi movie couples, their one and only attempt at procreation had met with unprecedented success. Aamir is so shocked at this point that he goes unconscious. (The audience too gets shocked but God in all his mercy does not make them unconscious.)
Then proceeds the romantic movie part 2, by which time you really do not care what happens to the characters. Live, die, go into a coma, do whatever you want, just end this movie. (A welcome change in this part is the low frequency of the ubiquitous shayaris, there are only corny dialogues and a oh-so-cute kid thrown in for free.) It is now that you understand the whole point of Kajol's blindness in the first part. She is not supposed to recognize the living Aamir (even though she has already identified his badly burnt dead body). Anyway, here Aamir suddenly remembers that inspite of defacing the streets of some country with Kajol's torn photograph, he still loves her. Kajol fulminates and tells him of her perpetual state of mental delirium where she cut and pasted ears, noses, lips, eyes from various photographs to form Aamir's photo. (The fact that the travel agent with whom Aamir worked can give her a description and make life easy never occured to her, but then as I said before, details are certainly not the strong point of this movie.) The next day Aamir tries leaving. Here comes the third most unintentionally funny moment in the movie. Kajol runs after him and then gives him ONE TIGHT SLAP. My friend summed up the emotions welling up properly when he said, "That should have been the director!" So, AnK marry officially now and live happily ever after. Except that we still have the IKF and Anti-terrorist squad angle to be taken care of.
There's the mission too after all. At this point the screenplay turns into a word for word reproduction of the climactic scenes from 'The eye of the needle' by Ken Follet. The climax is suitably Indianized, but Kajol (quite unnecessarily) kills Aamir in the end. Logic ofcourse, is as oblivious from the finale as from the rest of the movie. Kajol gets the trigger, escapes from a mad Aamir (just a bad impersonation of any action hero worth his salt here, nostrils flaring, eyes pretty large and emotionless). She contacts Tabu who advises her to.. well.... do nothing (she has to kill Aamir in the end, which she won't be able to do if she destroys the trigger now). Keeping true to the long lasting tradition of the police coming in at the movie's end, Tabu et al come in the end and the quite dreary movie ends on a drearier note.
Aamir and Kajol try to act their best but are still confused as to what they are supposed to do. Rishi Kapoor drinks and cries for all he is worth. Kiron Kher appears again in the ideal-mother role (Am I the only one who feels she is getting typecast?). Shiny Ahuja and Lara Dutta have roles so short, that you suspect they were put into the movie for a game of find-me-if-you-can. Tabu, does mostly nothing except for frowning, ordering and coming in towards the end. To sum up, efforts of the cast are valiant but they are no match to the incompetent story, confused editing, corny dialogues and directionless lack of entertainment. The movie is confused as to what it wants to be, shifting from one mode to another, confusing the audience and disorienting any sense of continuity. Good movies are not always logically correct ones but they are always ones where the audience experiences a 'suspension of disbelief'. A state wherein he/she can vicariously experience the travails of the character. They know its all untrue but they still believe it. If the movie is funny, it persuades you to get the main idea. However, the only state Fanaa put me in was 'suspension of all belief'. I didn't care two cents for the characters, and movie does not have any central idea.
Inspite of it being such a dud, I know the movie is going to do well. Since you have no work in life (how did I find out? coz, you read this post upto here!), you are probably already making plans for the movie. I know what you are thinking right at this moment, "There is Aamir, there is Kajol, coming back after a really long time, the production is Yashraj. How bad can it get?".... Another victory of hope over experience.
2 comments:
well i always thought kunal kohli sucked big time, still remember i was bored to death in hum tum, with meaningless coincidental meetings and never ending "hum tum". thank u for reaffirming my belief in the pathetic directioral sense of Mr. Kunal Kohli. I think yashraj also sucks big time. actually they have lost it.
Dude, the minute I saw that 96fps slow mo shot with rain drops and aamir-kajol nazarein churana - you KNOW it's TRASH! :D lol.
That shot exists in every trashy film by YashRaj and KJ, etc, etc. :)
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