Monday, June 06, 2005

Bunty Aur Babli

We tried to get tickets for this movie last weekend itself(failing which we went for Naina.) Wiser, this week I booked tickets on Wednesday itself only to have the movie hall folks call me to say that they are canceling the morning show 'coz of technical probs. Not willing to let this deter plans, I hunted all over the net and booked tickets in this obscure theatre miles away from where we live and set out in the hot sun only to find that the movie was sooo not worth it.

The movie starts well, the parts when Rani and Abhishek set out from their small town to make it big in the city were pretty enjoyable. They start doing small con jobs first to make ends meet and then for plain fun only to realize that this is their life's calling. So they get married and resolve to be together the rest of their lives and to keep pulling jobs. Amitabh Bachchan is introduced pretty late in the movie as the cop who resolves to catch them. The chase and whether-he-catches-them-are-not is the rest of the movie.

The promos about the movie were pretty clear that it is no intellectual fare. So I was pretty prepared and left my brain at home, but even so I was unpleasantly surprised. It seems as though the director first set out to make the an Ocean's Eleven kind of movie, but failed miserably by including preposterous ideas like selling the Taj Mahal (Sheesh, give the audience some credit!). The humor that you expect in this kind of movie is conspicuous by its absence. And then halfway through he decided to add sentiment as well, as a result there are some totally unnecessary weepy scenes. Of course there has to be some kind of masala and so a cheesy item number by Aishwarya Rai. Amitabh Bachchan's role didn't have much scope, and yet every scene of his was hyped up and the neck cricking mannerism was very irritating. The drunken scene with Big B and Ju B was drawn out like an obstinate bit of chewing gum(I think this is when my roomie fell asleep). To be fair the first half has a few enjoyable moments, but there is absolutely no excuse for the part after the interval. The songs are nothing to write home about except the "dhadak dhadak" song which I kept humming throughout the day.

Verdict : Average bordering on bad

6 comments:

Vetty Max said...

Agree 99% with the review. Was a huge disappointment. The so-called jokes were not even funny. The songs too somehow seemed to be placed at exactly the wrong places too.

The 1% where I differ from your review is that I felt Amitabh was awesome, even though he did not have a great role.

janani said...

@vmax - And to think this was the movie I was waitttting to see ever since they started thir promos on TV! :-(

Sagnik Nandy said...

agree to 100% of the review (including humming dhadak dhadak whole day). i thought the song had an amazing tapori picturization! i however liked the part of the Taj sequence where the crowd gathers outside the ministers house :)

janani said...

@sagnik - Yeah that bit was one of the rare moments in the movie. :-) And when Rani has this cat fight with another model who calls her a "biiiatch" :-)

Anonymous said...

Agree 100% -
Cha - i should have read this yesterday -
Soga kadai is - nethi night show ponen ..
First half - a bit enjoyable
second HALF - Rambamo rambam
and moreover - ramayanam maadiri songs ...

janani said...

@subs - muahwaha!!! :-)))