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But
Tanuja, think of it this way. Who would want to go
and see Tum Ho Na (premiered this week) in
a theatre? First of all, the star cast was extremely
incongruous. Imagine Jackie Shroff being paired with
Riya Sen! They looked like a father and daughter more
than a romantic couple.
Perhaps the story, trying to be fey and selfconsciously
different, demanded a certain age lacuna between the
main lead. Jackie was eerily silent in the first half
as Riya, playing a bohemian cross between Zeenat Aman
in Hare Rama Hare Krishna and Amrita Arora
in Main Hoon Na, screeched and snarled her
way through a series of misadventures with hard drugs.
After an accidental murder (the gun shot startled
me awake) Jackie dumped the insufferable hippie and
his Goan boat-bound lifestyle to get into a 3-piece
suit and marry Nehtra Raghuraman who suffers a flat
tyre and a revved-up libido at the same time.
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"I'll marry you," she screams as Shroff repairs
her punctured tyre (wish someone repaired the damaged script).
Just as we get some dopey bits of domestic harmony, Riya
Sen screeches back into Shroff's life trying to get his
sari-clad wife all red-faced with jealousy. Then the wife
sees the secretary massaging her husband's neck. In anger
she snips off her hair gets into a mini and stumbles into
hubby's office on a stiletto abusing and swearing at her
supposedly philandering husband.
Jackie Shrofff had a number of chances to prove himself,
including a drunken monologue which, like Riya's whiny whimsy,
went on forever and ever.
Thank God this film was never released in theatres! I'd
suggest other filmmakers with funny stuff that they call
phillums dial 'S' for Sahara.
I'd rather suffer such starkly artificial films at home
than brave them in theatres.
****
And
let's have conventional soaps instead of pseudo-movies.
I sort of like Sooraj Barjatya's Woh Rehne Walo Mehlon
Ki, if for no other than reason then its stark conventionality.
This week Rani married and left for her sasural hoping to
find a home away from home. If only wishes were horses!
The shock of finding her in-laws' place far less presentable
than she imagined was juxtaposed with montages of happier
times when she was the queen of her father's house.
Shots
of the dingy stairways in her new house coalesced into flashbacks
of the plaster-of-paris stairways into a filmy heaven…
and so on… Now of course the avaricious in-laws have
realized that the Rani whom their son has married isn't
half as rich as they had imagined.
It's
an excruciatingly filmic irony, done for television in that
disarmingly artless way that the Rajshri Productions have
patented over the years.
****
Will
the Hindi correspondents on the news channels please improve
their English language? On Channel 7, I was appalled to
hear the female correspondent pronounce Marigold as 'marry-gold'.
Maybe marriage was on her mind because of the company she
kept that evening.
But why was Manoj Bajpai behaving so churlishly? He was
almost snapping out the answers. When asked how much homework
he did, Bajpai retorted, "I never prepare, never carry
my characters home… I'd rather stay home for months
than do faltu roles.."
Sure, Manoj, we believe you. We've seen you in Inteqaam
and that other movie where a little girl is gangraped.
Ugh…and a double-ugh for Shweta Kawatra who went on
and on bitching about Vivek Oberoi on Sony Max's film-news
magazine-show Current Bollywood. Why must she bring
her personal likes and dislikes into the discussion?
Our soaps are becoming progressively promiscuous. I don't
know whether that's good or bad, because promiscuity is
not really a sign of progressiveness. Hence the heroine
Kripa in Sony's Kaisa Yeh Pyar Hai is pregnant with
the child of her host's son who grimaces and swaggers like
God's chosen one. For reasons too complicated to be gone
into the swaggering hero has decided to spurn and abuse
his beloved. He rolls his eyes, bares his teeth and makes
rude gestures at her, driving her out of his life.
Baby's dad ouch?
****
Sony's
CID Special Bureau is getting supremely swanky in
mid-life. The mid-air stunts this were to die for. Fortunately
no one died. But I must say, CID is the only show
that makes a concerted effort to bring a certain professionalism
and gloss into the presentation.
On a more grounded note, the ever-efficient Srinivas Jain
walked the talk with Mumbai's top cop AN Roy asking the
frankest of questions about the future of bar girls and
underworld activities in Bollywood with minimum ostentation.
The
same night I watched Mandira Bedi's tea-pot turn into a
snake on Zee's Mano Ya Na Mono.
Makes you wonder which is more dangerous, cop talk or snake
pots.
