CINETALK

breathless treatise on how to create a prolonged climax without losing the theme’s bearings. The film has been shot as an extended crime thriller.

There is room in the commodious narration for disgruntled characters from a multitude of Islamic countries living in the US. But at the core, there are just three characters - the terrorist, his pregnant and rebellious wife and the expose-driven journalist, played by Saif, Kareena and Vivek respectively.

Vivek plays the progressive American Muslim with a resolute understanding of the underlying politics that plagues his character’s soul. But Saif is a disappointment. In a role that could have been a career-defining event, the actor pitches a performance as a not-so-reluctant terrorist that simply swims on the surface.

There’s no attempt by the actor to understand the workings of Ehsaan’s mind or to revisit Ehsaan’s roots. What we see is a confused rather than a politically and religiously conflicted soul tormented by an ideological crisis.

Where is the mean-spirited guy who exploited and cheated Urmila Matondkar in Ek Hasina Thi?

Finally Kurbaan belongs to Kareena Kapoor. In her most consistently-pitched performance to date, she pulls out all stops to play a betrayed wife with splendid sensitivity. Kareena accommodates her radiant beauty into an utterly credible character and performance. Much of the credit for Kareena’s compelling performance must go to the written word. Anurag Kashyap and Niranjan Iyenger enter the characters’ dark and anguished world with words that avoid rhetorical excesses. However, a key classroom discussion on Islam and the Western world is ruined because even the American students speak in Hindi!

“Kurbaan” shows a deep understanding of the bonds that bind and separate the Islamic world from the West. It is a critically important work because it spells out uncomfortable truths in a cinematic language that’s riveting and resonant without resorting to extravagant flourishes and fireworks.

Not to be missed.

A sweet, simple romantic tale

Film: Aao Wish Karein

Cast: Aftab Shivdasani, Aamna Shariff, Johny Lever, Rati Agnihotri

Director: Glenn Baretto

Aao Wish Karein is a sweet and simple film with its heart in place. For a fantasy film set in contemporary times, producer Aftab Shivdasani and director Glen Baretto concentrate on keeping the narrative simple rather than relying upon visual effects (VFX).

Loosely inspired by Tom Hanks starrer Big (1988), Aao Wish Karein is set in Simla and is about a 12 year-old-boy who wishes to grow up fast as he is tired of being considered a kid by his crush (Aamna Shariff).

Urged by his friend and philosopher (Johny Lever), he makes a wish and it comes true -- he turns into a 20-something young man (Aftab Shivdasani) the next morning.

There is no over-the-top act, no vulgarity or any mandatory jokes around manhood in the film. Instead, it focuses on the quest of this boy who wishes to woo his lady love.

This is where Aftab throws a pleasant surprise. While being good in comedy is a given for him, Aao Wish Karein gives him ample opportunity to showcase his emotional side as well.

He does well on all aspects in a role that required him to walk a thin rope. The character requires him to have the innocence and purity of a 12-year-old boy even when he has turned 22. Aftab keeps his facial expressions, mannerisms and body language in check.

Aamna, in her second film after

Aloo Chaat, looks pretty and is extremely likeable. While the first hour mainly requires her to give beautiful smiles, it’s the second half where she is required to emote as well. Watch out for the pre-climax scene where she is shocked at the marriage altar. Or the one where she realises that she is in love with Aftab.

There are heart-warming scenes like these which give a consistent feel to Aao Wish Karein. The one where the young kid is witness to his dream getting shattered and the song that goes along with it is very well done. Not that the film is devoid of comic moments. The ones where Aftab reveals his real identity to his friend, his encounter with a call girl, the first time when he proposes to Aamna and later when he takes her to his bedroom do bring in a smile, if not make you fall off the seat.

Any shortcomings? Well, once the AftabAamna love story is sealed, there isn’t much movement. The movie goes off-tangent with Aftab looking at solving his family problems. Thankfully, the movie does come back on track, hence arriving at a convincing end. The only ‘wish’ one makes as a viewer? If only the makers had promoted this film a little better at least, Aao Wish Karein would have been more visible than it is today.

Joginder Tuteja

Completely frivolous

Film: De Dana Dan

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty, Katrina Kaif, Paresh Rawal, Sameera Reddy Director: Priyadarshan

In our school days we were taught nonsense rhymes that were incoherent, jumbled words strung together trendily. De Dana Dan is a 150-minute-long nonsense rhyme. Its power to mock every rule of sensible and intelligent filmmaking simply infuriates and exasperates you to a point of complete breakdown of communication between cinema and art.

The characters are fairly funny to begin with. Akshay Kumar as Archana Puran Singh’s slave-cum-driver is the portrait of anguished hilarity. He brings to his part of the servile toy-boy a kind of facile fury that flaunts an easygoing sense of self-deprecating comedy.

Suniel Shetty as Akshay’s partner in the nonsense rhyme scheme seems to enjoy the comicality initially...At least he’s relaxed until the frames begin to fill up with more characters than Noah’s Ark and the spaceship invented to save mankind in Roland Emmerich’s 2012 combined.

There are more characters romping in confusion in De Dana Dan than in any of Priyadarshan’s over-crowded comedies. Two marriageable women (Katrina Kaif and Sameera Reddy) with secret lovers, their harassed fathers, Tinu Anand and Manoj Joshi, an avaricious father-in-law-to-be (Paresh Rawal) and his son (Chunky Pandey), a tart (Neha Dhupia) willing to sleep with anyone who pays. And that includes poor

Vikram Gokhale who looks out of place in the boisterous goings-on.

De Dana Dan is like a jabbering juggernaut hurling with its fast-talking, constantlymoving army of characters into a region of utter chaos. The screenplay throws forward a gaggle of incoherent gags, which suggest that the melee of characters are more distressed by their financial than emotional condition in life.

Soon we, the audience, cease to figure out what the characters are up to or how they are inter-related, if at all.

Just go with the flow. At times, literally because at the climax we have the characters swimming and spluttering in a flood of water let loose from a bombed terrace tank in a luxury hotel.

Who planted the bomb? Is it the funny hitman Johnny Lever? Or the funnier assassin Asrani roaming around the hotel trying to hardsell a corpse in a coffin?

All this, mind it, is supposed to be the summit of hilarity. The jokes depend almost entirely on the actors’ ability to say the atrocious lines as though they mean it. Some like Akshay Kumar and Paresh Rawal succeed. Others don’t.

At the end of the day, this comedy of incredible mistaken identities and monstrous errors of judgment coaches us on the meaning of ‘slapstick’...literally. Everyone slaps the person closest to him or her regardless of the reason or the repercussion.

Zany or just plain witless? You decide.

If this is the present and future of mainstream Hindi entertainment then we need to do some serious thinking on the way a coterie of super-successful directors and actors have redefined entertainment to a state of utter inanity.

De Dana Dan is not a film. It’s a series of skits strung together to convey a sense of baggy fun and frivolous entertainment.

Subhash K. Jha