November 24, 2007 at 12:04 pm · Filed under bollywood
To be honest, I didn’t really expect much from this director’s flick ever since he gave us Chocolate, which is probably the biggest rip-off in the history of Bollywood, I might add, not just the Usual Suspects bit, but the entire album is testimony to Pritam’s thieving capabilities.
But Vivek Agnihotri surprises me with Goal. Indeed, there are factual errors. Yes, it’s dramatic. And it might be the worst football flick to hit Bollywood. But - credit be given where it’s due - it somehow works, without evoking many yawns.
The plot is rather similar to Harimohan Paruvu’s ‘The Men Within’, except that - and this is an act of cinematic bravery in Bollywood - it’s based on football and not cricket, and based out of UK. Shaan (Arshad Warsi) is the captain of the Southall United Football Club, in a community that’s as British as the Old Pakistani Consulate area in Dubai. Yes, they’ve got Pakis, Bongs (east-Pakis?) and Indians who come together to unite in their passion for the game. Asians in the UK. Supposedly, victims of racism - or so we’re made to believe. Well, atleast that’s the driving force behind Southall’s thirst to win. It’s not about football - make no mistake.
And we thought, they were actually trying to save the ground. The Southall Chairman, in an ‘emotional’ moment, dies of an attack while Shaan is driving him home. Shaan sees the body go still, stops the car, the corpse’s head turns around, and the smart-ass midfielder is absolutely convinced that the man is dead. He didn’t feel the need to check the wrist for pulse, or anything of the sorts. Just breaks into tears, the director screams ‘cut’, and the next scene - the funeral - is already halfway through. Wow. How convenient.
Suddenly, the folks realize that they need a coach. Enter Tony (Boman Irani), who - for some ‘inexplicable’ reason - is trying to hide his identity. He agrees - after a few minutes of persuasion - and gets to work immediately.
So Shaan’s family is small and content. Wife Jenny runs a restaurant that fries Kababs, although spice has little place in the joint. Sister Rumaana (Bipasha Basu) is rather attractive, just out of college, a medical degree, and the new physio for the Southall team.
What the team need, however, is a striker. So, Coach promptly walks across to Aston and throws in a desi carrot or two, nearly saying ‘join us son, for here is where you belong’. To whom, you ask? Why, Sunny (John Abraham), of course, who is ridiculed - or he thinks he is - because he’s called a Paki. That’s bad enough for him to throw a few punches. But the striker isn’t joining yet, he needs a team, not a circus, he says. And that’s that.
Until, of course, Aston pick their team and Sunny’s name doesn’t figure. And folks capitalize on the racism issue. Colour. Coach makes the kid sweat for about 10 minutes in the rain, and he’s convinced. Southall it is.
Right, so with the new striker in place, Southall start winning. Football is a team sport, I heard? So one, good striker makes it a winning team? Heck, whatever. Marks to Agnihotri for making this ridiculous idea look a tad convincing on screen, and more marks to John and Arshad for making the viewer believe it all. All in all, worth a watch.
And the flaws, criminal ones they are. If only Goal had remained a ‘football flick’, we’d have loved it. Instead, there are shitloads of factual errors. Professional footballers, for the record, do NOT get drunk every night. Man United’s dressing room isn’t open to the general public, and is certainly not open to a Old Pakistani Consulate Southall soccer team. Paki girls don’t call their brothers ‘Bhaiyya’ as much as they’d call them ‘Bhaijaan’. A hairline fracture to the nose doesn’t result in fatality.
And hey, what was that? A tournament that lasts atleast seven months? Because - at the start of the it - Mrs. Warsi goes, “I’m pregnant”. She watches the finals with a stomach and a half. Right. And I’m President.
Yes, there is the typical Bollywood overdramatization too. Background score sets it up, Coach mumbles a few ‘inspirational’ words, and everything was done to evoke patriotism minus Vande Mataram going off in the background.
And the dilutions. A Qawalli, as absurd as it gets. The sub-plots. The father-son-relationship that ‘drives’ the climax. Chak De was that subtle recipe which had the right amount of ingredients, blended together extremely well. Goal, in contrast, is EVERY possible ingredient chucked in.
In spite of the drawbacks, if you are still recovering from the OSO-Saawariya trauma, then go watch Goal, atleast to bring back some faith in cinema. For the men, there’s the option of watching how Bollywood makes a mockery of soccer. For the women, there’s John and there’s testosterone.
Maybe it’s wrong to compare Goal with Chak De, but I will - sue me - and I tell you, while Boman-SRK comparisons can be made - because the Parsi actor has dome brilliantly well - the overall product is a couple of notches below Shimit Amin’s masterstroke. Arshad’s honest performance and John’s eye-candy help it along, but a hit it’s not.
And Bips, as she rightly self-proclaims, is very sexy. Ergo, watchable.
November 20, 2007 at 1:56 am · Filed under bollywood
Remember this Koffee with Karan clip, where Farah Khan suggests that film critics are retards, albeit in a lighter vein? And then, the same critics went all over the internet blasting her?
Personally, if she thinks that Om Shamti Om will improve things with the critics, she’s rather overoptimistic. Some flicks are destined to be bad. OSO, however, had potential to be a good, run-of-the-mill entertainer - the paisa vasool types that we all enjoy, a mix of masala and masti. And for the first half, it did, before deteriorating to forgetville in the second.
Yes Ms. Khan, thou hast committed a crime in ruining what could’ve been a good flick.
1970s - Om Prakash (SRK) is a struggling junior artist, in love with Shantipriya (Deepika Padukone) who is, to say the least, a star. She hogs the billboards, the premiers, everything. Om is, undeniably, crazy about her. As if talking to her poster wasn’t enough, Ms. Khan lets us in on the ‘finer’ details - junior-artist saves Shanti from a fire, mouths gibberish while she talks to him, and even does the ‘what-makes-her-happy-makes-me-happy’ act, because hey - Shanti is married to producer Mukesh Mehra (Arjun Rampal).
And to make things worse, she’s pregnant. When she goes, “I’m pregnant”, Mukesh goes, “What? How? When?”, and we start to wonder - did he, or did he not? First signs of a poorly written dialogue, incidentally, leaving it to SRK to carry it off.
Oh, the spoofs are awesome throughout. Deepika can dance, and she’s got eyes that captivate with a capital C. Too bad for her, and her Shanti, that Mukesh doesn’t think much of them anymore. The kid is a disaster for the actress, so - while saner men might have discussed an abortion - Mehra has nothing to do with such logic. Homicide, right away, as he burns a whole set and Shanti in it.
Yes, you guessed right, Om is at the scene, and tries to save her, but the Mehra henchmen arrive and ‘take care’ of the guy. Oui, he dies too.
And, in a ‘brilliant masterstroke’ of coincidence, the audience is slapped baited fed stuffed with the idea that SRK dies at the same hospital where another child is born. Re-birth. Apparently, in Farah Khan’s Bible, re-birth needs some kind of physical proximity, the rest of the logic be damned.
So, why am I bitching about logic in this masala flick? Because, really, if it stuck to being a masala-flick, I’d enjoy it.
Instead, it crumbles downhill as it gets more serious and ‘intense’. The dialogues get more predictable, and as SRK realizes his past, the audience realize their mistake. OSO gets a tad boring, and if it wasn’t for SRK and his mere screen presence, it certainly would’ve sunk.
By the way, there are goofs. And rip-offs. To begin with, security at the sets, back in the 70s, didn’t have the grey uniform with red straps. Apparently, in Farah Khan’s 1970, almost everyone have sideburns and checkered trousers. Also, an explosion sends SRK flying a hundred meters out of a building, but he lands as safe as a cat, and gets up immediately with hardly a limp. Perhaps he’s a superhero after all.
Taran Adarsh, in one of his shit reviews, suggested that a movie should enlighten us. Well, OSO does enlighten us to one fact. Deepika Padukone’s make up isn’t affected one bit by a surrounding fire. Not at all. There’s fire all around her, she’s running and screaming, but not a drop of sweat, and the make-up - intact. Worthy of an Oscar ramp-walk. Damn.
Now, the lines. Remember ‘The Alchemist?’. Remember Paulo Coelho? And this famous quote, ‘When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you get it?’. Right, so the OSO dialogue-writer apparently loves this quote. Takes it, translates it - literally - and sprinkles it all around the script.
And there are a set of scenes in OSO where the reborn Om enacts the whole Shantipriya murder scene to remind Mehra of the crime. Hamlet, anyone?
While on the subject of rebirth, the ‘realization’ bit was very Karan-Arjunish, I’ll tell you that. Worse, SRK’s shift from Om-2K to Om-70 was rather abrupt. Like, he suddenly realized that’s he’s someone else - and started to believe it from the word go. And hey, they’ve also ripped this scene.
You see, I can go on with the flaws, but I’ll stop right here.
Credit ought to be given where it’s due, and I’ll be honest, sitting through the songs, this was vintage Farah at her choreographic best. The spoofs, like I suggested earlier, were awesome, and while the Manoj Kumar bit might have seemed overdone, as long as it contributes to good humor, we’d buy it.
Double credit to SRK for making this believable, and for saving this near-disastrous ship from sinking. In Shreyas Talpade and Kirron Kher, King Khan finds an able support cast, and they not only make this ride bearable, but their natural expressions leave little to criticize. Arjun Rampal treads into territory I’d safely call ‘overacting’, but hey, he’s always been more hunk than actor.
Right, and the dame. Fine, so Deepika Padukone is hot. H-O-T. I agree. She can dance, the babe can swing her lovely hips, I second and third that. And … er … act? Perhaps, she can. She’s not really the next-best-thing in Bollywood - no - but her expressions are fine, she’s got a killer-bod and a killer-smile, and I’m even willing to forgive the fact that this chick who lives down the street steals my nickname. Everyone know the real Sandy anyway.
We digress - just like the movie did, from humor to intensity, where it shuts itself down. Nice try folks, but skip the second half and you might just like this.
And Farah, maybe I’m half a critic. That makes me half-retarded. Your flick was half-fun, wasn’t it? So, would you be half-kind and half-honest, and sweetheart, give me a half-refund dammit?
And maybe I’ll just half-sue you for half the crap. Next time you publicize your flick so much, make sure it’s got meat. Half-cooked ain’t edible.
