Himmatwala

Starring: Ajay Devgn, Tamanna, Mahesh Manjrekar, Paresh Rawal

At: DT Cinemas & others

Rated: 4.5/10

There is that ageold Ramgarh and an angrezon ke zamane ka, well, ticket collector; then there is a sher, a sherawali, a Sher Singh and, if you’ve still not had enough of it, a dialogue explaining why Project Tiger came into being (hero tells the sher ‘itna maroonga ki 20 saal baad samaj mein ayega Project Tiger kyun hua’).

Then there is Ajay Devgn too, in those big but not white shoes of the incorrigible Jitendra, doing all the maar dhar and mukkabaazi as uncomfortably as Sunny Deol would, say, do a tathaiya tathaiya ho dance (he even punches a tiger into submissiveness!); there is Tamanna too, with her hunter and I-soooo-hate-gareebs persona which is not a patch on Sridevi’s vivacious screen presence, or for that matter, even her thunder thighs! This one has all the curves and Karisma-like features taking her nowhere except on to the latka-jhatkas around those matkas.

The abla naaris also make a comeback with mother dear (of course in a white sari) giving glycerin a run for its money and a sister who gets beaten up regularly by her pati without raising her head even once!

Welcome to the dismal 1980s with an even more dismal dash of 2013. Yes, you need courage to sit through such unplugged and overt kitsch, concocted by Sajjid Khan with a bravado which even his hero sports with apparent embarrassment.

And if you thought this one would make you laugh more than it makes you cry, you couldn’t have been more ridiculous than, say Mahesh Manjrekar, who plays an evil sarpanch with hardly an evil bone worth its marrow in his countenance. He is a walkover to our marauding hero who can turn iron bars upside down, fight with 10-ton temple bells, take on the tiger and, of course, throw every muscleman in the vicinity with just a punch in the air.

Himmatwala 2013 would have been great if it had hinged on humour through and through. Sajjid does not feel the need to laugh so much, so he limits himself to a few out of the box dialogues like “arre, 80s hai, sari ka pallu phad ke baandh do”.

When the Jitendra-Sridevi starrer had become a hit, there was no choice for the audiences. They didn’t know any better. But today, meaningful cinema, thoughtful cinema, hi-tech cinema, humour, drama, action and emotion have gained adulthood. Today, there is hardly anyone who can sit through this and not feel the need to get tested by a shrink.

The only good factor around Sajjid’s misadventure is the tribute a delightful Paresh Rawal pays to the largely unfeted Kader Khan who’s humour and sense of timing is yet to get the kudos it always deserved. Rawal, a mighty actor in his own right, does well here to remind you of Kader Khan through his demeanour and dialogue delivery. His puppy cute hairdo adds to the persona of a sidekick he plays in this one. But Rawal is not the central character of this film, and, Himmat-wala not a movie that can talk itself out of the quicksand of ridiculousness it has thrown itself into.