2013 may have closed on a high with Krrish 3 & Dhoom 3 roaring into public imagination, but the year tucked in a huge cache of big films by big directors and big stars, hurtling to doom with no speedbreakers whatsoever. Our film critic MEENAKSHI RAO takes you through 13 of these much touted, big budget and keenly awaited films which shocked, bewildered and even compelled movie buffs to believe that when it’s bad it’s really really bad
Culprit No 1: Zanjeer
Sorry BigB you had to see this happening
Why: Zanjeer was special, very special. Its memories should not have been tampered with so much impunity
As heartbreaks go, this one was pretty singular. As outrages go, it was second only to Ramu Ki Aag. As remakes go, there shouldn’t be any such ones. Director Apoorva lakhia went wrong with everything — from unleashing on the audience Ram Charan’s unaligned face to mutilating a powerful film which had turned Amitabh Bachchan into an iconic star for decades to come. lakhia’s crime is that he treated iconic film in the most cavalier way.
The script sucks, the story is thrown at you like garbage, the presentation is callow, the sequences unconnected and his stars so mismatched that you cringe much too often for comfort. A slap not just on Amitabh Bachchan fans but also on the history of cinema which left everyone angry: Ajit’s unforgettable swagger as the deadly Teja is mercilessly lampooned by Prakash Raj; Bindu will not forgive lakhia or Mahi Gill for showing up “Mona Darling” as a slutty, libidinous moll with no personality or oeuvre.
Biggest heartbreak: satya2
The unbearable truth
Why: Forgot to put up the mandatory board: Beware of Ramu!
The second biggest (after brazenly mutilating an iconic film like Sholay in Ramu Ki Aag) reason why Ramu should take to organic farming and detoxify his cinematic pollution or be sent to a correctional facility for directors gone awry. Satya was a near perfect, comprehensive, edgy, emotional, stunning, violent and slick film which established Ramu as the cutting edge director of bhai log films in Bollywood. Satya2, on the other hand, establishes him as the obsessive compulsive director of rolling out singularly ridiculous sequels. Not just a lifeless story but also a completely doped out Puneet Singh Ratn as the main lead and forgettable music float around in Varma’s flawed make-believe world to crippling effect.
Family disaster: YPD2
Apne to bahut tedious hotey hain
Why: Orangutan is the hero, not the three Deols!
Out of sync, terribly misplaced and the worst from the Deols jolted you into lunacy this year. Imagine! Even good old Dharmendra was so short-shrifted by director Sangeeth Siwan in this one that a crazy looking orangutan gets to do better things than him in the film. All the three Deols do more things with the orangutan than they do with each other! Humour is the ultimate casualty of this family blunder. The audience sat through this one only because, in India, apne toh apne hotey hain!
Only Himmatwala can sit through it
It’s 80s no more
Why: A blow to the original!
There is that age-old 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 in those big but not white shoes of good old Jitendra, doing all the maar dhaar and mukkabaazi as uncomfortably as Sunny Deol would, say, do a tathaiya tathaiya ho; there is Tamanna too, with her hunter and I-so-hate-gareebs persona which is no patch on Sridevi’s vivacious screen presence!
Welcome to the dismal 1980s with an even more dismal dash of 2013. Yes, you needed courage to sit through such unplugged and overt kitsch, concocted by Sajjid Khan with a bravado which even his hero sports with overt embarrassment.
Not again: Hangover III
Hang this one please
Why: No mirth in their baggage
I want Mike Tyson’s paaltu tiger to come and make a meal out of these four friends. They suck as they turn a rip-roaring comedy into a tedious soiree, high on nuisance, low on fun and devoid of comic. If it was not so annoying, it would have been embarrassing to see these four going back to Vegas with no mirth in their baggage. From the time the head of a hapless giraffe goes flying into the windscreen of a hapless motorist on a freeway, you know how the franchisee has killed the advantage the brand of Hangover had given him. If Hangover II was a mistake, Hangover III is a heinous crime. Can’t be forgiven even if Doug has been kidnapped, Chow is in kill-mode, Alan’s going to an asylum and the other two not doing much. For God’s sake, even the prostitute has reformed into a pregnant wife of a respected surgeon!
Where’s the funIJ
Ranbir’s biggest letdown: Besharam
Misguided misadventure
Why: Ranbir can’t be so besharam about going so wrong
If the youthful exuberance of Ranbir Kapoor, his stunning histrionic abilities, his screen presence, his Midas touch and his drop dead looks fail to save a film, there must be something really wrong with the script and the direction. Besharam is a classic case of both going criminally wrong. It figures high on the list of 2013 shockers mostly because one came out wondering how and why Ranbir would sign such a sorry film. It’s gauche, unhinged and also makes you ask what on earth made comeback couple Rishi and Neetu Kapoor sign such an unhappening film.
A bad family reunion this one!
X-rated: Grand Masti
What’s your tolerance quotientIJ
Why: Sex comedies make Indians stiff in the wrong place — the shoulders
The verdict on this depends on how much grossness you can take or how you manage to not cringe embarrassingly at dialogues like “Rose, Mary, Marlow” and “once upon a time I had a laura”! Stiff shouldered Indians have still not come of age to enjoy sex comedies wherein you have a Hard-dick condoming umbrellas and pumping up jewels in his underpants, where there’s a lot of creamy fizz bubbling out of coke bottles and where the heroine invites boys to her milk factory as the camera focuses on her 42 cm boobs. Director Indra Kumar may have a rocket in his pocket, but the rest of India still has problems with such hyper crotch activity.
Balan shock: Ghanchakkar
What was that all aboutIJ
Why: Exaggerated like Aiyya, unhappening like Zanjeer
Just because Vidya Balan gave stunning performances in 2012 should not have meant she would give you shockers in 2013. But she did. No one can explain especially when Ghanchakkar was a rigmarole with an unreasonable beginning and a crazy end — a thriller sans a twist! Balan as the loud, fat Punjaban housewife, was a bad caricature of, well, fat Punjabans! If the heroine strutting around in a polka dot night suit did not kill you, the end kills you completely. Something will happen, you feel — nothing ever does!
Criminal: R... Rajkumar
It’s H...Horrible!
Why: Gives you a terrible ailment called Trichotillomania which means craving to pull out own hair
One of those over the top movies with potential to make even the staunchest votary of ahimsa tear not just his hair but also that of person sitting next to him in sheer frustration. Now, who would like to buy a ticket worth Rs 400, top it up with health injurious popcorn and Pepsi at a pocket searing price and then watch an ungrown and unkempt boy trying to be a mawali adult making slurping sounds in attempts to kiss a girl who looks like his elder sister! R… Rajkumar was an assault few could bear this year. And yes, it’s not just Shahid Kapur who should take the blame for this unplugged blunder. Someone should bring out a restriction order against Prabhu Dheva directing films.
Boss is wrong
Unfit hai Boss!
Why: Behen ki lorry! Come on you can’t utter such unprintables & get away with it!
Boss, this one was alagh level ka hawwsome! Akshay trying to cash in on his earlier body of work, Akshay trying to bring out a Singham from within a Dabangg and a Rowdy Rathore from within a Joker, Akshay trying to throw attitude… not right at all. To top it, the man has a daddy hang-up, daddy has a beta-is-goonda hang-up and bhai has a villain ki behen hang-up and the villain has, God knows what hang-up. Director D’Souza “don’t angry me,” is all I can plead!
Bajatey Raho: Really!
Reason to cry
Why: It steered clear of hilarity so it sank
This year’s misguided missile. You expected humour, there was none. You expected action, there was only a hint. Why Bajatey Raho would steer clear of its own lifeline which was humour, was bewildering. A neither here nor there film caught in an unexplained bout of inanity. This despite the presence of Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shorey, Tusshar Kapoor, Ravi Kishen and Dolly Ahluwalia. Pathak was stuck to pathos, Ranvir irritatingly cantankerous and Tusshar, well, God knows why he was there at all.
Alcoholic haze: Aashiqui2
No patch on Aashique
Why: Alcohol hero, doormat heroine!
In 1990, the Bhatts created a musical sensation riding on the voice of Kumar Sanu and fresh faces of Rahul Roy and Anu Kapoor. The film became a cult with pulsating numbers and love story. Though the songs of Aashiqui 2 tugged at your heartstrings too, they were nowhere near the original blockbuster. The unexplained presence of alcohol was the main lead and the end an unexplained disaster. There was a lot of mismatch in the middle too, starting with the missing chemistry between the lead pair. She looks beautiful but static, he intense but not for her. There could have been only two reasons for this one to work: Chemistry and music — one is missing and the other okay.
After Earth, Nothing!
Father-son duo too alien
Why: Shyamalan should have had the 6th sense to not make this one
The most inane, stuck-up spatial sci-fi in a long-long while, After Earth fails to show pretty much anything that makes for a sustainable film — its emotions are wrongly undertoned, action is missing in action, adventure is as flat as Katirna Kaif’s stomach (without the allure) and its pace seems to have been heavily drugged to unexplained paralysis — like the one the otherwise happening Will Smith suffers in most of the movie, as does his son.