Review: BUDDHA IN A TRAFFIC JAM

Buddha Fails Drive Test, Creates Traffic Jam


zero stars 


Mini Review:

An arse is just an arse even though you call it a derriere. This film pretends to understand all kinds of problems and then offers solutions that are so laughable you don't even feel road rage that could smash Buddha's windscreen.

Main Review:

The movie starts with a title slide for the video: Bastar 2000 BC and there is a black and white video of a tall, rake-thin man chopping wood with an iron ax. The film then morphs into Bastar 2014 and there's still a tall, rake-thin man chopping wood with a wooden ax. So things haven't changed for the Bastar tribals. Before the thought 'maybe they like it that way' pops in your head you are taken to a title slide called, 'Chapter One: I am a Bitch'

You choke over the coffee and watch drunk MBAs from Indian Institute Of Business (they claim to be the best business institutes of the country) smoking ciggies and other things while share banal ideas and then their friend suddenly begins to sing: I'm a bitch, my dad is rich... Instead of guffawing at such needy attention grabbing drunkenness, the MBAs seem to like it as if it were concert of the year. 

There's not a shred of anything original after that: politician leering at tribal wife, torturing husband, pink bra campaign (they collected bras, but did they send the delicate bits to the goons who blacken the faces of the singing drunk babe, the film does not say.) and wait things happen in chapters not original either: Freakanomics! Blink! Red Salute!

The pink bra social media campaign brings the focus on to young lad with accent earned via IIT and New York and now at MBA. He's Arunoday Singh. There's just one professor in a largely empty college (Anupam Kher at his unintentionally funniest best) pretending to teach how everyone needs to be corrupt for progress, the government, the naxals fighting the government and even the Bastar tribals. 

WOW! Here's the connect we were waiting for. And you don't have to have a degree to guess right here that there's a link between the naxals and the prof. We hurtle through predictability and bump into Mahie Gill. She used to be gorgeous, and possessed acting chops. Now she is simply meat, exposing her breast and faking orgasms in movies. It doesn't matter if the naxals call her the politburo puppet.

Meanwhile they remember it's an MBA college, so we get to see presentations and pitching of marketing ideas, and slides... How to save the tribals by finding funding for their pots. Wait! Painted pots? Don't the bastar tribals already sell Terracota pots and statuettes all over the world? And Dhokra art? 

The naxal philosophy is so flimsy, it was probably found on cereal boxes. 'We need a revolution.', 'Guns are our minds and thoughts are our ammunition', 'we need an army of incorruptible youth to fight the system'... and the audience is like, 'whaaaat?'

Yes, yes. Anupam Kher's nasty naxal friends want the young student leader (how did he become a student leader?) Arunoday Singh dead. And Mahie Gill finds her faked orgasm moment before she blows herself up. Literally. But that's not all. Prof says, 'We're everywhere. (We have infiltrated) The government, lawyers, doctors, your best friend, your bus driver... And we are waiting for a bloodbath on the streets...

When you stop laughing at all this nonsense you are glad the naxals operate deep in the forests and will not watch this crap or they would become turn into Sanghis. Also happy for the tribals who shun this sort of civilization and hide in the forests. 

Just because you know pet phrases like Salva Judum and Bastar and Laal Salam it doesn't mean you have a higher purpose, that you are catering to anything more than young people who can afford to buy 250 rupee popcorn. 

p.s. Maoists/Naxals are atheists, poor Buddha got embroiled in this movie to give it some sanity! Methinks a New York Bar named after him is a better bet...