Review: KERRY ON KUTTON

This Balia Ain't Malgudi!

2 stars

Mini Review:

Remember the British Comedy Films in the ‘Carry On’ series? This film attempts just that with Balia bumpkins and serves a comedy that happily takes you into darker realms. The dialog and situations are very funny in parts, the characters are beautifully cast, but a better director would not allowed the film to meander all over the village. If you are 'Touchia gaye hain' types, then this movie isn't for you. Others can chuckle along.

Main Review:

Just like the Carry On films, the sexual content in this film has been treated with lots of humor. The situations are lewd, and yet so funny you cannot but laugh out loud.

The story has really low life characters but they are interesting. Three teenagers with raging hormones. Two boys who are stuck on the same village beauty. And the third who dreams of emulating a village rebel (the Baaghi from Balia) who became a legend for killing someone in cold blood and running away with a pedigree dog to Nepal and then becoming rich and famous in the pedigree dog sale business.

Seems dull, you’d think. But slowly you realise that the village belle Jyoti is not sweet and simple. She’s using the lads to buy her presents. ‘I’ll kiss you and even get a photo taken with you in the photo studio, but for a romp in the hay, buy me a touch phone. And when you do, I’ll make our photograph my wallpaper!’

While you watch this gobsmacked, your ideas of the idyllic village life are shattered. One hormonal lad, Suraj, is the village teacher’s son, on a short leash money wise and is unable to buy the phone. Rebuffed, he is so angry he wants to kill anyone who even looks at the object of his love. The girl in the meanwhile has moved her pretty avaricious eyes to the second hormonal lad Kerry, who has been kicked out of his home because the local men were complaining about him getting on with all the village women. He is unrepentant and grins throughout the movie, shameless about getting on with the women, age no bar. The village belle eggs this lad to buy her jewellery. And when he says that these things take time, pitts the masterji’s son, (the first boy) to have this hormonal lad beaten up. Things just escalate from there and you laugh because there is humor in ‘free desi handguns but you need money to buy bullets’ ...

The third lad (Kadambari) dreams of dogs and killing and is a friend to Kerry.

The girl has blithely moved on to someone else, and it is not shown how, but she now admires a gold necklace in the mirror. And thankfully this is done without being judgemental.

Meanwhile, you have enjoyed meeting really creepy bunch in the village: Thakur thugs (Naam mein thaakur toh bach gaya hai!), the local wedding band and their transgender dancer, the ‘Bade babu’, the dads of the lads (the village teacher and the pig farmer), the old man who owns pedigree labradors…

Had this script been handled by someone who had more finesse, the film would have been really ‘badass’. The beauty of the local language and its casual vileness is retained and stuff that does go down well with urban sensibilities (your mum ran away with someone hornier than I) might raise eyebrows. But even when the story is told rather roughly, the darkness of the script is worth the meandering.

And I’m still laughing at the scene where the tranquil sleepy village is rudely awakened by the hut imploding when the two teenagers trying to get it on dislodge the central bamboo holding the hut up! And I’m still grinning at Jackie Shroff’s ‘Teri Meherbaaniyan’ inspiring a lad’s life ambition of dog-napping…

Watch it if you can stomach very casual murder and avarice and love in a village that is not Malgudi.