DEDH ISHQIYA

Their perception: 10 stars

What we saw: Dedh stars

QUATL HUYE JAATE HAIN SMUGNESS SE!

Mukhtasir Review:

We like daastaan-e-double cross, and we love mushaairaas as much as the next person of good tarbiyat does. But the movie is smug, it cracks a joke, plays a clever card and waits for the audience to understand… tauba aisi khud-pasandi se!

Tafseel war Bayan-e-Review:

Boss, I love khalis zubaan wali Hindi. And the movie is an aural orgasm. No doubt about that.

It also has the coolest villainous shakhs to have come out of a UP based movie. Vijay Raaz is a pleasure to watch, his long locks, his shervani, his majnu with a magnum 44 persona… What a character he is! He’s crazy enough to do whatever it takes to win the girl, but does not act like he’s a cool guy playing a crazy character. Clearly outshines the zaroorat se zyada adakari dikhane waale Khalujaan. Koi Khalujaan ko samjhaaye, ki making weird faces could work in silent films, here it is like shouting at the audience, ki dekho, kya kamaal ki comedy karta hoon main. Alas, it is Arshad Warsi who is mindblowingly funny as Babban.

There are set pieces like the Mexican Standoff and the late night kiss episode that are brilliantly done…

Phir is film ke mouaine ka anjaam sirf ‘dedh’ sitaaron tak kyon seemit hai? Aapne toh badee tareefein suni hongi somwaar se hee Vishal Bhardwaj ke khair khwaahon se is film ke baare mein? Pata nahi kaun sa version inhone dekha… Yeh film jannat ka waada toh karti hai, lekin it falls short by miles. And there’s only one word that explains the ristee huyi quwwat e amal. And that fault, that hubris is: smugness  

Like a nausikhiya, like a person who just cracked a superb joke, this film waits, the story pauses, and the characters say: Look at me! I’m so cool. I said ‘penis; ten times without batting my eyelash, I introduced such cool characters like the bug-eyed, almost dead hakeem, I am so cool, I even have cool names for highway pubs. This film cracks jokes and then smugly explains the joke…

The fun of watching the movie ends when we figure out the double cross really early in the film. But then the filmmakers think audience is toh ahmak, chalo inhe thoda detail mein bata dete hain.

So they tell us why a kidnapping is being set up. They also hint at childhood love stories  in pictures, then show it as flashback. The audience can figure out by the peeling paint and the general unkemptness of the haveli, but they are not satisfied with that. They hammer the begum’s impending poverty with the villain rubbing it in not once, not twice but four times.

What is most irksome, is the desperate need to have a Tarantinoesque shootout in these art house films. Annoying because they don’t have the cojones to show pools of blood. Bullets are fired, but majaal hai ki koi mar jaaye! A man who lives by the gun hides behind glass when there’s bullets flying everywhere. How clever is that? Not once have we seen a drunk Arshad Warsi in the movie, and yet he chooses to pick up a booze bottle (where did it come from?) instead of the gun in the scene.

And although it was cool to see the nawaab with a shotgun, plunging angrily into the bullet fest, it would have been more nawabi, to have appeared with a retinue of servants carrying a chair, for the nawaab to watch the gun battle. It would be as aristocratic as could get.

Which takes us back to the beginning of the film. Why start this film with a ghisa pita joke and a scene ( http://bit.ly/1fhFxRy ) ‘inspired’ from  Blazing Saddles?  As they said in the first film: there’s a whole lot of Chutiyam Sulphate being spread in Dedh Ishqiya. Khao toh four stars, na khao toh dedh..

PS. Botox failed.