Film Review: A streak of cynical realism undercuts all of Jolly LLB's jollities

Jolly LLB opens with a hit-and-run accident involving a drunk rich kid in a Land Cruiser and several poor men sleeping on a Delhi pavement. The pavement-dwellers die, a case is filed against the rich kid, but his family hires the sharpest, most hotshot lawyer in town – and gets the boy acquitted. The case is closed. Until a struggling young advocate, newly arrived from a small town, decides to file a PIL to have the case re-opened.

Sounds like a dully predictable tale of good-versus-evil? Certainly there’s no doubt that Jolly LLB is a film with its heart in the right place. But director Subhash Kapoor manages to leaven his conscience-laden tale with a healthy dose of laughter. And crucially, he gives us a protagonist more complicated and believable than, for instance, the unswayable paragon of Ferrari ki Sawaari, a charming but somewhat fairy-tale-ish film that was also about honesty.

Jagdish Tyagi, aka Jolly (Arshad Warsi) is a decent-enough guy, but his small-town simplicity is not something he’s proud of. He’s made the move from Meerut to Delhi because he has ambitions. He wants to be somebody. In fact, he wants to be somebody like Tejinder Rajpal (Boman Irani) — the kind of lawyer whose arrival in court causes a stir. When Jolly decides to file the PIL asking for reinvestigation in the Rahul Deewan case, it isn’t only the public interest that’s on his mind: he knows it’s a quick route to media attention and potential fame. It just so happens that this pits him against his hero Rajpal – and Rajpal’s heroism starts swiftly and surely to unravel.

The rest of the film is about how a novice like Jolly meets the multiple challenges thrown his way by a riled Rajpal: challenges not just of the head, but also of the heart. What makes Jolly LLB more than a standard-issue David vs Goliath story is that it understands the difficulties of retaining a moral compass in a world which seems to reward cleverness, not honesty. For the small-time lawyer whose ‘desk’ is a rickety table outside the District Court (with his typewriter chained to it for fear even that be stolen), the stakes are low and the temptations great. Is it surprising that such a man should measure even his own defeats by degrees of nuksaan and faayda?

Kapoor’s last film, Phans Gaye Re Obama (2010), a quirky tale of a recession-hit gang of dacoits, was spread needlessly thin across a convoluted plot and too many characters. Jolly LLB – barring some utterly out-of-synch songs and an uninteresting romance track involving Amrita Rao – sticks assuredly with its main plotline: the unconnected rookie lawyer, a minnow trying to fight the biggest fish in the pond—and having to figure out if he’s going to take the bait.

Warsi and Irani, the consummate performers they are, keep us more than engaged in the twists and turns of the battle. But the character who really brings the courtroom to life is Saurabh Shukla’s eccentric Justice Tripathi—not averse to asking for the odd favour, but sharply aware of where the buck stops, a man who can be a stickler for the rules but can also bend them when it seems absolutely necessary.

When Kapoor does move our gaze away from the central courtroom drama, it is to cast a gently satirical eye on the absurd ironies of the surrounding reality. There is the great scene where a havaldar known as Guruji (Sanjay Mishra) sits down to auction posts at different police stations, with the "upar se order” being only that the bidding start at 20 lakhs and the post go to a “clean image wala afsar”. There is the police bodyguard who arrives, on court orders, to ensure Jolly’s security—a doddering old man who can barely bear the weight of his rifle. There is the unremarked, completely realistic moment when it is made clear that even to fight the good fight, you must pay a couple of bribes—but chalo, you can do it at a discount rate.

There is pleasure in watching the underdog win, and the film does not deny us that. But when Boman Irani’s raging Rajpal shakes his fist and declares he’ll be back, there is something about this film that makes him more believable than we’d like. There’s a streak of cynical realism that undercuts all of Jolly LLB's jollities.

Published on Firstpost.

Film Review: Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi

It’s great to have a mainstream Hindi movie abandon the unreality of an eternally youthful, size zero universe for a love story that centres around two 40-something adults. Set in the context of the regular airbrushed Bollywood romance, the farts-and-all reality of Bela Bhansali Sehgal’s directorial debut is nothing short of radical. But barring a few warm and funny moments, Shirin Farhad ki Toh Nikal Padi is a bit of a damp squib.

The story—written by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who is Sehgal’s brother—revolves around a 45-year-old Parsi bachelor called Farhad Pastakia (Boman Irani). Farhad really wants to get married, but every alliance falls through when the potential bride discovers that he works as a salesman in a bra and panty shop.

So Farhad waits, patiently writing letters to Indira Gandhi on behalf of a deranged uncle who insists that she “married the wrong Firoz”, even more patiently dealing with non-stop phone calls from his overfond mother Nargis (Daisy Irani), and hoping that his luck will change.

And it seems to, when the feisty Shirin (Farah Khan) walks into his underwear showroom, and then into his life. But then Nargis decides—for reasons involving a water tank—that she does not like Shirin, and life gets complicated.

This rather slender plot might have made for an appetising enough morsel, if only Sehgal didn’t stuff it so full of unfunny toilet humour and silly escapades involving nutty old Parsis: there are only so many farting jokes and gun-toting bawas one can take.
In recent times, the happy-go-lucky Parsis of Khatta Meetha have been replaced by the slightly mad ones of Sooni Taraporewala’s Little Zizou and the sinister ones of Homi Adajania’s Being Cyrus

Sehgal’s version—squabbling housing society nutters—maintains the Hindi cinema fiction of the fully self-contained Parsi universe, where everyone only drinks Duke’s Mangola and Raspberry and your favourite food can either be salli boti or dhansak.

The bubble provides its moments of insight: when Farhad, trying hard to show how much his tastes match Shirin’s, agrees that ‘Ranbir Roshan’ is a wonderful actor, the film opens up the possibility that there is still a real Mumbai uncolonised by Bollywood. But mostly, the airless Shirin Farhad world, where everything from living and socialising to jobs and hospitals is tightly enclosed in a Parsi setting, feels a trifle unreal.

Sehgal’s film is clearly aiming for the warm family humour of the Hrishikesh Mukherjee variety, but it’s simply not funny enough. The bra-panty and fart jokes aren’t that great, and the Parsi meetings breaking into battles get really repetitive.

The home scene isn’t sparkling either. Daisy Irani as Farhad’s irrepressible mother and Shammi as his quiet, occasionally giggly grandmother are fun enough to watch—though they don’t come anywhere close to the marvelousness of Dolly Ahluwalia and Kamlesh Gill in Vicky Donor.

Shirin’s family scene—the coma-ridden dad, the single sacrificing auntie —though it manages to depict difficult real-life circumstances with a rare lightness of touch, is a bit boring. There are also several completely unnecessary songs, which do nothing for the film except slacken the already slow pace.

The pleasure of watching choreographer-director Farah Khan gyrate expertly to steps we usually might see her heroines carry out isn’t enough to compensate for the impatience we feel as yet another song interrupts the already minimal proceedings of plot.
The central performances are what keep the film afloat. Boman Irani does a fine job, playing his everyman character with the perfect blend of helplessness and optimism, and achieving a believable Parsi-middle-classness without ever overplaying his hand. It’s a joy to watch his quiet transformation as he wakes up to the happy realization that love may not, after all, have passed him by.

Farah Khan, too, is perfectly cast, and manages to keep up her side of the boat by playing Shirin as what one imagines is a version of herself: outspoken, no-nonsense, impulsive and warm. One wishes they had a tighter, funnier film to wrap around them. Hopefully there’ll be a next time.

Read this review on Firstpost.com, here.

Film Review: Ferrari ki Sawaari is more than a feel-good ride

Ferrari ki Sawaari tugs unerringly at middle class parental heartstrings. But it’s not just a warm, fuzzy, feel-good film. It is also an affecting take on corruption, honesty and hope.

A coaching camp at Lords; a cricket-crazy little boy who’d give anything to go; a father who’d do anything to send him but doesn’t have the money; a grouchy grandfather who thinks his son is filling the child’s head with useless fantasies. Add to the mix a wedding planner called Babboo Didi, a goonda-politician, his stupid son and a Ferrari that must find its way to the stupid son’s wedding—and you have the ingredients of Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s new production.

The makers of the Munnabhai films have managed to produce another crowd-pleasing moral tale, cleverly wrapped in a cloak that’s all sweetness and light. At the centre of Ferrari ki Sawaari‘s charmed (and most of the time, charming) universe is Rusy Deboo, the sort of good guy who when faced with a particularly bad traffic jam, doesn’t honk or lose his temper or even try to take another route out—he gets off his little scooter and helps clear the road himself. When Rusy distractedly cuts through a red light while listening to his 12-year-old son Kayo’s excited account of a cricket match, he drives to the traffic cops to pay the fine. “But why have you come here when no one saw you?” asks the bemused hawaldar. “Someone did see me,” says Rusy. “My son.” As he explains it to the almost irritated havaldar, “Jo dekhega, vahi seekhega na (What he sees is what he’ll learn, no) ?” there is a quiet belief that shines through his gentle, bespectacled eyes, an inherent sense of right and wrong which derives its strength from the purest, simplest desire in the world—to be an example to his son.

But being an honest government official fairly low down in the administrative hierarchy—head clerk, Worli RTO—doesn’t really let Rusy do everything he’d like for his little boy. He can just about manage to replace Kayo’s broken bat in time for a crucial match, but money is still very much an object—and the lack of it an insurmountable obstacle to Kayo’s dreams.

Rajkumar Hirani’s story—turned into a screenplay by the producer-director team of Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Rajesh Mapuskar—tugs unerringly at middle class parental heartstrings. In the shiny new world of post-liberalisation India, where new temptations glitter at every turn, desire can be a constant, unavoidable companion. Spun as a positive thing that pushes you to do better, this is what gets called aspiration—but the desire to fulfil your child’s every wish can also lead you down a thorny path. Ferrari ki Sawaari takes this double bind as the basis of a warm, fuzzy, feel-good film that is also an affecting take on corruption, honesty and hope.

The central characters may seem formulaic, black and white—Rusy is too nice and almost unbelievably honest (“Raja Harishchandra,” as the cop laughingly calls him), his son Kayo is super-talented and super-adorable, his father Behram’s bad-tempered negativity is unredeemed (until it turns around completely and becomes its opposite)—but this is just not the sort of film where you should go looking for complicated shades of grey. It’s the sort of film in which goodness is tested by a big bad world, and even the baddies, mostly, turn out to have a heart.

And yet this film contains, for my money, one of the most powerfully real bad guys I’ve seen recently— a man whose brand of evil is more recognizable to most of us than the stylish gangsters and murderous thugs who usually make up the gallery of Hindi cinema villains. The superb Paresh Rawal brings his dependable acuity to playing the despicable Dilip Dharmadhikari: and this baddie is profoundly heartless. A man who could cheat his closest friend out of his best chance at fame and fortune, FKS makes it very clear, is always going to be the sort of man who gets an ‘urgent phone call’ when someone unimportant needs his help.

Meanwhile, the embodiments of goodness—Sharman Joshi and Ritvik Sahore—play father and son with such heartwarming ease that it’s hard to be truly annoyed by their saccharine-sweet relationship. And Boman Irani channels every ounce of his inner Parsi into the grizzly, gone-to-seed Behram, perfectly embodying the cynicism of a man who’s spent most of his life working up an impotent anger. Irani also gets to deliver, in the half-muttered tones of a crabby old man, the film’s most cracklingly sharp lines: from “Yeh cricketer log nahi hai, yeh salesman log hai, tel-sabun bechte rehte hain (These guys aren’t cricketers, they’re salesmen—go around selling oil and soap)” to “Jab safed log ke desh mein recession hota hai toh aisa scheme nikalta hai, camp-vamp ka (When white people have a recession in their countries, they come up with these schemes: camps and suchlike.)”

These are deeply affecting performances, but admirably, they retain enough lightness to keep the film from descending into full-on maudlin melodrama. Some of the other actors do a good job, too: Deepak Shirke and Aakash Dabhade are likeable as the buffoonish duo who’ve managed to lose their boss’s Ferrari , and Seema Bhargava is marvelous as the rough-tongued but warm-hearted Babboo Didi.

The film is not flawless. The Parsi-ness is kept light enough—while serving as an easy way to create a character who can be believably lower middle class and comfortably English-speaking and invested in education. But the section involving the Ferrari is overlong, and made more annoying by the drawn-out, caricaturish depiction of the Marathi politician’s family. The songs are pointless and detract from the already slow pace of the latter half: Vidya Balan’s “Surmai si chaal, chikni paamplet se gaal” cannot make her laavani item number feel less foisted-on, and the flying Ferrari song has a Cartoon Network-cum-cheesy-fantasy air that really isn’t in synch with the film.

But this film has a lovely way of connecting the generational and historical dots—I absolutely loved the black and white stills that flash back to Boman Irani’s youth, and the silent splendour of a Christmas-lit Bombay gali in which a grizzly grandfather bowls to his bright-eyed and bushy tailed grandson is enough to charm even those of us who aren’t that taken with cricket.

Published on Firstpost.

Film Review - Well Done Abba

When Truth Turns Trite

TRISHA GUPTA

FILM >> WELL DONE ABBA
DIRECTOR >> SHYAM BENGAL
STARRING >> BOMAN IRANI, MINISSHA LAMBA, ILA ARUN
RATING >> * *

SHYAM BENEGAL has spent a great deal of his directorial life representing the Indian village on screen. His latest offering, a rural comedy, marks the distance he’s travelled from the intensely realist critique of patriarchy and caste in Ankur (1974), Nishant (1975) or the equally trenchant Samar (1999).

It isn’t that Benegal can’t do — or hasn’t done — comedy. But the broad buffoonery and lame jokes of Well Done Abba make one ache for the nuanced black humour of Mandi (1983) — where the travails of a house full of prostitutes formed the focus of a marvellous satire about politics and middle class morality. Or at least for the warmly humanist humour of Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008), which managed to woo urban multiplex audiences into a rural cinescape, and whose success Benegal is clearly trying to recreate. Unfortunately, Sajjanpur’s already stagey village and deliberately stock characters, now transported from north India to the Dakhani Urdu-speaking regions of Andhra Pradesh that Benegal knows well, dissolve completely into caricature here.

The main narrative — about the super-sincere Armaan Ali (Boman Irani), whose attempt to build a well on his own land under a government BPL loan scheme is thwarted by the system — might even have been alright on its own. But it is forcibly tethered to the unfunny shenanigans of Rehmaan Ali (Armaan’s beimaan twin, also played by Boman) and his wife (an irritating Ila Arun) and a saccharine-sweet romance between Armaan’s perky daughter Muskaan (Minissha Lamba doing a decent Preity-Zinta-lite) and local mechanic Arif. The lack of nuance with which issue after issue is dealt with is disappointing — the sarkari ad-like reference to the RTI Act, the appallingly flat subplot about poor Muslim girls being married off to Arab Sheikhs, the fact that Arif must be shown to be of indeterminate religious background to establish secular credentials. Benegal attempts simplicity but only achieves simplisticness.

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 14, Dated April 10, 2010