Sunday, December 13, 2015

Ranbir Kapoor Urban Employment Generation Scheme

The star-power of the Gandhi family. An unending supply of funds courtesy the national exchequer. The glamour of economists like Jean Dreze & Amartya Sen. A proven intellectual like Dr.Manmohan Singh.
All of these contributed to create the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
Now, replace . . .
1. Gandhi family with Kapoor family
2. National Exchequer with Sajid Nadiadwala
3. Jean Dreze & Amartya Sen with Deepika Padukone
4. Dr Manmohan Singh with Imtiaz Ali
What you get is Tamasha. A movie that makes you question the very purpose of film-making. The movie was very thought-provoking in the sense that there were umpteen moments throughout when I would sit and wonder - why did they have to make this movie? And every single time, I came up with the same answer - MNREGS.
Imtiaz Ali, by now, has a reputation as a good director. The incumbent Kapoor is Ranbir. Glamour-flavour of the season, of course Deepika. And of course, Sajid Nadiadwala for money. So now they hunted for a plot. Of course, boy-accidentally-meets-girl-in-exotic-foreign-location. That is ok, but hasn't it been done to death? Ummm, ok. So let's make it intellectuaaal (Banno tera swagger lage saaaxy). We'll try to intellectualize emotions. You know, both will be common folks. But they'll meet at this god-awesome exotic locale and be completely filmy characters. Then they'll come back to India and become normal again. Then there'll be emotional turmoil. Oh yes and plenty of scope for "acting", at least for Ranbir.
I understand split personality, I understand multiple personality disorder, I also know of special children. But Ranbir's acting transcended all this. In that he tried to exhibit one or more of all this and ended up portraying himself much beyond any of this. And ends up irritating you to nails-scratching-blackboard levels.
Deepika has had the same steady level of acting since her first movie. When the camera's not focussing on either her superbly-toned legs (there's this hilarious moment when she wakes up from bed fully clothed - a kurti on top and leggings upto her ankle. Then she sees Ranbir playing football with a couple of kids. She goes down to get coffee after changing...into hot shorts :D) or her dimples, she's trying to emote in that perennially half-choked voice of hers.
The thing with Prem Ratan Dhan Payo was that it didn't take itself seriously. It was a dumb movie from end to end and made no pretense about being otherwise. It didn't take itself seriously which contributed to some hilarity from time to time. Tamasha, while attempting to be fun, is not. It's a movie which (apparently) seeks to explore the finer nuances of human emotions blah blah.
Tamasha could very well be renamed RKUEGS.
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