Consortium of corny punchlines

Film: Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara

Director: Milan Luthria

Shouldn't it have been Twice Upon A Time? Or a conventional Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai 2? Maybe a suffixed Returns or a completely different title altogether? But no, they decided to go with Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara (OUATIMD). And sadly, in this sequel to the film which was a decent re-creation of the 80s flamboyance, there are no talking points that go deeper than how the title should have been composed. In fact the entire film is as insignificant as the Y in the Ay and the A that was in the prequel's Mumbaai.

Overconfident from having sold the prequel, Luthria's film goes overboard with heavy-duty dialogues that swell up like helium balloons before bursting into nothingness. Every single line in the film, except perhaps the lyrics of the songs, is punctuated and exaggerated to sound deliberately ostentatious, which after a point makes you sick. The punches are only ironically amusing and it is hard not to judge the person sitting next to you, if he/she is genuinely falling for them.

Set roughly in the late 80s, the film picks nearly a decade after the climax of the previous film. Shoaib, played by Emraan Hashmi earlier, grows up and indigestibly turns into Akshay Kumar. And while the setting of a gangster thriller idly loiters around; OUATIMD plays itself out like a ridiculously childish, set-piece love triangle.

After Lootera, the sudden rise in expectations from Sonakshi have led to further disappointment as her character Jasmine sees her regress into the submissive, powerless role where she is at the mercy of two powerful men. One of those men, Shoaib, played by Akshay, is the villain, while Imran's Aslam is the archetypal hero.

Akshay Kumar simply recites punchlines throughout the film, with a cigarette, that has no regard for continuity, constantly lit between his fingers. Lacking the powerful aura of Ajay Devgn's Sultan Mirza and the charisma of Emraan's Shoaib, his black shades and well-kept hair hardly create a persona. While the first film gave us the memorable “Duaa mein yaad rakhna” by Sultan Mirza, Akshay's Shoaib throws one too many dialogues for us to remember any of them. And Imran Khan disappoints once again (or dobaara, if you may), with his contemporary body language and South Bombay accent. Maybe he never received the text that said the movie was set in the 80s.

Overall, OUATIMD is a null and void movie which serves no purpose other than killing time inside an air-conditioned dark-room. However, it will make truck loads of money and set precedents for more dobaaras of the same category.

At 160 minutes, the film is a fitting punishment to give to someone who has just lost a bet. With repetitive sentiments and caricatured leads, the film is a long test of endurance for anyone with a good taste in cinema. Beyond redemption, it wouldn't matter what the critics say. To put it in Shoaib's words, (read in Akshay's husky voice) -- “Agar aisi film ko rating diya, toh number bura maan jayenge.”

Rating: 1 out of 5 

Published in DNA (Pune) on August 17, 2013 

The 80s Are Back(stabbed)

The film opens with the disco number Thank God It's Friday with Sonakshi Sinha doing her best to appear graceful. Sajid Khan's inability as a director to introduce the time period in which his film is set, couldn't be more visibly stated. And five minutes after the shabbily choreographed dance sequence turns into a street fight, the film fails in recreating the 80s, like the promos promised.

Ajay Devgn is Ravi, the Himmatwala, who is the strongest man in the universe, which is established by his fight with Russia's strongest street fighter -- a feat that even Rocky Balboa required 12 hard-fought rounds to achieve. 

Then, Ravi returns to his village where he reunites with his family and revisits the old wounds and the atrocities that his family faced at the hands of the evil sarpanch Sher Singh (Mahesh Manjrekar); quite similar to Vijay Dinanath Chauhan's return to Mandwa, only more pathetic. And then, with one insignificant twist in the tale, the story unfolds just like it did 30 years ago with Jeetendra and Sridevi.

In a superficial effort to recreate the 80s, Sajid uses the hyper-reality which was an involuntary reflex back then; but ends up making a mockery of everything. If all the dialogues in the film were spoken only once, the film would be cut down by two-thirds.

A sequence where Ravi paints a picture of how he will torture Sher Singh is a re-enactment of the famous shower murder scene from Hitchcock's Psycho. But it all comes across as distasteful and foul; which by the way, seems like the theme of the film.

The only thing Himmatwala has managed to positively recreate is the picturisation of the song Naino Mein Sapna; however, Ajay Devgn's tough-guy physique doesn't allow him to move like the Jumping Jack that Jeetendra was.

The other thing in the film that is from the 80s, is the sense of humour. Most of the punches are just too predictable and jokes that you may have read in a time when forwarding text messages first became cool. Some typical Sajid Khan puns and double entendres, which Paresh Rawal sportingly delivers in his caricature role as Narayan Das, are simply not funny. If you find yourself in a theatre where people are actually laughing at them, then consider it as a sad commentary on sense of humour of the times we live in.

Of all the films that were made in the 80s, Himmatwala was probably the last film that deserved resurrection. Defining a dark phase in the world of mainstream Hindi cinema, the 80s are a thing of the past for a reason.

For a devotee of Indian cinema, the 80s are a fond memory for parallel films like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and Chashme Buddoor and they would like it if it stayed that way. And with David Dhawan's remake of Chashme Buddoor just a week away from us, we can only pray that it doesn't ruin the image of a timeless classic.

As far as Sajid Khan's deteriorating sense of humour is concerned, Himmatwala hasn't brought back the 80s, but it has, in a way, brought mediocrity and crass back into filmmaking.

Rating - 1/2 out of 5

Published in DNA After Hrs (Pune) on March 30, 2013