Imagine a fun music video shot with style and energy, vibrant with life and color. The song itself makes you want to not only tap your feet, but dance with wild abandon. Imagine your favorite actor, dreamboat star boy or girl, shaking a leg in it with you. He or she turns on the charm, and you’re really having a good time.
Now imagine the saddest scene possible say, an orphanage in trouble. Or a dog suffering. Too far? Okay, let’s stick to the orphans. Tears flowing, separation happening, hero in trouble. Your favorite tearjerker. Individually, these scenes are effective. They’re good to watch, and serve their purposes as mere parts of a whole. Now put them together, one after another. As part of a single sequence without a sign of continuity, they resemble a shabby corporate presentation. A business plan. Because that is what Besharam eventually is.
A formulaic, tacky, overdrawn bullet point presentation designed with 6 random songs, a young bankable superstar, a newcomer girl, an aimless villain, boy wonder’s equally-famous parents providing the ‘laughs’ thereby setting the stage for multiple meta family dialogues.
This is not to say that no work goes into making these spectacles, it is laborious and requires skill for the crew involved. But how must they feel, contributing to make up a senseless mishmash of individual moneyshots? Either the director has great motivating skills, or the producers have tons of money. You’d bet on the latter in most cases.
But here, they seem to have got even the basics wrong.
Let’s take the opening sequence that is supposed to ominously introduce an intimidating villain (Javed Jaffrey), followed by Ranbir’s introductory car-chor chase sequence through Delhi streets. Tackily shot, shoddy camerawork, patchy editing, a distinctly video feel and to top it all, the imagery itself was so underwhelming. A clear lack of imagination. Even Ranbir Kapoorseems lost through it all. The only respite during the entire film comes when Babloo (Ranbir) is solely on screen, trying hard to overact as a lecherous Delhi boy. The cop couple, Ranbir’s real life folks, Rishi and Neetu Kapoor treat this as a regular post 8 pm family get together. You get the idea. Also, senior Kapoor stuffs his face with biryani wholeheartedly (finger licking et al) every second film nowadays, no doubt taking a leaf out of Saurabh Shukla’s Jolly LLB notebook. This would serve a purpose if cinema counters actually sold biryani or lunches.
Abhinav Singh Kashyap, the original Dabangg man, finally returns with his next directorial project after 3 long years. We knew that he had promised another braindead entertainer, one for the masses. But then, the trailers of Bullet Raja, R… Rajkumar and Boss played before Besharam even began. And, not surprisingly, it dawned even upon an enthusiastic holiday 9 AM audience that they may have already seen half of Besharam in those 3 trailers. You could hear them sigh – it was blatant overkill, an epiphany, a moment that no Prabhu Deva movie can ever take back. Deflated, they watched Besharam, but barely squeaked.
The filmmakers have made themselves clear with these efforts, with late press shows, that only box office collections and super weekends matter. Besharam, with its 3600 screens across the country, will no doubt break opening day records. But the audience might slowly be waking up to this shareholding business, because from their muted reactions, even Ranbir Kapoor butt cleavage isn’t good enough anymore.
Hindi, Action, Drama, Romance, Color