« Friday Dhamaka : To be a successful Consultant with no extra effort | Home |  Friday Drives: …and all the women in the world… »

Jodha Akbar : Of Fat Mohturmas and Pink Slaps

The desi brigade is out in full force to see Jodha Akbar. All 6 screens are playing the movie. The house is full, almost. Fortunately, unlike a Shah Rukh Khan movie, we don’t have to stand in a huge queue to get in. It’s a breeze this evening. You walk in and straight to screen 6. Accompanying your’s truly is Paytoo Singh (male, roommate, has seen more sleeping time than wakey wakey time in his entire life span) and Pink Slap (female, American, wafer thin, wears pink coats, and keeps repeating that she has learnt a new Hindi phrase called “tight slap”).

With Paytoo and Pinkoo (Pink Slap - name changed for rhyming purposes) on either side, we find a row that has two ladies sitting on the aisle. Mom and Daughter. And they have just, it seems returned from participating from the WWF (World Wrestling Federation, and not World Wildlife Fund).

Fat Mohturma to Fat Daughter (in loud and clear voice): Why the fuck do they have to come here? They won’t let us watch the movie in peace, piece, pisssss.

Trembling Paytoo, Pinkoo and oz cross the 1 inch gap between Fat Mohturmas’ legs to get to our empty seats.

oz burps out heavy dinner.

Trigger action: Any itsy bitsy tiny sound coming from anywhere near Fat Mohturma will elicit the following:

Fat Mohturma pointing finger to oz: NOW YOU GUYS PLEASE KEEP QUIET AND LET US WATCH THE MOVIE IN PEACE.

oz, Paytoo and Pinkoo shocked.

oz: Bbbbbuttt, the movie has not yet started.

Fat Mohturma: STILL (Pointing finger rather dangerously at oz, handing stretching over Paytoo who has sunk 20 feet down in his seat)

oz: (trying his best to recollect himself) M’am I’m a kind of a movie reviewer, so be assured.

Fat Mohturma: STILL (Finger Point closer and closer, more and more dangerously at oz… Pinkoo has gone stone cold while Paytoo has sunk so deep in his seat that there is no visible identification about anyone sitting on the seat… Paytoo with his chameleon like body has become the seat)

oz: Please don’t assume any such thing. If it happens please do tell. But until then don’t come to my face and start throwing this.

Fat Mohturma: STILL (Finger so dangerously close to oz’s eye that oz decides, it is better to watch Jodha Akbar with two eyes than with one)

oz goes on ignore Fat Mohturma mode. Fat Mohturma turns attention on the poor Screen - that is about to show the movie.

Screen screams to oz: O Temporary Saviour. You have cheated. Now for the next 3 hours and 20 minutes, FAT MOHTURMA IS GOING TO STARE SO HARD AT ME THAT SHE IS GOING TO CREATE HOLE ALL OVER ME. Don’t you have any shame. You come here week after week, every week, good movie or bad movie, but you come to meet me, I show you the films every week without any fail…. and you can’t save me from Fat Mohturma.

oz to Screen: Dude, chill. I would rather watch you full of holes with my two eyes than watch you with no holes but with only one of my eyes. Sorry dude between your holes and my eyes, I will choose my eyes anytime.

Screen to oz: Bastard, I thought you were my best friend…. I was so wrong.

Paytoo suddenly floats up on his seat, after Fat Mohturma’s 200 pound hand is back to it’s resting position on her seat. Pinkoo slowly shows signs of life with the melting of fear off her body… first the eyelids start to flutter, then the finger starts to move, the hand shakes and finally the legs get life back into them.

Pinkoo: I will give you a tight slap

oz: What the fuck???? Why?

Pinkoo: Just because that’s the new Hindi word I’ve learnt.

oz: It is not a hindi word… ‘TIGHT SLAP’ Where the fuck is the Hindi in ‘Tight’ or ‘Slap’???

Paytoo: Sirjee, Fat Mohturma looks like she a big bad woman!

oz: I can see that. I can see that she is big. I can see she is bad. So what is the fucking new thing you have told me here?

Paytoo: (thinking hard)… ummm… Big & bad in the same sentence

oz: Fuck it…. why didn’t I think of that?

Pinkoo: I will give you a ‘Tight Slap’?

oz: Now what did I do?

Pinkoo: Nothing. I’m just practicing my Hindi.

oz: BUT THAT IS NOT HINDI!!! ‘Tight Slap’ IS NOT HINDI.

The loud voice reach Fat Mohturma’s fat ears, who moves with great difficulty her fat body to turn her fat face to oz, and using her 303 fat drilling eyes to dig a virtual hole in oz’s head.

oz gets the message.

oz (meekly and very very softly): sssssorry…

Paytoo and oz quickly sink into their respective seats. Pinkoo feels a whiff of freezing again…

Turning our attention to the movie which begins shortly… we are transported in a Gowarikar world that seems to have existed in the 15th century.

Right off the bat, it seems like Gowarikar is making amends and trying to ward off the ‘Was she called Jodha?’ controversy by having disclaimer about it. This after a slide that the movie is work of fiction. It gets a bit confusing for us when there is fiction, but a disclaimer on Jodha and then watching intermittently some real historical events that took place in Agra, Panipat or it could be even Troy… please don’t ask.

It’s Gowarikar’s story.

And he continues to make the same old mistakes.

Now I’m not a big fan or Lagaan or Swades. They were well intentioned movies and I like them, but they won’t feature in any of my top movie lists. Swades specially was filled with typical Gowarikar technical flaws and rode on something similar - of what we saw Sanjay Leela Bhansali do in Black. Swades has few good moments in the screenplay - NOT in the direction.

And the same is true, for Jodha Akbar. Though the idea of having a partly fictionalized history on screen was a great idea, Gowarikar has this knack of repeating his mistakes. It happened in Pehla Nasha, Baazi, perhaps not in Lagaan, but definitely in Swades.

Though I wouldn’t beat the crap out of him as Khalid ‘Vengence’ Mohamed has, nor go overboard like Taran ‘I’m an idiot’ Adarsh did. Of course, there were moments where I wanted to pull Gowarikar up for making amateurish mistakes… for the love of God, - the way he ends “Khwaja Mere Khwaja” is irritating and painful… it was beautiful moment to have the camera go back and capture the dark with just the lighted tents in the center bathing in the beautiful moonlight as the Akbar in his trance is swayed around with his love for Saint Khwaja and God.

But no as will be seen in most of movie, Gowarikar chooses to end scenes in the most amateurish and obscure way as possible. Some scenes that could create impact go “phut” in Gowarikar’s hands… the twice throwing of the evil son from the fort, which is right out of the history books, could have been done to chilling effect. Gowarikar uses it as a comic tool. Bad idea. This perhaps was not Gowarikar’s intention - to get a laughter out of the audience at that moment… he failed miserably.

Often the writer and director resort to gimmicks. The eye communication between Akbar and Jodha when Akbar enters Jodha’s prayer room for the first time, may have some “cuteness” to it… but does one need to use such gimmicks to tell a scene in a movie that rides on a budget of $10million? Simplicity does not need to be discarded if there’s a huge pool of cash funding the movie, but neither does one have to resort to such gimmicks and immaturity in story telling inorder to ensure the audience is kept “binded”… and it leads to the age old quandary faced by filmmakers - whether to just focus on the story and lose a part of the audience or try keeping most of the audience and alienate the story. After seeing Jodha Akbar, one now knows, what choice Gowarikar made.

Though, the battle scenes (FX) were a big issue with Mohamed and many other critics/bloggers, I would let go of this. It was a definite step forward and perhaps in the few years, our FX quality will be at par with that in the west, and perhaps we will have the budgets that can facilitate those quality goals.

The movie for most part, does move fast and then suddenly in parts as if Gowarikar wanted to indulge in a few scenes, goes turtle slow. One is where Akbar and Jodha are looking at each other after a practice fight between them. If the intention in the ‘looking at each other’ scene was to communicate sexual tension between the two… we got it… but extending the ‘looking’ scene to a few minutes has your brain going “fuck it!!! Dhoom Machale Dhoom Machale Dhoom” and Gowarikar loses you at that very instant.

I see Ashutosh Gowarikar as a guy with good intentions, not necessarily a good story teller. A guy who can be a very good project manager not a film director. A guy who has good story ideas but not the story itself. A guy who is good a visualizing, but not at executing onscreen the visual displays - for example the ray of light hitting Akbar before he falls in a trance to sing “Khwaja” is so amaterishly conceived, designed and the f/x executed (pure shoddy)… it makes 1940s Hindi movie special effects look absolutely marvelously.

The slip happens too often and that makes you question Gowarikar’s abilities as an A league director.

The cast is strictly ok… no great shakes here. I didn’t find any ground breaking or acing all games kind of an act from anyone here. Hritik was in a long time, very inconsistent. From cutting edge acting to really shoddy stuff. Aishwarya had to look beautiful and she did, though I still can’t make out if the loose hanging skin on her belly was merely cause of the screen defects or does she now really have one?

This is a perfect Sunday after brunch movie. It’s not bad. It’s not good. Mercifully with 10 million bucks it does turn out to be a Timepass. The question is - with 10 million dollars do we want to make ‘just timepass’ movies or something that can engage us a bit more that that?

B minus. Biwi, Kids and tons of Popcorn. But for you make sure it’s Aisle seats please.