 |
Trust Bollywood to confuse your viewing experience so much that you don’t know what film you are watching in the first place.
Well it’s supposed to be a sequel but the two characters being brought back from the first film — Shoaib and Mumtaz — have metamorphosed from Emraan Hashmi and Prachi Desai to Akshay Kumar and Sonali Bendre! But when in a flash frame you see Sultan, he is still Ajay Devgn all right. Clearly faces of dead characters don’t change.
Then there is this separate layer of Shoaib being based on Dawood Ibrahim. Does that make Imran Khan’s character of Aslam modelled on Chhota Rajan? But haven’t we seen that story in Company?
And they can’t even make up their minds on what to call the film! Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai Again or Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara or Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara. Maybe they have taken their own dialogues a little too seriously — “Naam bata diya toh pehchaan buda maan jaayegi”!
Whatever you call it, however you spell it, it’s just a done-to-death love triangle. Between the (fit hai) boss, the ghulam (ka bhanja) and the kopaal-kundola (er, ‘femme forehead’). And the sequel to what was a searing story of oneupmanship in a retro-wrapped Mumbai underworld is an age-old fight between “namak aur pyaar”. How salty is your love?
What is truly retro though is Akshay Kumar, who seems to channel the hammiest actors of the 1970s and ’80s and yet manages to exude his own hamming skills in a performance so hammy that you almost gag on your popcorn.
There’s more on the menu. With his lines stolen from Navjot Sidhu’s diary of discarded jokes, you really have nowhere to run or hide. Only Sherry can explain a line like: “Doodh mein nimboo jiska, paneer uska!” Non-vegans don’t despair, there are hundreds of other recipes for disaster.
And if Marlon Brando stuffed his cheeks with cotton balls to look like a bulldog, Akshay Kumar fills his mouth with dry ice to look like a chimney! Throughout the film so much smoke billows from Shoaib’s backlit mouth, you start worrying if his insides are on fire!
But no, actually it’s your money burning. And from those ashes will emerge a proud weekend collection figure. From Id to I-Day, it’s the same story.
Maybe the Bhatts are cleaner. Their sequels end with the titles. At least they don’t bring shame to the earlier film. The director-writer team of Milan Luthria and Rajat Arora in a bid to reprise the success of Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai milk that first film in tone, setting and background score, but forget to squeeze in the real nimboo — a plot to justify 160 minutes of the audience’s time. All you are left with is cottage cheese that’s bland and boring.
When Akshay’s not playing — “khiladi tha, ab poora khel hoon!” — Imran with eyes too mascara’d and sideburns too long looks very out of place. And Sonakshi’s Kashmir ki kali Jasmine is smart enough to understand the feelings of one man but appropriately naive to look through the advances of the other. The two of them share an “inter-course” joke that becomes a major plot point in the film. Just imagine!
And in the middle of all the ishq vishq pyaar vyaar, there is the most bizarre killing scene in any film in the history of cinema. Akshay is supposed to be holing up in a particular hotel room. The guy who wants to kill him enters the room, spots shoes behind the curtains and pulls the curtains down. There is no one there but concentric circles drawn on the glass door. As the man stands there, Akshay standing on the golf course five floors below shoots him from there with a sniper rifle. Bullseye!
There are also a lot of songs (by Pritam) peppered across the film, none of them worth recalling. Even the Amar Akbar Anthony number Tayyab Ali has a very ho-hum avatar and even a Vidya Balan pop-up window can’t liven things up.
By the time it all comes to a close, you realise you had entered the theatre once upon a time. And now you are old and lost and a little angry. But are you wiser? Till another Friday maybe.