MOHENJO DARO (U/A)

Director: Ashutosh Gowariker

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Pooja Hegde, Kabir Bedi, Arunoday Singh

Running time: 155 minutes

Rubbery crocodile, Kabir Bedi and Rakesh Roshan had come together for Khoon Bhari Maang back in 1988. Almost three decades later, in the garb of going thousands of years back in time, rubbery crocodile and Kabir Bedi have teamed up with Roshan Jr. for a motion picture experience so staid and stodgy that you would be far more entertained inside the reptile’s stomach.

The problem today with Bollywood filmmakers and corporate houses is that the projects have to sound successful on paper. So, when an Ashutosh Gowariker must have walked into the UTV office, his Mohenjo Daro presentation would have definitely included these slides:

♦ Period film (like Lagaan, Jodhaa Akbar) — check

♦ Male star (like Aamir, Shah Rukh, Hrithik) — check

♦ New girl (like Gracy Singh, Gayatri Joshi) — check

♦ Conflict about tax (like Lagaan) — check

♦ Big water action set-piece (like Swades) — check

♦ A.R. Rahman (like Lagaan, Swades, Jodhaa Akbar) — check

And even when you as an audience member go through this list, you would be excused to believe that such a ‘formula’ cannot go wrong.

But it’s never about the ingredients, it’s how you cook them together. Keeping all those elements in play, Gowariker churns out a tale so old and rotten that the stench can stream across centuries. 

You have a boy from a small town arriving in a big city. The big city is ruled by an evil man. Righteous good boy has an early tiff with the evil son of the evil ruler. He decides to go back to small town but then bumps into beautiful girl. He chooses to stay back to win the girl and thus has to fight with the father-son duo. And that too over gold biscuits, more like gold cookies actually!

Now place this done-to-zombie tale inside freshly-constructed sets and clothe the actors in leftover Lagaan wardrobe and put the subtitle 2016 BC. Don’t forget to put one CG top shot every few minutes to show the famously planned city and a river flowing by. And there’s Rahman putting in some tribal chants, going Mohenjo Mohenjo Mohenjo... Mohenjo Daro! Voila, you have a love story set in the Indus Valley Civilisation! 

The most disheartening thing about Mohenjo Daro is that Gowariker, who has not only given us a couple of great films but an unending list of unforgettable songs and scenes on celluloid, doesn’t rustle up a single magic moment in the two-and-a-half hour trudge.

Remember the Ghanan ghanan picturisation in Lagaan or the scene where Shah Rukh’s Mohan Bhargava meets an impoverished farmer Hari Das in his home in Swades? For that same filmmaker to write a scene where the boy and girl meet for the first time and he blows a whistle or the next time they meet he steals a quick glance at her arse, it’s embarrassing, infuriating and quite repugnant.

The only redeeming set-piece in the film comes in the second half in a very Gladiator-styled death match where Hrithik goes up against two huge cannibal warriors. The action is well done and it is perhaps the only scene where you get the underdog David-vs-Goliath feel of things. The very Noah’s Arc ending would have been more satisfying if that plot point would have been brought into the script earlier and not as a last-minute twist.

The less said about the performances the better. Kabir Bedi and Arunoday Singh as the baddies reprise the Subhash Ghai villains of the ’80s and ’90s where every emotion is expressed with extreme exaggeration, where every muscle on the face has to move miles to convey what’s on their minds. 

The new girl Pooja Hegde plays Chaani, “the chosen one”, but sadly might end up being remembered as the one with the jaunty plume on the head. She doesn’t leave any mark in any scene and is as wooden as the planks used in the sets around her.

That brings us to Hrithik, who is perennially in a sense of wonderment in the film. Whether it’s that croc coming to say hello or water flowing through a dam or that feather-crowned girl or a mad man on the streets or spotting a unicorn in his dream, his jaws are always on the floor. When he is not playing the wide-eyed beauty, he flexes his muscles well enough but there’s nothing about this performance that deserves to be seen or remembered.

Rahman’s score is lazy here. The songs are confused streams of fusion, borrowing inspiration from different schools of music and even the background score doesn’t have the signature Rahman touch.

The dusty pages of the Indus Valley Civilisation chapter in the history book in school was way more entertaining than Mohenjo Daro. Because at least in our imagination we could time travel to a world that was huge and fantastic and not reduced to cardboard characters acting cheap and funny. And they weren’t even playing cricket!

Is Mohenjo Daro Hrithik’s worst film? Tell t2@abp.in