Blew it *By Minty Tejpal* *Posted On Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 03:48:55 AM*
This one could turn out to be as big a disaster as the Titanic. By Titanic, I mean the actual ship that sank, not the film that soared to the sky. Industry reports say that Blue cost over Rs 120 crores to produce and it seems that none of that fancy moolah went into script development. A large amount must have gone towards singer Kylie Minogue, whose appearance is a mere marketing gimmick. The story is thus. Back in 1949, a ship carrying treasure from India sank somewhere in the Bahamas. No one except fisherman Sanjay Dutt knows where the treasure is buried, except he is unwilling to look for it. His buddy, Akshay Kumar, and brother, Zayed Khan, are very keen to get hold of the treasure, and keep trying to persuade Dutt for half the movie. Then Zayed gets involved with some real bad guys in Bangkok, namely Rahul Dev, and ends up owing them 50 million dollars. Yes, a whopping 50 million dollars for a little bag he lost—that’s how silly the screenplay is. Finally, when the bad guys first try to kill Zayed, then graduate to kidnapping Dutt’s wife Lara Dutta, only then does Sanju baba agree to search for the treasure. Oh well. The scenes in Blue are very poorly directed, while the dialogue is absolutely flat and tedious. For an underwater action film, it has the pace of a still temple pond, with Lara being the sole lotus. The final twist in the plot is pure hilarious, and only drags the film further down into its watery grave. However, the underwater sequences are shot magnificently and the marine life is as gorgeous as shown every night on Discovery and other TV channels. The fish display a lot of variety and character, but are unfortunately not an integral part of the story. In turn, most of the characters that are an integral part of the story succeed in acting fishy. Sanjay Dutt plays Sagar, a character who apparently knows the ocean like the back of his hand. However, there is nothing in his bored manner to suggest he is seaworthy, except his large paunch that must surely keep him buoyant even in the high seas. He also becomes the only pugilist to box in a ring wearing a tracksuit. Akshay and Sanjay address each other as sethji and sarkar, which is just infuriating from the start. Smarten up, guys, you are in the Bahamas. Akshay puts on chin fuzz and a tattoo on his back, and that’s about it for character study. Who he is, where he comes from then becomes irrelevant, for he becomes the rich dude with half a french beard. Zayed tries to act all cool, but doesn”t quite cut it in the acting department, while Lara Dutta looks hot but has absolutely no role to speak of. It’s very tough to make the truly beautiful Katrina look bad, but Blue manages to succeed. Katrina wears straggly hair and a lip stud, both of which don’t suit her. What remains is an infuriating chorus which goes—b-lew, baloo. After a long time, AR Rahman gives us a very mediocre score, which is a pity. Hope the torture of scoring for trite Bollywood is not getting to our genius.
