This is how mediocre people review good music... With the help of
visuals.
Fiqrana is nothing like guzarish. May be they ought to have their ears
checked or their speakers.
On Oct 16, 2009, at 9:01 PM, Gopal Srinivasan <[email protected]>
wrote:
Boooooooooooooo
The 120 minutes of Blue cost Rs 120 crore. That’s one crore for ever
y minute of screen time. But why is it that more than the screen, yo
u keep an eye on the time. Exactly what Kylie Minogue says, when Aks
hay asks why she is looking at him: “There’s a giant clock in
that direction... Baby, I was just keeping time.”
Blue can be the costliest film coming out of Bollywood but it is
also not very short of being one of the worst films to have come out
of the industry. Ever since Yash Raj Films did it, in fact twice
over, every big-budget movie tries to orchestrate a dhoom.
Now, both D and D:2 had a script and Blue obviously doesn’t. First-t
ime director Anthony D’Souza should have rather credited himself as
a project designer. A boxing match, a fast and furious bike race, a
lingerie commercial, he tries to pack it all in.
Blue (U/A)
Director: Anthony D’Souza
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Lara Dutta, Zayed Khan, Rahul Dev,
Katrina Kaif
But what the first half actually becomes is a lousy apology to
justify that everyone in the film needs money — and loads of it. Aar
av (Akshay) needs it for kicks, Sam (Zayed) needs it to ward off the
baddies, Sagar (Sanjay) needs it for his brother Sam. And even Mona
(Lara) needs the sona for some marine school. So, if you go in expe
cting an underwater film, be warned: the blue you see in the promos
is just a fraction (in the second half) of a boring, bland film.
The treasure hunt itself is a joke, really. As Akshay says with all
sincerity: “Humein samundar mein jaake khazana le aana chahiye.”
Like getting some elish from the market for the shorshe maachh at di
nner. In fact, even that’s harder to get this festive season compare
d to how they just stroll into the sea and straight into the treasure.
The sharks seem least bothered. They are worse than the plastic
snakes in those old Hindi movies guarding the khazana. You don’t see
their ‘jaws’ even once and they just roam around the area with
their high tails. Scary? You got to be kidding.
Blue, in fact, could have been a really funny spoof film. But given
the talent on display, if they had tried to be intentionally funny,
it could have very well turned out to be a tragedy for us. There’s t
his scene where the three men go under water. Now, Akshay and Zayed
are bare-bodied — Sanju Baba obviously can’t afford that, given
his paunch — and so they kind of ‘stroke’ each other up while
Lara in a bikini stands alone on the boat in aTitanic pose. It’s jus
t Laugh Out Loud (for all the wrong reasons).
As widely publicised, Blue has a couple of Oscar winners in its
credit line-up. Given how precious little time is spent in the sea
and even most of that is drowned in songs, it’s difficult to underst
and why star sound man Resul Pookutty had to take so much trouble. M
aybe he was just justifying his fat pay cheque.
Earlier in the week, A.R. Rahman told t2 about new directors —
“Sometimes they are great and sometimes they let you down”. His
choice of words was telling. He had obviously seen Blue — you have t
o, if you are also doing the background score — and he was saying it
all, Rahman-understated-style.
This is clearly a disinterested score from the maestro. Chiggy Wiggy
is fun till the bhangra beats come crashing, Aaj dil gustaakh hai
too has some zing but the rest don’t stick. Especially Fiqrana, whic
h comes with the credits, has a huge Guzarish (Ghajini) hangover. An
d what can you say about the theme? We understand they want to shout
‘Blueeeeeeeeeeee’ but what we hear is something like
‘Buuuuluuuuuu’.
The cast goes completely undirected. It’s like that first narration
with the actors, when everyone delivers lines without any purpose, j
ust reading them off the page. And when you have people like Akshay
Kumar, Sanjay Dutt and Zayed Khan doing that, it can be very bad news.
Rahul Dev’s flat speech can work for a no-nonsense baddie but if the
leading men cannot add an iota of emotion to their dialogues, what
are they doing there? Seriously, if you have so much money at your d
isposal couldn’t you afford someone with a flatter stomach or someon
e who can keep his eyes open properly.
The underwater cinematography (Peter Zuccarini) is okay. Nothing you
haven’t seen on Discovery or Nat Geo, and with really no dramatic pu
rpose in the proceedings, it’s not much different from watching mari
ne life on the small screen.
As Dutt’s Sethji tells everyone very wisely in the film: “Yeh
kahaani jhoothi hai aur iss jhoothi kahaani ke liye bahut logon ki j
aanein gayee hain.” Aur Blue se jhoothi film ho hi nahin sakti and i
n all probability yeh jhoothi film ke liye bahut logon ka dimaag aur
paisa jaayega.
Now you have to decide whether you want to spend Diwali high and dry
or get wet and waste your money in the Blue charity fund.
P.S. Sanjay Leela Bhansali should be the only happy man around. He
is no longer the only guy who delivered a blue blooper on Diwali.
