FILM: Humshakals
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Ram Kapoor, Riteish Deshmukh, Bipasha Basu…
DIRECTOR: Sajid Khan
Tammanah Bhatia makes so many faces in every frame you wonder if she’s auditioning for a film against cocaine addiction while pretending to be in a comedy about three sets of identical characters wackily whopping it up.
Bipasha Basu who plays one of the female misleads…. sorry, leads, in the comedy of ghastly errors, has gone on record to say she was extremely disturbed by the end-result of this film.
So, to be honest, are we. And the end that Bipasha talks about seems to take forever to reach as we watch three grown-up ostensibly evolved actors lapse into a collective state of incurable retardation.
Humshakals seem to be designed for the mentally challenged.
Even they would cringe at the way the two protagonists Ashok and Kumar (Ashok Kumar, gedddit?) are depicted. Moronic and misconceived, the duo seems to revel in crass mediocrity.
As inmates in a mental asylum in London(no less), Saif Ali Khan and Riteish Deshmukh raise the ante for lunacy to a point where sanity begins to seem like a state of mind invented to make us believe there is a world, a relatively sane one, outside what comic filmmakers in Bollywood consider to be funny.
To be fair, Sajid Khan’s new brainwave replete with triple roles for its three male leads plus a drag act each in the second half which is genuinely funny, is as obnoxious in treatment as the slapstick comedies Aof Rohit Shetty or Anees Bazmi.
I suspect the actors must have had a whale of a time shooting the scenes. And Sajid Khan must have enjoyed writing the comedy of mistaken identity specially when the look-alikes keep multiplying as the plot progresses.But the growth is unstructured. It’s like supplementary food being air-dropped to famine victims. The basic food items are missing. What do you do with add-ons?
The comedy, ha ha, moves with the screechy stealth of a choir boys singing Yo Yo Honey Singh’s numbers when the head priest is on a vacation. Every member of the cast and crew seems to be in a vacation mood. Many of the gags stretch themselves out languorously as though the director commanded the camera to roll and then went off to sleep.
Saif and Riteish vacillate between being spoofy and spiffy with some help from Ram Kapoor who gets to play two characters, one of them suffering from what the medical experts on board for this specialized comedy refer to as “OCD Level 3”.
Riteish, as regular in Sajid Khan’s cinema as titles beginning with “H”, makes a better impression than Saif who tries hard to show us he’s in the fun no-brainer mood. Saif is clearly out of his depths indulging in the slapstick lunacy of a world that has no logic except to create a chaotic humour out of a stockpile of mistaken identities.
Oh, there are three ladies in the show who wriggle and pout whenever the plot is in doubt (which, as you can tell from the nature of the material, is very often). Even the opposite-sexiness is handled more engagingly in the hands and chests of the three heroes wooing their own doubles in voluptuous drag. While Saif woos Riteish in drag and vice versa, bizarrely Ram Kapoor wooes himself in drag to create a kind of auto-eroticism that has no bearing on the film’s predominant mood of sexual innocence.
To shock us, there are lots of gay jokes popping up when you least expect them to, as though the director wants to remind us that political incorrectness is not only about mistaken identities but also about identity crises.
Don’t even try to make sense of the world that Sajid Khan builds.
The sand castle of goofiness can any time be washed away by the high tide. The director doesn’t really care.
Sajid Khan takes potshots at himself and his sister Farah Khan by showing “Himmatwala” and “Tees Maar Khan” as part of torture curriculum in the mental asylum. Don’t be surprised if the DVD of Humshakals shows up in Humshakals 2 as a torture device.
In one of the rare genuinely funny sequences, Saif and Riteish try to impress Ram Kapoor by pulling off the tablecloth from a table filled with food, promising as they do, that nothing will spill.
Of course all the food comes crashing down. But does the fear of falling ever hold back the broad comedy of ill manners which Bollywood thinks to be funny? Wish we had as much fun watching this film as the team seems to have had making it. Saif is shown to be a bad stand-up comedian. The film never outgrows its hero’s character’s craving to make people laugh. (IANS)
FILM: Chef
Cast: Jon Favreau, Sofia Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Oliver Platt, Bobby Cannavale …
DIRECTOR: Jon Favreau
Writer-director Jon
Favreau’s indie
film Chef is a light hearted film that revolves around the life of a chef, who is passionate about his culinary art.
The narration also interlaces the chef’s personal relationships and educates viewers about the impact of the social media marketing in the current scenario.
Carl Casper (Jon Favreau), the celebrity chef of a prestigious LA restaurant owned by Riva (Dustin Hoffman), is all excited and goes out of his way to prepare an exciting menu for a prominent reviewer and critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt), who is coming to the restaurant for dinner.
But unfortunately for him, Riva forbids him from altering the restaurant’s popular menu and Ramsey in his on-line review trashes Carl by writing, “damn mean shit” about him.
After a series of Twitter rants, Carl invites Ramsey to the restaurant, again for an experiential meal. But unfortunately for him, Riva stands by his decision and Casper leaves in a huff.
Later that night, an annoyed Carl barges into the restaurant and has a face-off where he lashes out at the critic. This is captured on video that goes viral and Carl is soon a laughing stock.
Jobless and low on funds, with a view to bonding with his neglected pre-teen son Percy (Emjay Anthony), he takes on the offer made by his wealthy ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara) of being a “Nanny in Miami”. Once in Miami with a little financial help from Inez’s even more well to do ex-husband Marvin (Robert Downey Jr.) Casper musters his courage to follow his heart and to do his own thing. He refurbishes a food truck and serves Cuban sandwiches as a way of reconnecting with his son, jumpstarting his creativity and providing a good excuse for a road-movie journey while driving the vehicle back to LA Chef Carl Casper is happy at last!
With the behind-the-kitchen scenes, the film beautifully portrays how heartbreaking and tough the restaurant business is. It reveals how real cooks use cooking as an artistic and creative outlet.
It is not a “slacker’s job,” as is commonly perceived.
Like a true artist, the chef too wants appreciation when he creates something that he has put his heart and soul into. And the real dampener is when he is constantly told to play it safe or when food critics criticise merely for the sake of finding faults.
Favreau’s script is written from the bottom of his heart and he candidly portrays Casper through his writing and performance.
Sofia Vergara with her husky seductive voice is appealing; she plays the concerned mother and encouraging partner with ease. Emjay Anthony as the kid is endearing and spontaneous. So is John Leguizamo as Martin Casper’s loyal assistant.
Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson as Molly the restaurant hostess were two characters, which were too short to sink in. Perhaps any actor could have essayed those roles. Similarly Dustin Hoffman and Bobby Cannavale as the sous-chef are wasted.
The production quality of the film is good and Kramer Morgenthau’s camera work is flawless. Some of the food images are so brilliantly captured that you instantaneously crave for food. Also, wide-angle scenic shots are picture-postcard like, making you want to be in Miami.
The background score along with the Latino-Spanish music is also worth a mention.
Overall, ‘Chef’ is a well made film that is thoroughly enjoyable yet cloyingly formulaic in its presentation. (IANS)