Slumdog Millionaire review: What Is Bollywood?

Originally published in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 5, Dated Feb 07, 2009


WHEN THE VENERABLE Roger Ebert visits India, he will imagine he knows the name of almost every Indian woman — Latika;
if Danny Boyle is to be believed, there are 26,283 Latikas in Mumbai alone.

Slumdog Millionaire opens with a multiple-choice question: “Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it? A: He cheated. B: He’s lucky. C: He’s genius. D: It is written.” With a device as smart as this — a set-up whose inevitable answer will turn out to be ‘written’ (or destined) — the film could well go on to be about pretty much anything before circling back in its finale to remind us that everything was predestined. A choice left out of the prologue could have been ‘Option A answers all questions’. Well, mostly.

A story the whole world already knows, Slumdog is, not unlike its Oscar co-contender Benjamin Button, a film deftly constructed with a series of flashbacks intercut with one of only two events that are played out in the present — the interrogation after which the film hurtles to the 20-millionrupee question and the lovers’ reunion.
I wonder why, though, this present is set in 2006, as the title card indicates?

Although there have been numerous documentaries and oriental exotica woven before, Slumdog is the first Bollywood film by a foreign filmmaker. Scant criticism for the film in the West and copious amounts in India has accused it of being ‘typical Hollywood tripe’ and ‘nothing more than Bollywood masala’ respectively. How does Boyle manage to get accused of making both a Hollywood and a Bollywood film at the same time?

A clever conceit, Slumdog is a cinematic tour-de-force that employs a realistic portrayal of what is essentially an uplifting fantasy (Hollywood likes uplifting, and Bollywood thrives on fantasy fare). And the secret? ‘It is written’.
Whether we like it or not, films need to be written. And when they aren’t, more often than not they become fodder for the next generation’s spoofs.

Danny Boyle is enjoying a Jamal-like fortune with his film; a billion Indians are rooting for Slumdog to sweep the Oscars. Come February 22, India’s rejoicing billion may insist that the next season of Kaun Banega Crorepati be played live — it’s much more fun the Slumdog way, with its attendant opportunities to scam the show. And also demand that the brilliant Anil Kapoor reprise the Amitabh-Shahrukh role. Jai Ho.

Singh is Kinng Review

Original of an altered review, published in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 33, Dated Aug 23, 2008.

A Punjabi film with an English title, ‘Singh is Kinng’ is Akshay Kumar’s coronation film as Bollywood’s king. Or so is the overt attempt.

Akshay Kumar plays Happy Singh, a bumbling trouble-maker for the denizens of his village in Punjab. As much as everybody in director Anees Bazmee-land is a caricature, be it the villages in Punjab, Mumbai, South Africa (‘Welcome’), Egypt or Australia, they are smart-enough to make decisions to propel the film forward, thenceforth existing for the sole purpose of showcasing stars’ talents for comedy, romance, dance & action.

The villagers expressly banish a pranky Happy Singh off to Australia (to bring back a mafia King) ridding themselves of his antics while they don’t seem to mind substituting another deaded villager (the mafia king) in his place who Happy Singh is entrusted with bringing back to the village.

Sure enough, Akshay Kumar’s Happy Singh reforms the desi mafia in Australia, pontificates the worth of family & do-gooding, finds a mother in Kiron Kher, dances with mother’s daughter (Katrina Kaif), woos her, & ultimately wins her for himself joining Snoop Dogg in the film’s end credits for a reiteration of being ‘The Kinng’.

It is difficult to distinguish the comedians in the film as every single character seems to have been asked to resort to comedy whenever they deem fit, and/or when their co-actors’ comedy isn’t working well-enough.

Akshay Kumar definitely is the star of the moment having delivered more consecutive hits than any other in the last couple of years. But in all his career, evidently, Akshay Kumar hasn’t dabbled with a rare entity (in Bollywood) called Good Cinema (or just Cinema, as opposed to pickture), where the canvas is as big as his stardom deems he deserve but at the same time entirely plausible, written (not gags invented on sets), aesthetic, & tasteful.

Rajinikanth's stardom is built on Modesty - the more he's modest on screen (about his achievements) bigger is the audience's reaction insisting his greatness. Akshay Kumar sems to be treading a similar path; he doesn't feature in any of the action sequences, because he doesn't have to - people's memory of him as an action star is enough to fill-in, and enjoy the modest darling as lovable, desirable, touching, oh-so-cute!

Am reminded of the Golda Meir quote, "Don't be modest. You aren't that great." Akshay Kumar, with his obvious magical powers on screen, proves modesty to be the preserve of 'The Arrived'. He also proves that the films of the incumbent kings of Bollywood are as good or as bad as the ones he’s anointed his kingdom on, depending on one’s nostalgia-quotient.

Little do our Bollywood stars need be told that investing in well-crafted scripts and films would as surely account for the present generation's future nostalgia too.

Tashan Review

Here's a review of the recently released Big-Budget Bollywood film Tashan, originally published in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 18, Dated May 10, 2008
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OVERSEXED, UNDERAGED
These Bollywood big-budget affairs like Tashan can't distinguish film scenes from their spoofs at award ceremonies, writes THANI



TASHAN’S WRITER-DIRECTOR Vijay Krishna Acharya says, “Writer F Scott Fitzgerald once said, ‘You don’t write to say something; you write when you have something to say.’ I am a staunch believer in those words.” While Acharya seems to have done terrible justice to the craft of writing with the Dhoom films, here he does much superior injustice to direction. Bad writing begets bad films.

Saif Ali Khan plays a call centre accent-trainer who’s hired to work on gangster Anil Kapoor’s English. Kareena Kapoor plays Anil Kapoor’s secretary of sorts, who first traps Saif in love, then elopes with 25 crores of Anil Kapoor’s booty. This particular predicament, necessitates the existence of Akshay Kumar’s wannabe shooter who’s hired to recover stolen money from the lassie-on-the-run. Akshay’s bait-cum-guide on the road trip is Saif, who naively made plans with the femme fatale. Fair enough. Interesting even, for a film’s premise. But it is the indifferent manner in which Tashan’s makers go about the same that renders it terribly irritating.

Soon enough, the twosome of Saif and Akshay find Kareena and bond-into a threesome over the course of a ridiculous goof-ball journey before they eventually are ready to smokeout baddie Anil Kapoor, if only to redeem their own bad lives.



A particularly tasteless sequence from Tashan has Kareena Kapoor teasing Akshay Kumar’s Kanpur-thug by making him dry her undergarments, and subsequently getting Saif ’s accent-trainer to playact a rape of herself. All this, and an extended song and dance too, transpire as the stars appear in various stages of undress.

Bollywood, when it comes to representation of sex, continues to be like an over-sexed kid with an underaged demeanor — awkward, fearful, vulgar, guilty and covert. These Bollywood big-budget affairs can’t seem to distinguish film scenes from their spoofs at award ceremonies.



Watching Tashan is like watching Tashan, its sequel, and its prequel — all three films poorly written, executed and enacted. Tashan culminates with an overlong action sequence picturised on sets straight out of Roberto Rodrigues’ Once Upon a Time in Mexico. The sequel, Tashan 2, is about recovering money for the baddie, even though the idea seems to have been finishing him off. And the prequel, Tashan 3, consists of Akshay’s and Kareena’s teenage love story, in anonymity.

Akshay Kumar’s brief seems to have been to act like Akshay Kumar as portrayed by Southern star Vikram; Saif ’s to play Saif from the previous decade; Anil Kapoor’s to emulate Amitabh Bachchan from Aag, and Kareena’s to continue acting like her look-alikes, Paris Hilton and Dani Woodward.


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