Smart alluring Title – since 1921

Ever seen movies trying to recreate actual relentless conversations without a break requiring obviously multiple cameras and sharp editing. It is what differentiates standard cinema where cameras pause and wait for characters to finish their delivery and then the editors respectfully move to the second camera taking care to give enough screen time to egoistic actors. Now if an invisible camera were to move around, the home of four chaotic but people from everyday life ,as they scream their way around each other and even frighten a visiting plumber, is what it could perhaps capture in Kapoor & Sons as it pans out for major part of its screenplay. You secretly wonder how the director knew this was the way our families operated.

A frustrated infidel hubby, a frantic homely wife with a mind of her own, who loves her two sons but unequally, the two sons one a successful novelist and other an aspiring one, who bump into a lively bubbly today girl who owns a home that one of the brothers aspire to buy.  And hovering over this scenario is a cuddly 90 year old who insists on being naughty much to the delight of his grandsons and casual indifference of his harried son and his loving daughter in law.  There is really no motive to the story to describe.

The dysfunctional family spends its time juggling various balls of affection, anger, jealousy, infidelity, humor amongst themselves and yet they seem untouched by hatred. You like each of them individually except  when they interact painfully with each other. It is like a slice of their life brought to the screen with no start and no specific end. If the aspiration of the grandfather to have a family picture together can be treated as an end goal well then it does have an emotional motive. For he does not believe he will live long though he defies the hospitals and ill health, shocking nurses and grandchildren with his naughty porn affliction and Ipapad jokes.

What keeps you gripped is the effortless and breathless narration as the characters go around their daily lives unaffected by a camera hovering around them. No posing for the camera, worrying about wrong angles, dialogues and emotions flowing out seamlessly.

Rajat Kapoor and Ratna Pathak especially are a treat to watch as the couple over the hill trying to keep their relationship together despite the loud whispers of an affair on the sidelines.  Fawad Khan looking dashing as the novelist perfect son who returns home and is sucked into a complicated patch-up with his less successful brother Sidharth Malhotra. The uber cool Sidharth is besotted with the lively Alia reprising her State 2 type of character, bold and forthcoming.  Rishi Kapoor as the grandpa has a meaty role and easily the best lines that draw guffaws from the audience.

They all look real and extremely believable. Fallible as they are as human beings you pick up one of them as your favorites and root for them. Somewhere in your transparent conscience you know this is the dark closet that exists in every family that remains within the family to be covered by an all is well façade meant for the external world.

The direction works, the hyperventilating dialogue delivery works, the editor obviously had a lot of work to do and executed it efficiently, the music is easily forgotten and not required at all. The cinematography is good while it is outdoors but inside it struggles to keep pace with the relentless exchanges that happen and creates a hurting to the eye transition in some of the scenes.

So then why do you feel dissatisfied at the end? Is it what seems to be apparent  lack of motive for the plot?  The focus seems to be on delivering witty one liners (which works) but not working on assembling the individual excellences together. There is a tearing hurry in the execution. Some things remain difficult to digest. That a liaison in a small town remains unnoticed till a shocked son discovers it. Sometimes you get the feeling that the scenes stitched together make the plot and not the way round.

Obviously the naughty and bordering on the obscene dialogues work with the today crowd but it does get irksome when the talk about blue films and Mandakini s innocent sultry scenes in a Kapoor movie get dragged beyond comfort.  The fact that somehow Rishi’s voice does not seem to gel with his overdone nonagenarian make up distracts. Alia springs to action whenever there is humor to be curdled out of teeny bopper situation. Sidharth is quietly efficient working with his smiles. Ratna Pathak steals the scenes whenever she is in while Rajat wears the role very believably. It is Fawad Khan you leave the theatre with, admiring.  While good looks help, it is the finesse with which he bringsto life  a mixed up personality angry with the pressures of having to keep unto an image, that impresses.

If only the director Shakun Batra had put in more purpose and zing into the extraordinary cast, witty one liners and outstanding editing and less very obvious proxy marketinging of cigarettes as the entire cast seems to highlight the virtues of cigarettes and sutta !!!  it could have been unmissable. Even now it is any day better than the average stuff rolled out every week .When I came out of the theatre I felt it was a 2 ½ starrer but I would not put the accountability of bad behavior in a theatre of the young audience that actually reduced the impact, on to the movie.

***

Madam Sir, We are bored!

He sat scratching his salt and pepper beard waiting anxiously for his star heroine. They had commenced shooting. He looks up as she arrives, doing the cat walk, to where he is sitting. He notices that it is no more the Ms. World Walk. There is a sprightly gait more like seen in Athletic FBI agents. She wears dark Ray bans and moves across with a Tigresses’s confidence. He is happy that she has agreed to work for him but more recently she has asked for a special meeting and he is worried.

The casting had been pitch perfect. A tough woman cop in keeping with the demands of time. This time the time city infested with political goons and police turned bad men, needed woman power to set it right. The area had failed the acid test and it needed ropes. ‘Voluntary’ suicide by the wronged men. But then to get it past the censors it had be balanced with a conscientious law keeper who treads the right side of the law and yet instills fear in all the people. It was so original but then he wondered why no one was enthused till he had said he will cast a woman in the key role.

He had conjured up this this fresh of the oven story where a town is harassed by stinking politicians, their kin, who move around in open jeeps and rape women and commit broad daylight murders. Obviously they had forgotten the acid test or the town had run out of acid. The innocent top politician who is heading to be CM digs his own grave as he dispatches his own friend’s daughter having helped her educate in the IPS and hopes now she will do his bidding.  But the brave officer has other plans. Besides looking very good in a muddy town and wearing what looked like the only set of highly starched and perfectly ironed clothes, she goes around trying to set things right including her own corrupt officer one of the character actors.  She was to launch a full-fledged war carrying forward the legacy of the heroes of acid test movies. So all was set. And then that call.

‘Sir I need to talk to you’. His heart was all flutter. Did she not like the story? Did she want a double role? He had already agreed for top billing in the credits.

“Sir’ she said ending her athletic walk converting into a more athletic pose ‘I cannot thank you enough for having taken me in this movie. But you know that call from Hollywood right for the TV series where I play an FBI agent. Sir it has taken off very well. I don’t know if I can devote enough time for this movie. Sir don’t think I am ungrateful because I have to come back to this industry if it does not work out”

“Madam Sir ’he nodded looking serious’ so you want me to reduce the role? How do we fill the movie? We have 21 face-offs, 11 voluntary suicides, 20 fights, 55 stern one liners expected to win applause and already arranged 60 starched uniforms for you”

“Sir, please stop calling me Madam Sir that is the script of the movie. Tell you what, why don’t you make the corrupt cop as the hero who has a change of heart, the hero of the movie. I will come once in a while, glower, use all those dresses, and throw a few punches that I have learnt at the academy back home. Err I mean my new home.  I will check if there is any copyright to the kicks I will employ here including a few flips over the walls “

“Madam Sir, Yeh aap kya keh rahe ho? Me as a hero. The critics will be waiting out there to tear me apart besides other directors being envious of me for getting in front of the camera as well “

“Sir, Main hoon Na. I will tacitly support you in the movie. Go on do it. But first shave your beard off and look like a cop. Don’t overact that’s all“

“Madam Sir, Ok. I will rewrite the script to make the corrupt cop who has a change of heart and takes over the system in a smart way”

“ Ok cool, Got to rush off sorry dear sir, I have a guftagoo with Fallonbhai and then a photo shoot where I have to quickly tweet pictures of hanging on to some Hollywood’s unknown people’s shoulders like my competitor is currently doing ”

He watched as she sprinted in FBI style back to her car. And she was gone. He had exactly 5 scenes with her and had to rewrite the story to make himself the hero. He got up and looked in the mirror. Not bad uh!

(Extremely fictional write- up.  If it reminds you of a recent movie with a movie with a lady officer and baddies in dusty land then the impression could be purely coincidental)

And in other news Jai Gangajal the new follow-up movie to Gangajal is out. A story of a lady cop dispatched to bring order to a small town where goons outnumber the civilians. The law keepers too have their bank accounts with the political bad masters and hence it is a lone fight against illegal activities for the pretty female IPS officer. She glowers effectively but her walk sometimes gives away that she is an ex MS World but flashes of her Quantico athleticism abound in the few scenes where she makes a guest appearance.

The film belongs rightfully to the understated performance of Prakash Jha also the director of the movie who plays a corrupt cop who goes right. He is not in the least sloppy and turns in a stylish performance and looks awkward only in the fight scenes. He is honestly the best thing in an otherwise boring film with beaten to death sloppy scripts of political goons in a dusty town who need to be finished by hanging them in a spree of mob justice.

Jha usually needs to be lauded for trying to make a proper mix of message and story. But how long can we keep taking in the same story. The length is another problem and with the exception of a few scenes the movie drags badly despite his sincere effort.

Priyanka is sincere but very distracted and lost. Pavan Kaul as the legislator reminds you of Jimmy Shergil and is very promising.  Ninand Kamath missing from the scene for a long time performs the role of a rowdy younger brother very effectively.  The music is painful coming in at all the wrong times and reducing the impact of some of the scenes.

The enterprise then belongs to Prakash Jha who should be lauded for an impactful debut and creating a fresh character in another wise tepid movie.

Wonder if Madam Sir will ever now come back from the glamorous west