A colleague was recently attacked for his positive review of a film simply because he had authored a book on the filmmaker. This, despite the fact, that he had mentioned that in the review itself (This amounts to full disclosure).

Additionally, my colleague had expressly put it on record in the book that he’s a fan of the man. You cannot be more honest than this.

So maybe I should start with this piece with a disclaimer too.

I am a huge Kamal Haasan fan – to an extent that I believe that the difference between Kamal fans and others is that true Kamal Haasan fans are also smart enough to criticise his films. They are quick to see how The Scientist became Neela Vaanam.

I also know Mr. Haasan personally because I was once involved behind the scenes in organising the Chennai International Screenwriting Workshop. He’s always been an inspiration to me as a filmmaker and my film begins with thanks to him.

So, when his partner Gautami was telling me about their new portal Maiam, I had in fact suggested, that I would like to review ‘Vishwaroopam’. I told her that maybe I could write a very critical piece on the film once I had watched it and that they should carry it to establish the credibility of the website.

She was game. I was excited because I really wanted to find out if they would carry a bad review. Too bad we can’t find out now.

Because the day the film released, I messaged her back saying I cannot do it. I loved the film. It didn’t make any sense for Haasan’s own portal to carry a positive review.

Coming back to my colleague and the controversy of social networks attacking critics, I must admit that it’s quite a difficult task to resist from replying to people. Because the idea of a social network is to socialise with people. And when you are a film critic, everyone has a counter opinion.

This year, we have seen fierce disagreements on pretty much every other film. ‘Matru Ki Bijli Ka Mandola’ (which I thought was pretty OK though inconsistent and a few loved), ‘Akaash Vani’ (which I loved and many hated), ‘David’ (which I loved and many hated), ‘Kadal’ (which I thought was bad by Mani Ratnam standards but a few liked) and ‘Vishwaroopam’ (which I loved and a few hated).

When everyone is a critic, the art of criticism becomes even more significant. At the risk of sounding condescending/patronising, I must say here that the average Joe hasn’t been exposed to the basics of criticism or film studies. He reacts on an instinct, like a child getting his first injection saying: “I don’t like it. It was a bad experience.”

The average Joe probably hasn’t understood why willing suspension of disbelief” is such an integral aspect of storytelling, an artistic licence that allows the filmmaker to tell stories that are larger than life.

Which is why while he has every right to crap over everything he has paid to watch and troll anyone who does not agree with him, these shouldn’t be taken seriously for the same reason that critics shouldn’t be taken too seriously either. What you need to consider is the criticism – the arguments – why is it good or why is it bad.

Since, it’s easier to present further arguments using a modern relevant example, I am going to demonstrate by dissecting ‘Vishwaroopam’ and take you through my thought process of interpreting the film since this is a classic example of a film that’s got polarised reviews from critics, fans and haters.

And also because it’s all about the duality – of being a commercial film with so many metaphors to put most arthouse films made here to shame.

SPOILERS FOLLOW, read further only after watching the film.

Genre: Spy thriller.

What that means: Which means plot involving saving the world/country/city from bomb/some form of nuclear attack/terrorist plot/conspiracy. Simply put, not everyday events. These are things that require action, willing suspension of disbelief.

Director: Kamal Haasan

What that means: This is an atheist filmmaker and activist actor known to make films about humanity, compassion, non violence etc but is considered arrogant, indulgent and narcissistic. The films he has directed so far are usually rich in metaphors and recurring motifs. Mental note: Watch out for them.

The hero: Vishwanath a.k.a Viz who we learn is actually Wizam Ahmad Kashmiri, a secret agent who had infiltrated the Jihadi group.

What that means: First, Viz is an effeminate dancer, who isn’t quite the man of the house, contrasted with his working wife – a Brahmin meat eater – a sharp contrast to the vegetarian Muslim hero. The paradox.

The duality of all their roles. Like the trailer informs us: Everyone has a double role. “I am a hero and a villain” as the hero tells us, a man with “too much emotional baggage” that he has no time to get into since he needs to save New York. His surname Kashmiri is a hint of who the man is: A Muslim abandoned by his father, torn between his love for the State and sympathy for his brothers across the border. Till the end of the film, he refers to the villain of the film as his “brother Omar”.

The villain: One-eyed Omar Qureshi, Jihadi leader who considers Osama his mentor, but also questions his God.

What that means: An eye for an eye? Literally blinded by his beliefs (or possibly a bomb shrapnel/gunshot from American forces as we will probably find out from the sequel), he can only see one aspect of Jihad as presented to him by his mentor – Osama Bin Laden. Omar is educated, speaks English and acknowledges to Wizam that he knows health care is important but cannot afford to have white doctors around with American soldiers held hostage in the next village. He’s as human as anyone, a man who questions his God on the face of adversity. He’s troubled yet does what he believes is right. In one of the most telling shots in the film, he takes the filth from his teeth and feeds it to a pigeon – the metaphor for peace loving Muslims in the film. We see these pigeons in Afghanistan and later in the US. In the US, pigeons are poisoned with pellets that spread radiation and terror around New York. Pigeons and Jihadis who end up dead after being exposed to radiation in the warehouse: #sameguy.

The conflict: The growing terror network of Jihadis around the world caused by American attacks on the Islamic world.

What that means: Haasan decides to intercut between cause and effect – training in Afghanistan and terror in New York – while taking us through Wizam’s days as the villain (when he betrayed his brothers for his duty towards the State) intercut with his days as the hero (when he has to fight his brothers trying to wreck havoc among innocents). In the Afghanistan portions, we see him discover the human side of the Jihadi. Omar loves his son, who wants to be a DOCTOR not a WARRIOR (Later, we also see Omar playing with his son by blind-folding him and quizzing him on the kind of bullets – semi-blind man wanting to blind his son in his game of violence).

Omar’s son refuses to be called a child when Wizam tries to put him on a swing. But another child-like grown up is quick to get on the swing, is more easily swayed. This character ends up becoming a suicide bomber at the NATO base after he’s given a burqa (eerily introduced into the frame as a hand puppet by the senior Jihadi – again, a lovely metaphor to show that the kid has become the hand puppet later when he wears the burqa and blows himself up!). As we cut from the newspaper shot of his death, Wizam remembers the now dead kid swaying on the swing, as he walks across another swing with a younger child on it.

It’s a shot of the swing in the background that lasts all of two seconds. A little later, he sees the dead doctor lying near a dying horse, frees the animal from misery by shooting it dead (again, duality and the irony – that death is sometimes the kindest act you could do), takes her stethoscope and gives it to the kid who wanted to be a doctor.

The father walks in and points his finger like a gun and mock-fires at the kid’s defiance. The hero helps the kid point his finger as a gun at this father and mock-fires. The villain’s sidekick laughs, villain mock-fires at the sidekick. Kid runs out of his home and starts mock-shooting other kids. It has become a game. Kids shooting kids. Violence begets violence. This is a harbinger of things to come. American troops bomb the village, killing innocents. Cause. Intercut with Effect – Jihadis come to America, bomb New York. Not just Jihadis from Afghanistan, from all around, including Nigeria.

Treatment: Intercutting present with past, effect with cause, in a rather REALISTIC tone for a spy thriller!

What that means: This is a spy thriller. There’s absolutely no need for restraint. We have seen Bond, Bourne and even Agent Vinod do the craziest badass things. Yet, Haasan wants to play it real because he wants us to invest in the people and care for them. The only thrills are through rash driving cars in traffic. And gunshots. Not hand to hand combat. The spy knows he cannot barge into an FBI operation, he can only politely request: “Can I come with you?”

His wife, being an expert on the nature of the radioactive material, is asked to help the bomb squad. When she first mentions the Faraday Shield that was needed to stop the bomb from being triggered by a mobile phone, the bomb expert knows what she’s talking about. Later when she is allowed to the room by the FBI officer who thinks it’s over, she repeats the need to get a Faraday Shield. The bomb geek says the Faraday Shield “should be there in five minutes” (so he clearly has arranged for one already).

Realising that might be too late, she looks around and sees that a microwave could do the same. She saves the day. Why should she? Because education saves life. Not violence. A doctor saves life. DOCTOR not a WARRIOR (Deja vu? Omar’s son wanted to be a doctor) Woman preserves. Man destroys. Not the hero… who gets to put the last bullet into the Jihadi after he’s shot multiple times by the SWAT team. Compared to other heroes in movie situations like this, our hero doesn’t get to do much at all, except maybe blow through the bottom of the door to make a cockroach get away from the Spycam. Earlier when the FBI officer Tom apologises to him for kicking him, before he could say anything, his boss, the Colonel (Shekhar Kapur) butts in saying: “No need. These things happen.”

Haasan is happy to take the backseat and let other characters deal with most of the action. It’s quite unusual for a hero considered narcissistic to give the villain a far more complex role than his own.

Moral: A Muslim agent has to fight a Jihadi group that he once infiltrated and betrayed.

What that means: It’s not everyday do we see a spy thriller made out of India that looks so credible and plausible, while maintaining the equipoise and the duality of truth – of both camps. American and the rebel camp…The Jihadis.

The villain, Omar is fighting for a cause he strongly believes in. Even if it’s caused by blind beliefs, to avenge the death of his family. What US calls collateral damage. The duality of truth is that while there are fundamental Muslims like Omar, Vishwaroopam also tells us that are many liberal Muslims like Wizam, who marry Hindu girls, who stay vegetarian, are patriotic to the country, are peace-loving, have sympathy for their misled brothers… and yet are willing to fight for what they believe is right. To save innocents from collateral damage.

You can replace Wizam in Afghanistan here with Jack Sully in Pandora (Avatar). A man sent to infiltrate the natives for unobtanium/oil that the imperial capitalists want. While Jake wasn’t a native himself, here Kashmiri is a Muslim himself fighting his misled brothers. He maybe misled himself, given that his act of betrayal leads to death of innocents in Afghanistan. He knows he did a lot of wrong, which is why I strongly suspect that we will learn in the sequel that he did in fact, save Omar’s son, who is probably now studying to be a doctor.

It’s very rare to see a Muslim hero, a patriotic one at that, in our films. Or even American films for that matter. Haasan takes a genre template and infests it with so many metaphors, recurring motifs and meaning for those who like depth in their cinema. And I haven’t even got started on the science versus religion subtext (a theme that he explored in Dasavatharam as well).

But I have to concede it’s mostly lost on the audience. But I wouldn’t blame the filmmaker at all. Because that would be like blaming a writer for the illiteracy of his reader.

The average Joe isn’t cinema literate. Which is why criticism, NOT critics, is all the more important today. Criticism means arguments, not just judgments in 140 characters (though we do that too as a teaser to the full review later). We present our case, let you watch the film and make up your mind.

But at the end of the day, it’s still just one person’s opinion. I don’t expect you to agree with me. Similarly, it’s not fair for you to expect a critic to agree with you. If you will only read reviews you will agree with, you must write your own and read them.

A true critic understands duality. That it is possible for the film to be good and bad at the same time, depending on who’s watching it.

Which is why, it’s all the more important, to present your arguments and leave.

Let people be the judge.

Because people also are smart enough to see the difference between argument and judgment. Between reason and emotion. Between critic and troll!

(This was written as a guest post for IBN-LIVE)

One’s a super stylish, black and white, moody gangster film that punctuates the narrative with sudden bursts of bullets in the tradition of the best noir films. And David (Neil Nitin Mukesh is really good) is the good guy-protecting-the-bad facing a moral crisis.

Another is a grungy, high-energy, coming-of-age tale of a young musician who sets out to avenge his father’s honour. David (an earnest Vinay Virmani) here, is the good guy wanting to embrace bad for revenge.

The third is a slow, lazy, breezy, drunk… almost stoner, unusual ‘romance’ between a happy go lucky drunk and a deaf and dumb girl. David (Vikram is endearing) here is a bad guy (drunk, juvenile, vandal who goes around punching women) wanting to be good and romantic.

Yes, the fact that these three stories/genres are set across different decades -  in 1975, 1999 and 2010 – is a bit of a stretch and even more when the filmmaker insists that the climax of all three stories happened on March 3rd!

To be honest, I was dreading the fact of watching a film connected only by a name that might end up having a contrived climax that tries to tie up everything. But luckily for me, David was all about the journey and not the destination.

David is an exploration of morality – between right and wrong – and it does so with so much more restraint and style than the blatant in-your-face good versus evil face-off in Mani Ratnam’s Kadal. While I knew from the promos that the film was going to pack a lot of style, what I didn’t anticipate was the surprising amount of soul and substance and a filmmaker in supreme control, so damn confident of his craft.

Here, you are not just rushing through the motions for the sake of pace but exploring it slowly, letting your audience soak in the rich textures of character, their environments and inner turmoil. David is the journey into that part of the mind that is at a two-way fork on the road and how their demons, their Daddy issues, their meeting with their Goddesses shape their destiny.

There is so much glorious detail in David that sets it apart from most Bollywood films. Every frame is so exquisitely composed and choreographed to capture character and mood, a perfect marriage of form and content. The first is dead serious, the second bitter-sweet realistic and the third completely zany and creative. While each character study is faithful to the genre the story is set in, the journeys of the three Davids have one thing in common – they all want answers. David is about the unravelling of those answers while cashing in on its artistic licence and constantly reminding you of its fictional nature through its storytelling devices – music video-like montage sequences, stylised action (the shootout sequence is simply fantastic), surreal supernatural twists, larger than life atmospherics and lavish shot compositions that will put Sanjay Leela Bhansali to shame.

Remember that classy, slo-mo shootout picturisation of the jazzy version of Khoya Khoya Chand in Shaitan that the filmmaker indulged in simply because it looked so cool? There’s a similar boxing sequence here set to Damadam Mast Kalander. Only that this time, Bejoy connects it to what’s going on in the film and uses it to underline the David-Golaith theme running through the film. This is not style for the sake of it. This is style that underlines the film’s central conflict. As a physical manifestation of the battle with the demons.

The relationships are so tenderly etched out in all three stories – be it the classic love story in the first, the unusual bond between an elderly widow and a musician or the beautiful friendship between a drunk and the lady running a massage parlour. It’s these touches that give David its heart and their meditation on the choices they need to make, gives the film its soul. The all encompassing style with which the narrative unfolds is just a huge bonus.

David has to be among the best looking films to have ever come out of India. I’m happy to report that it’s also among the bravest. It’s never afraid to be politically incorrect, whether the Davids are doing right or wrong. Bejoy gets it right.

It’s easy to make a fast film. To make a slow one requires balls.

It’s easy to make a film as a moral science lesson. But to make an amoral film requires guts.

David packs in the spirit of the indie in the big bad world of Bollywood Golaiths.

Mr. Orange approves, Mr. Nambiar.

(I saw a bit of the Tamil version as well, Jiiva is fantastic in it. Will surely now go watch the semi-dubbed Tamil version just for him!)

Kadal is a difficult film to write about especially because a lot of why it doesn’t work lies in spoiler territory.

So do come back to read this only once you’ve seen the film. And yes, that means you must watch it. Even knowing that it is bad. Simply because even a bad Mani Ratnam film is better than most films made.

To begin with, the faulty Prologue should have been done away with at the editing table. It gives away too much information that makes a significant plot twist before interval predictable. We were better off not knowing how exactly Arvind Swamy and Arjun know each other. Because once we know their equation, it’s easy to see a twist coming the minute Arjun returns to the scene. This weakens quite a bit of the first half of Kadal.

The prologue is a weak first scene because Arvind Swamy’s priest comes across as a little too uptight for us to see him as good. He’s like that pest in class who gets you caught for copying. Which is a pity because the character actually blooms into a real person a little later when he enters the village the film is set in. He smiles a lot, he likes people and as tolerant as he is with mischievous urchins, he doesn’t hesitate to slap the kid when needed. And just like that, an uptight stereotype became a real person. Wish we saw more of this human side with his nemesis, who takes character exposition to new heights by taking the name of the Devil in almost every scene he appears. Saataan this, saataan that! Yes, we get it. You don’t have to come in black-and-black to talk about Saataan post interval, we understood who you represent from the very first scene.

It’s not just the simple black and white, good and bad stereotyping that fails Kadal, it’s also the lack of character motivation… What are the these people doing in the film?

An orphan boy who wants his “father” and the whole village at his feet, signs up with the Devil halfway into the film… So far, good. But ten minutes after interval, his “father” is dead and there’s nothing left for the boy to do but wait for the climax to redeem himself. So he bides his time romancing the heroine.  A couple of songs with almost similar visuals – and at least one same reused shot of the couple in a bicycle on the shore in both songs – put the film into a time warp.

Nothing happens. One principal character is away and the other free to do what he wants to.

The priest who has to prove his innocence and win back the trust of the villagers… does it instantly on return! And the Devil of the villain has absolutely nothing challenging him till the climax.

To re-emphasise, as the film does again and again all through the second half, the villain’s graph coasts along gloriously smooth, the boy’s is stuck in a time warp and the other is in exile finds himself suspended from the film and the story.

We have the boy turn all out killer without the slightest hesitation and turn soft again almost instantly every time a romantic song sets in. This is as uni-dimensional as any Tamil masala film, not what you would expect from Mani Ratnam. But it also wants us to learn lessons of forgiveness from the church! Only Mani Ratnam would have thought of making masala meet gospel!

There are some great moments where you can see the class of the master – like the scene during the opening credits when we see the child for the first time, as he discovers that his mother is dead. It’s such a powerful sequence all the way to the burial and you wonder why he didn’t just open the film with this compared to the weak opening at the seminary.

The first half has many such moments – especially the first half hour when the village warms up to the priest who employs a tape recorder to break the ice, the priest’s relationship with the orphan, his attempts to tame the runt all the way to the arrival of his wounded friend from the past! The subplot involving Lakshmi Manchu is quickly forgotten in the second half and the boy’s transformation from bad to good happens with the weakest of Mani Ratnam’s heroines… a girl who behaves like a child (like Priyanka in Barfi, not as over the top). Mani Sir, this is not a new type. Almost, all Tamil film heroines behave like they are 14 year olds with a crush on the hero!

Rahman’s songs are picturised great and the film looks fantastic no doubt but the overdose of the simplistic Biblical good versus evil discourse turns the film predictable. But for the unbelievable unprecedented technical excellence in the picturisation of the climax (Rajiv Menon’s cinematography brings the storm alive), there’s very little the second half offers in terms of good cinema.

The actors are mostly good. Gautham Karthik reminds us of his father and gets a dream debut, the girl is bad but that’s probably because of the ill-etched character she’s been assigned while Arvind Swami gets to make a superb comeback and Arjun gets to be all out bad, even if uni-dimensional. But they have all worked hard on getting the diction right. The technical team gets the milieu somewhat right. Rahman has given us a rather eclectic unusual soundtrack and if the film is let down, it’s only by the weakest material Mani Ratnam has ever been associated with (the screenplay and dialogues are credited to Mani Ratnam and writer Jeyamohan).

For a more superior and authentic film set in this milieu, go watch Neer Paravai (incidentally Jeyamohan wrotes dialogues for this too) which had a lot more to do with the sea than Kadal, where the sea, barring the spectacular climax, is just pretty wallpaper for the rest of the moral science lesson set inside a church!

Genre: Dramedy
Director: Anurag Basu
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Ileana D’Cruz, Saurabh Shukla
Storyline: A carefree, spirited young man with a hearing and speech disability has to kidnap his childhood friend, an autistic girl, for an emergency.
Bottomline: The sunny, summery anti-thesis to the wintry, bleak ‘Black’

It’s tough not to draw parallels between Black and Barfi! with so many striking resemblances, overlapping of themes and equally emotional popular response.

Yet, they are at the opposite ends of the spectrum, despite their distinctively different European treatment.

If Bhansali and Ravi K Chandran chose to paint their canvas in shades of gothic black, Basu and Ravivarman bathe their film with beatific light.

If Black tried to make you cry, this one tries to make you laugh.

If Black chose to focus on characters trying to overcome their disability, Barfi! chooses to focus on the characters ability to see the world differently.

If Black was about a character battling old-age and schizophrenia and another coming of age, Barfi! is about the return to innocence as the lead characters celebrate their ‘disabilities’.

While Barfi (Ranbir) has the ability to put a smile on your face though he can’t talk or hear himself, autistic Jhilmil (Priyanka Chopra) sees the world through the wide-eyed innocence of a child.

They are not trying to compete in this world or trying hard to prove a point like characters in Black. They are happy living a life together, far away from the madness of materialism of today. Remember the seventies when songs about life used to be about how life was a song? Barfi! totally milks music for old-world charm.

It’s the Ranbir Kapoor show all the way as Barfi makes you smile and applaud with his antics without needing a single line of dialogue. It’s a fitting tribute to Charlie Chaplin and his own grandfather Raj Kapoor, the original Indian tramp and he proves once again that he’s the best actor of his generation.

Priyanka too is just wonderfully restrained for most parts. However, the best portions of the film do not belong to their story. Their scenes together look blatantly cutesy and manufactured.

Almost like Basu wants to say: “Look how much spirit these two happily disabled characters have. Please smile for them, they don’t need your tears.”

Though a far cry away from Bhansali’s “Look how much spirit these two characters have to fight their disability. Shed a tear for their struggle and triumph,” Barfi! gets problematic by reminding us of their disability all the time – even if it’s for laughs.

Why do filmmakers need to treat disability like a show-pony irrespective of whether they want to make you laugh or cry? Barfi is the other side of Black. Equally manipulative. Which is why Iqbal despite its budgetary constraints seems like a more honest film – it makes you completely forget that Iqbal cannot talk or hear.

Even if you are to overlook the plot contrivances here (don’t you just hate it when characters are bumped off conveniently to get the story moving forward?) and the desperate efforts to manufacture conflict of an epic scale, there’s that leisurely pace that might discourage repeat viewings.

The first hour of the film is picture perfect, especially, the scenes with Ranbir charming Ileana and their relationship. This is Anurag Basu’s finest hour with the visual medium. He shines with his craft, using non-verbal communication, flawless physical comedy, superbly employed metaphors and leitmotifs to a fetchingly French background score by Pritam that is really the soul of the film.

And then, one of the biggest cliches of Indian cinema (the hero needs money for the kidney operation of a loved one) kicks in a convoluted plot of kidnapping and needless suspense to make up for conflict.

Still, there’s a lot to love in this “Adventures of the Happily Disabled” once you buy into the platonic Barfi-Jhilmil relationship. It just doesn’t seem right when it turns into a love triangle because clearly one of them is still a kid at heart.

Which brings us to the film’s biggest strength at the box office – it’s family friendly. Pretty much every member of your family is probably going to love this film and many will swear it’s the best film of the year.

Strange that many looked down upon Basu’s last film ‘Kites’ though it was just an adult version of the same story: Love knows no language and it happens when two people are on the run. If Barfi channels Chaplin and French cinema, Kites paid homage to Tarantino and Rodriguez.

Barfi is a safe bet. Populist, instantly likeable, charming and unfortunately, a tad too light.

Genre: Comedy

Director: Rohit Shetty

Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Asin, Prachi Desai

Storyline: A man lies through his teeth to save his job

Bottomline: The worst remake of a film since Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag

Sitting through Bol Bachchan is like sitting through multiple car wrecks. No, seriously. There is enough car on car action all through this unwarranted Rohit Shetty remake of Golmaal.

Well, it’s made by stuntmen, you see. Something they don’t want you to miss.

Think 12 Angry Men performed entirely by blondes WHILE they are watching the Sidney Lumet classic on stage BECAUSE they keep forgetting their lines. Or Star Wars staged by the cast of World Wrestling Federation just because they speak English like Yoda. “Talk like him, we can. So fight with tubelights, let us.”

There’s enough bad English in this film under the pretext of humour to make even Rowdy Rathore go: Don’t Angry Me.

If you liked Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Golmaal, which you sure did, you would want to protest this assault on one of the effortlessly funny films of all time.

Here, the effort shows in every scene.

Every actor opens his mouth knowing well that he has to deliver a funny line that’s mostly dead on arrival. While the iconic Ramprasad Dashrathprasad Sharma (Amol Palekar) was a natural born scum who premeditated his lies and Bhavani Shankar (Utpal Dutt) was a hypocritical culture Nazi, Rohit Shetty and his writers paint their characters in monochrome.

Here the hero lies because he is noble and his nemesis buys it because he’s kind at heart. Abbas (Abhishek Bachchan) wants to save a child from drowning in the temple. So to prevent bloodshed, he lies that he’s Abhishek Bachchan.

Whoa! So that’s how communal India of today has become.

What’s worse is the fact that the makers resort to gay jokes by making Abbas play an effeminate dance teacher who turns on an army of wrestlers. Stay classy, guys.

We can’t really fault the actors here when the lines were cursed from the start. Abhishek Bachchan gives it all and the effort shows sometimes while Ajay Devgn walks around hamming it like he’s in on the joke.

And thus, the classic comedy about generation gap becomes approximated to… well, people blowing up cars while making off-colour jokes about race and homosexuality because there are puns waiting to be milked.

Yes, you will laugh a couple of times mostly because the actors manage to salvage a bad joke here and there.

But most of it does not even make sense. Sample Ajay Devgn translating “You make my heart swell in pride to” to “My chest has become blouse.”

That’s pretty much how funny Rohit Shetty’s translation of Golmaal is.

(This review originally appeared here)