Babul : Antarctica, here I comeeeeeeeeee
Print
Everything is connected to the Samundar (Hinglish : the Moronic Ocean)…
The son goes something like this “My love for you is bigger than the ocean…”, while the father goes “There is water in the ocean… but it is undrinkable… water is water… ocean water… “… to make matters more clear to you, O my dear reader, the words are spoken at different times in the movie to a Ms. who works in udja tu Bulbul… that you definitely would like to give it a royal miss.
Meanwhile, life is a Pahad (Hinglish: A stupid mountain)… that keeps crashing on your khaali sar (Hinglish: A stupid head)… or atleast that’s what Shri Shri Ravi Chopra jee would like in his nirdeshan (Hinglish : A stupid direction)
Before I move on to give you, O my dear reader, a brief 2 liner of the story of itchy bubble, let me tell you that this BR Production Babul’s post, has been the most hardest, toughest post to write ever since I started my blogging hobby 2 years ago.
No dear reader, it is not that I had to hit, hammer and strangle my brains to even attempt to understand this Ravi Chopra’s almost understandable product, but the problem was in running between my computer to type this post and my restroom to relieve my upset stomach.
To say that Babul will give you an indigestion will be an understatement. Please open the cap of Tums/Hajomola/or whatever you take… pour half a bottle of the pills in your fist and FORCE them inside your wide open mouth.
The above is to be done before the movie has begun. The action is to be repeated each time Salman Khan comes on screen. Then during the interval. Then during Salman Khan’s death scene. Then whenever he comes on screen as a ghost. Then during our very own PFC’s buddy buddy, John Abraham’s “I come in, I move out, I come in, I move out, I come in I move out….” performance (Sorry John, but if you are reading this… please get a whitener and blot the word “Babul” out of your memory and every damn piece of paper you see it on).
Of course, it goes without saying that if anything is left in your favorite digestion-aid bottle… you should religiously empty that bottle into your mouth before you step out of the theater…
Or Else…
The next few days of your life, already filled with stupidities, (á lá Ravi Chopra’s Babul) will get utterly utterly… stupid… yes more stupidities which may make you question the very existence of your life… Is life meant to be lived on and on to watch movies like “Babul”??? Making an advance appointment with your psychiatrist or your spiritual guru or perhaps your Momma is strongly advised before you enter the theater to watch this…
Mindless 180 minute crime of a movie, that is built solely on scenes that are self ejaculatory in themselves sparing no room or concern for the viewer watching it.
Where is the effort to pull the viewer in? The team and the players in Babul seem to be having some kind of a party in their penthouse, while you watch them from the loft of your apartment absolutely unconnected and emotionless… lifeless though, would be a more appropriate word…
Babul in two lines, is the story of widow remarriage. Son dies, Father of the son, takes on the onus of getting the daughter-in-law remarried.
Interesting subject? You bet. It’s been some time since someone has touched the topic of widow remarriage, except of course Water. But Ravi Chopra and company seem to have had some other plans…
To isolate the viewer to the point that he or she starts noticing everything else except for the movie, around him or her.
For some odd reasons… watching this Awful Bull, makes you more sensitive to your surroundings and environment…
While making the 23rd trip out of the screen during the running of the movie, you notice that the theater “Naz 8″ had only 6 screens.
There were 6 urinals in the men’s room. One wasn’t working. The toilet paper gets stuck inside this oddly created device and no amount of punching or kicking helps to get the paper out. You then use the buckle of your belt to unscrew the device, take the front flap out and happily get your hands on the toilet paper. And in self appreciation, (of getting to the hard to get toilet paper), you walk out of the rest room carrying the flap of the toilet paper holder. It finds a permanent place, in your adventures-in-cinema-shelf in your living room.
The air dryer for your hands has a 24 inch long vent but you get the fucking air coming out of only a 1 inch corner of that stupid vent. The effects of Babul were affecting every nook and corner of the theater.
There are 57 people watching the movie… (I’m serious, I was counting people)
Rani Mukherjee wears around 8+ rati (close to a carat) pukhraj (yellow sapphire) on her index finger, while Amitabh Bachchan wears three rings in one hand and one ring in the other.
Salman Khan, seems to be suffering from some facial muscle irritation that makes him use them for only two expressions… namely – when his eyebrows move two inches up and then when his eyebrows move two inches down.
What the hell happened to this guy? Maybe his off screen antics don’t make us like him as much as before, but moving through movie after movie with your two patented expressions is carrying it a bit too far.
Underplaying the act may be the new in thing in Bolly-town, and perhaps that’s the reason why viewers have come up with a new “reactionary” action these days. The act of taking the shoe off and beating the head hard and bad each time – Salmanjee does his eyebrow up, eyebrow down expression… be it for laughing, crying or what ever un-understandable emotion he was trying to express – that is yet to be deciphered by humanity.
A range of able actors are used as props… it is indeed tragic to see Sarika reduced to standing in the corner or Rajpal Yadav used to pick up the suitcase or the phone. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON???
Chopra seems to be stuck in the 70s mindset which brings out such scenes where in the name of comedy actors are supposed to make faces at you.
Really… is this the level of moronic stupidity that exists within us, that makes filmmakers make such self pleasuring mindless bumped up insulting the already scrambled up brains of the viewers…
Ravi Chopra seems to be hell bent of creating a Mr. Spock in all of us. A viewer devoid of any emotions through any scene in the entire fucking movie… Babul could break the records of Antarctica with its mind boggling coldness…
If you have to choose the best thing in Babul, it would be, Sharad Saxena, playing the bride’s “real” father, who comes on screen for 95.6 seconds in the first half and 95.6 seconds in the second half.
Amitabh Bachchan goes through the motions. Horror of horrors, some scenes have him losing the viewer in the pit hole of boredom…
Rani Mukherjee, pours in everything she has, but quite frankly unless you are a student of cinema or a critic or Ravi Chopra, you are snoring in your seat 30 minutes into the movie to notice anything.
F Minus… You’ve got to see this to believe me. Sharing such pain makes it lighter and easier to bear. Pray, dear reader, share this pain with me… by watching this Bad-Bull
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Oz-bhai,atleast the only good thing about Babul that I can count is Your Review.This was like a bull-dozer rolling out flattening Mr. Ravi Chopra.Can qholeheartedly understand the pain and agony that must’ve gone into this creation…I mean your review.
loading...
as i had predicted, not even red-bull could’ve kept me up thru baa-bull. thanks oz, for confirming my theory. will make sure NOT to accidentally catch it on tv or something..
in john’s defense, i’m glad he’s doing a movie like this.. as an actor, it’s important for him to do the “big” films, so that for every one crappy, big film, he can at least be seen and noticed and raise his own stock and do 2 or 3 “small” but damn good films (kabul express, no smoking). this also brings in visibility for the gen-21 filmmakers such as AK and kabir khan and lets other such filmmakers know that actors like john are keeping themselves open to good cinema. so john, if you’re reading this, keep doing what you’re doing, because you have been fortunate to attain that healthy balance of big and small films, which brings the well-made movies to the forefront =D> and we at PFC really appreciate that.
loading...
It seems Ravi Chopra is stuck somewhere in the 70s without doubt. That was when he debuted and post debut stayed there in his adoloscence refusing to grow up. BAGHBAN was also a flick with a 70s feel (very reminiscent of Sanjeev Kumar’s ZINDAGI to a certain extent) and now this !!! My condolences Oz for having to go through this ordeal!
loading...
My heart goes out for you oz…But really sorry man…I am not sharing this pain with you…:d
loading...
thanx oz, for doing community service.
your review reminds me of one of those
ISSUED IN PUBLIC INTEREST thingies
loading...
So, let me get this straight, the social message this movie portraits is that ridiculous Films can cause indigestion?
loading...
Did u see Ravi Copra’s interview where he said:
(quoting from memory)
“My characters not like ‘VIVAH’s cardboard characters ” Becuz unlike VIVAH’s characters who touch elder’s feet on every occasion, his characters hug n stuff n hence more modern….!!!!!!!!!!!!
:d
loading...
The widow remarriage thing is Jaya Bhaduri’s story in Sholay. Now, will that be a part of the new Sholay also?
loading...
- Bishu, Agony? You should have seen my face while coming out of the theater…
- Striker, Maybe we should publish on PFC the date, time and channels on which Badbul will be shown as a “you have been warned” sign for our dear readers.
Nice to see your view on why John did this one.
- Aarkayne, I was pointing more to the negativities in 70s movies that filmmakers of today have still not yet learned from… instead making the same mistakes even today.
- VC, I understand… sukh mein mehfil, dard mein akela… I understand your position…
- Tushar, Damn need a sign board for that now… Good one…
)
- HG, I don’t know what the movie portrays… but what I portray after seeing the movie is that there is no pill in the world that can cure your indigestion after watching this Badbul
- Scout, Good point. Yes I read that. Not seen Vivaah, so can’t comment on them. But if the characters there are cardboard, here they not more than Lijjat Pappad thick.
loading...
Oz …. mazaa aa gaya =))
Remember I told u not to watch this one ???
Actually i have to second striker here. John and may be even some other actors – Arshad warsi, Irfan khan do have to get roles from biggies like Bhatt camp, Yash raj, Ramu … no matter how stupid these roles may be … coz only then will they get the money to do … a Sehar, a Kabul Express/No Smoking, a Haasil/Deadline…
Now that we are in the 70’s mode … do u remember a similar scene in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s classic – Anand, where Amitabh is told by his doctor friend “Aise logon ki treat ment key paise mujhe Mrs Sharma sey miltey hai” … where the doctor treats the TB suffering poor patient for free, and overcharges a Page 3 socialite …type woman
loading...
Here is my short review of the movie. I don’t think it deserves its own post, so forgive the length….
Went to this movie with two friends. One didn’t want to go, but he was outvoted. He made a side trip before the movie started, and then proceeded to sit in the row behind us when he joined us. I thought he was being polite, and he really was – he was ensuring that when he left the theater during the unendurable scenes he wouldn’t have to trip over us on his way out.
I didn’t think the movie was that bad (but, it wasn’t that good), but I am no judge of these kinds of movies. I am the target audience, a girl who cries. I cry at TV commercials. My friends have created a movie rating system called “The Cryometer”, based on how many times I cry in a movie. During my second or third time turning on the waterworks, a loud yawn came from behind me. Loud enough that I had to turn and look, and loud enough that half the theater turned and looked, too.
Then, the intermission. The yawning guy behind me is gone, and I find him wandering the lobby with a blank expression….
The second half of the movie was wonderful. Wonderful because I did’t know it was possible to laugh and cry at the same time. Cry on cue, just like the filmmaker wanted, laugh because of the running commentary from the bored guy in the row behind mine. Really, the second half of the film was slow and barely good, but it was great fun because the person behind me, one who is usually very respectful while watching movies, kept making jokes. Not so quiet ones. Really, you all should be so lucky to have the opportunity to share the fun that is oz bored and annoyed in a movie, sitting in the row behind…
oz wasn’t the only one whose mind kept wandering. I kept thinking how much Rani reminds me of my mother when she was young, and how my mom would look with henna in her hair, and if you can put henna in black hair. How a movie made up of so many beautiful scenes can be so – cold. How so much talent can be wasted in the climax of a film, and how such a strong social message can get lost in too much meaningless and unbearable dialog. I also noticed AB’s rings, and then noticed that John Abraham disappeared at his own wedding – wasn’t he the groom? Then, my mind kept wandering to the fact that all I wanted to do after the movie was go home and watch a comedy….
loading...
http://www.indiafm.com/news/2006/12/12/8412/index.html
Oz…you better rush …you dont have much time..
loading...
Guys, Anyone nioticed that it was AB & John who wanted to get Rani married while there was no confrimation from Rani about.
So much for Women Lib.
This is my expression during the movie8-|
loading...
Oz: Baap U R the limit. =)) I haven’t laughed this much reading a film review. I can only remember laughing when KM reviewed Daud in TOI. He is milder these days.
Read his review:
http://hindustantimes.com/news/1153_1862641,001100030005.htm
loading...
you guys deserve it for watching it. Filmmakers have gone berserk. Most beautiful women in the world is shown as Umrao Jaan( A tragic role) with tag lyric like “agle janam mohe betee na keejo” ( imagine Miss universe crying and asking lord to not make her a girl child again) and then in today’s world, in established rich families, folks ar talking about widow remarriage. I mean who has a problem here. The whole meaning is lost if widow is as beautiful as Rani.
loading...
Muzzy,
I didn’t get that at all. While the whole thing was foisted on her by outside forces,it was she who confronted both of them about making decisions for her without her consent, and then it was her who told JA that he would have to wait until she was ready before she could move forward with him.
Granted, it wasn’t done in a very forthright manner, but I didn’t see her as a complete doormat, either.
Although, I could be wrong. That was about the point I started daydreaming….Notice that I don’t even remember the characters names now….
loading...
lets all of us forget “baabul” and shift focus to “kabul express”! waiting eagerly to watch it next week… by the way india should send “baabul” as it’s official entry for the golden raspberry awards…it’ll win hands down!!
loading...
Speaking of Kabul Express, I loved the trailer they showed during the “interval”. The best part of watching Baabul was watching5-6 trailers…I was impressed by the new trailer of Kabul Express and also Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd. Though looks like a very low budget movies…it i feel it is going to be fun. The makeup and the looks of the character are so very well defined. Was lauging my ass off on seeing Kay Kay..he looks hillarious with that oil-soked hairstyle.
loading...
Oh good lord what were they thinking of releasing such a dry morbid story this time of year?
The whole marketing of this movie was wrong, he didn’t give up all relations to make one .. teh whole remarriage thing was hyped up so much but it’s only teh last 20 minutes or so that really see this argument coming into effect.
The whole movie was a little difficult to swallow as an emotional family movie. Rani excels in crying and that’s it ..
loading...
Ricky, i don’t think Baabul going alone would be fair. What about DON and KANK?:-?
loading...
Looks like ‘Baabul’ wasnt the only let down though…
‘Fanna’ was, ‘KANK’ was and shockingly ‘Bas Ek Pal’ was!!
Shocking, as Onir showed some promise with ‘My Brother Nikhil’, and although the first 20 mins or so were different from the usual, the whole story changed and the characters started to confuse and annoy me!!
Total let down and a waste of two fantastic tracks by Mithoon…..He’s wow…As a musician that is!
But yeah, ‘Baabul’ had my cousin in fits of anger.
She pretty much felt the same way as you Muzzy.
And Gattu, thankfully i haven’t read KM’s opinion on ‘Daud’ as i happen to be the only fan of that movie!!
(I also have a Ramu fascination although the less said about the recent ‘Shiva’ the better!)
loading...