Jannat: Indifferent Balls!
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If timing was any kind of a horse, this one would be first past the finishing line. There would be no better time for a film like ‘Jannat’ to hit the screens than now when our nights and evenings are reeling with the spectacle of cricket at its most decadent. To call it ‘rife with possibilities’ is an understatement. Conceptually, this is a loaded gun. And it arrives with one helluva big bang metaphor. Cricket commentary plays on a radio. Emraan Hashmi’s voice cuts through asking to cut out the noise and concentrate on the game of cards. Big Badda Boom! Maximum Impact Metaphor! And Kunal Deshmukh makes his debut and he couldn’t have gotten a louder coconut to crack.
The people who will be going for a movie like ‘Jannat’ could be broadly classified as- the ‘Emraans’ and the ‘non-Emraans’. This review is written by a ‘non-Emraan’. Not that it will be making any difference to the ‘Emraans’.
Imagine my surprise when I, in my full senses, started to enjoy the movie. It happened somewhere in mid to late first half. The protagonist Arjun has just fixed his first match, a local league one in South Africa. He’s made an offer of fifty lakh rupees to the team captain to throw his wicket and ensure that the match is lost. Arjun’s life is at stake. If he loses, the ruthless mob boss who has got a lot riding on the hedge isn’t going to hesitate in having his head. The captain goes on to hit a century and the match is down to a last over showdown. As the decisive over proceeds, director Deshmukh plays out a sly subversion. He has engaged the audiences’ sympathies with the protagonist- a selfish mercenary, a bookie and now, a match-fixer and the whole cinema hall waits and watches with bated breath hoping for the captain to succumb to greed and for the match to be lost. It gives a whole new spin to the phrase- ‘so which side are you on’.
Yet another tricky moment is a passing glimpse of a match being played on the TV where a spectacular catch is taken and celebrations of the dismissal are on in the field while the bookies and fixers drink champagne and have their own reasons to celebrate.
The first half is as enjoyable as an Abbas-Mustan in their heydays. The absolutely ludicrous, the shamelessly tabloid, the baroquely emotional, the blatantly unreal, the unintentionally camp are given the masala thriller treatment and Director Deshmukh works up a good rhythm. There are foot-in-mouth moments like where the script asks for ‘match-fixing to be legalized’ (what!), dialogues making a comparative analysis of cricketers and prostitutes(egad!) and then the standard Emraan love story with a standard Emraan heroine as they strut around singing standard Emraan locations singing standard Emraan songs(emraan!). Ever present is the unmistakable stamp of Vishesh Films and vintage sequences like when the heroine learns of her lover’s murky past and breaks down. She squats distraught over the floor as the police inspector gives her a brief news reportage overview of how ‘match fixing is connected to international terrorism’ and all this while, the breasts gently heave.
Even the interval moment is a standard Emraan interval moment but Director Deshmukh employs enough cunning to make sure that we won’t see it coming.
So far so good.
As the movie kicks back after the interval there is a distinct feeling of something gone awry. It opens on a wrong note and instead of working its way back to the rhythm of the first half turns into a lugubrious bore that can only collapse under its own weight. All the loop holes that the director seemed to have judiciously avoided in the first hour and a half now come into action. Just when I was celebrating the fact that Kader Khan-isms like sticking in puns and references to cricket lingo had been well restrained, it turns out I had been sitting on a ticking time-bomb. A mob henchman who hardly opens his mouth in the first half finally gets dialogue and it’s like the floodgates to Kader Khan ‘Aloo Meri Shaloo’ La La Land have been opened wide. Boy, does he chew! Square cuts, fine leg, balls, no ball, wide ball, sixer- everything is accounted for. Save for ‘free hit’. Somehow it seems to have escaped their attention. As it all dissolves into a lot of tacky and cheese, Deshmukh decides to keep cricket at the barely perfunctory choosing to concentrate on the love story and comes up with a ‘righteous’ take on ‘gambling as an addiction’ that only true love can cure. This gets us one song sequence after the other and you can say the exact same thing about the ‘yawns’. And once we get to inevitable smooch followed by the inevitable pregnancy, director Deshmukh goes for ‘itne paise main itnaich milanga’ closure and takes the one true cheap dirty shot. He alludes to the Bob Woolmer assassination with Dev Anand subtlety and then moves into a typical slow motion sentimental standard Emraan end.
Yaaaawn.
As for the performances, being a ‘non-Emraan’, I still find him in the same mode that he has been switched on to since Murder- like he’s perpetually trapped in a Trial Room in Shopper’s Stop trying on clothes, posing in front of the mirror and thinkingto himself , ”Hey check this out, I look a little like Colin Farrell.”. Debutant Sonal Chauhan is plastic asbestos alabaster and while she is passable wandering lost through malls and streets, watching her emote to “helpless” and “you killed him bastards” is ants-in-your-pants squirm. Sameer Kocchar, one of the mascarra lipstick boys of IPL Post match discussion fame, puts in a decent turn as the Inspector. The only true standout is Jawed Sheikh- here almost synonymous with ‘screen presence’. Even given the blasé nature of his dialogues, he cuts old world handsome and just to watch him pronounce ‘fitarat’ in that gravely voice of his, one can feel that this was exactly what Firoz Khan has angled for ever since he lit his first cigarette. I would like to believe that a definitive role for him is on its way.
‘Jannat’ ends up as a mediocrity. Never fulfilling its early promise and never having the balls to be ridiculously adventurously gloriously bad. It doesn’t even scrape the bottom barrel of ‘Awwal Number’. Instead it’s the kind of film where if someone asks me how it is, I would grunt indecipherably in reply. It’s a yawn. A bleah. A so-what. As I walked out the exit of the cinema hall I discovered someone had left an anonymous fart in the corridors. I could sympathize.
(pics courtesy- masalababes,zimbio, This Post is Dedicated to Masalababes)
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
lol. If I was Naghma from Yalgaar, I would be doin’ those lame-ass song interludes only to be followed by a bare chested Sanju baba goin ‘aakhir tumhe aana hai’. this is no match to the humble dedication, may be a mere twist of mate. welcome to the land of mas….oh did I just say that. apologies.
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Gr8 review and Hilarious pics to go with it :D !!!!
i liked the 1st half .. even though it was a lil too “Lucky” .. bt u knww.. we dint have the president saving the world frm aliens ! 2nd half was so screwed in the beginning our lil gang of movie buffs felt like running away.. when emraan came to see his gal in the restaurant wearing a shiny black not-for-a-lunch-date tux and asks “main kaisa lag rahaa hoon”.. a wannabe 1st row guy screamed as loud as he could “Chooootiyaaaaaaaaaaa” … this followed whistling and claps from majority audience and was ppbly the best moment in the movie! emrAan cn do bettr ….. the new gal was bad . esp “U KILLED HIM U BASTARDSSS..u bastards .. ” bt pbbly the dialogue was too screwed to blame her.. god bless the bhatts!
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lol! a bit low on ur usual color spectrum, but hell imraan can do that to people
and the dedication makes it all worthwhile:-)
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btw sid, write a warning on top : This article is not workplace friendly. :-) someone here just thought I was doing what I looked like I was doing.
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like he’s perpetually trapped in a Trial Room in Shopper’s Stop trying on clothes, posing in front of the mirror and thinkingto himself , ”Hey check this out, I look a little like Colin Farrell.”
Classic!
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@Tushar,
you need to be fired from there anyway brotha :-)
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nahi re Dpac. shubh shubh bolo :-)
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still nocturnal huh?
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DPac you are cool…
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huh?! kya Boss??!! aap bhi khichaoing?!!
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@Tushar.. hehe. The original title of the poast was supposed to be My Hands, My God… so i’d take it as a compliment.. but i’m sory about the office situation
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@Arjun.. the ‘bastard’ sequence can get pretty embaressing pretty damn quick.. too bad about the fall from the first half though.. i actualy thought thre was gonna be something in there.. not really substantial but otherwise
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@DPac.. humke kya pata tha ki aap bhi shaukeen hain :-)
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Siddharth – super funny post! I knew it was going to be a good one from this line: “…Imagine my surprise when I, in my full senses, started to enjoy the movie….”
I bet this review is more entertaining than the film… I’m saving it… that way if I get bored watching the movie (on DVD of course) I’ll just read this post again
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Arjun Suri – ““Chooootiyaaaaaaaaaaa” … LOL! And yeah, I was at work when I exploded into a burst of laughter over this!
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