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Ugly Aur Pagli vs My Sassy Girl, and You’ll See Me On TV This Time
In Shallow Hal, Anthony Robbins asks Jack Black, “Would you rather have a girl with half a brain or only one breast?” to which the reply is “Is this breast big?”
I don’t really know why I wrote that. I was trying to think of a witty analogy to describe my feelings about Ugly Aur Pagli, because the Ugly half, Ranvir Shorey, is expectedly fantastic, whereas the Pagil half, Mallika Sherawat, falls waaaaayyyyyy short of angel-faced Gianna Jun, the heroine of My Sassy Girl.
For those who don’t yet know, Ugly Aur Pagli is a remake of the Korean film My Sassy Girl, which happens to be one of my all-time favourites. I’m a big fan of the Korean rom-coms that I’ve watched – My Wedding Campaign and The Classic are the most memorable ones for me. I love their detailed characterization, their laugh-out-loud moments, their emotional flow, their sentimentality and the melodramatic climaxes. All this, mind you, is carried through by flawless acting.
Now, the trouble with commenting on others’ acting is that I’m an actor myself, and one day or another because of bad food or an upset stomach or the US presidential elections I might end up dishing out a turkey of a performance and then it’ll be everyone else’s turn to yank me off my high horse like a daku of an 80s movie. So with extreme trepidation, I write on anyway.
I quite liked Mallika Sherawat in Pyaar Ke Side Effects. I guess she can do good work, but in Ugly Aur Pagli, I just couldn’t help comparing her at every moment with the original Korean heroine, and every time, to her disadvantage. Gianna Jun’s character was every bit as rough and tough as Mallika’s Kuhu, but whereas one could easily fall in love with Gianna, I really couldn’t see any good reason for falling in love with Kuhu. A couple of voiceover lines have been written in to explain why Ranvir’s Kabir falls in love with her, but I immediately found it very zabardasti. The worst moments are when Mallika gets tragic. It’s horribly filmy – “I’m sorry, Kabir, mujhe maaf kar do…”
Correction. The worst moments are the songs and dances. Horrible! Horrible!! Horrible!!! Horribler!!!! Horriblest!!!! The only two movies I can remember in recent times where the song placements haven’t twisted my intestines are Jab We Met and Taare Zameen Par. Ugly Aur Pagli’s songs are so bloody zabardasti stuck into the narrative I wished someone would turn the lights on so I could read my newspaper instead. What made it worse was the memory of the effortless charms of My Sassy Girl. I didn’t even like the songs, and turning the heroine into an item girl ruined the angel image I would have kept if I’d remade the movie. And I hate hate hate hate hate dhinchak dhinchak beat songs with some stupid voice yelling lines like ‘Put your hands in the air / Wave ‘em like you just don’t care’. No offense to the actual singer, but I personally would like to take these lines and give them a good hard flush down an Indian Railways second class toilet.
On an aside note, I see a lot of kids nowadays want to learn guitar. Good. Maybe a lot of them are just looking to be cool, but in the process they’ll at least learn a few things that’ll help them appreciate proper music and not just stupid, mindf*#@, shitty, pukey dhinchak dhinchak.
Back to Ugly Aur Pagli. I’ve heard quite a few stories about Mallika Sherawat. She’s said in her Maxim interview that she’s single ‘cause she can’t find anyone who can deal with her superiority complex and accept that women are superior to men. Well, after six years with my second girlfriend (that needs a whole movie), I’m sure I can deal with pretty much any kind of superiority complex. And I will have no problems saying that women are superior to men. Bolne mein kiske baap ka kya jaata hai? Anyone knowing Mallika, please pass the word on.
…What the bally hell have I just written?
Anyway, back to earth again! Sushmita Mukherjee in her two-three scenes made me laugh more than Mallika in all the movie. Another area where Ugly Aur Pagli falls very short of My Sassy Girl is the execution of individual sequences. I don’t know whose shoulders should take the blame, but I honestly feel a frame-by-frame, cut-by-cut Xerox would have been much more effective than the watered down, almost careless recreations in U&P. And for a joke to be effective, even the one shot actors have to be really good – you can’t make a gag work without a good actor.
In light of all this I’ve written, if I’m ever chucked out of Suparn Verma’s office someday (he’s done the additional dialogues and screenplay), I’ll know I need to curb my honesty. I must mention here, though, that his post YashRaj, SRK, Salman etc zindabad was a big eye-opener for me.
Shooting Ki Kahaniyan
I’d commented earlier that I’d rather have a series on shooting ki kahaniyan instead of audition ki kahaniyan. Uparwaale aur casting agency ki meherbani se I’ve landed more work. Yesterday and day before I shot for a government ad – I think the campaign’s called Bharat Nirman and these modules are for the Ministry of Minority Affairs. They’ll be aired sometime around Independence Day onwards. I play a North-Eastern boy who’s got an engineering scholarship – kind of ironic, because I was an engineering student. Didn’t finish, though.
My buddy who’s also in the Godrej ad I wrote about said he’s seen the final cut and he didn’t see me in it. Never mind. That marks my ad debut, or at least the debut of my left thigh, which is probably all that’s visible of me. Fortunately, I’m the hero in the Bharat Nirman ad, so my mug should be on TV within a couple of weeks.
Sa Hi Besura
I almost forgot about this. Sa Hi Besura – a play with an all-star cast I watched at Prtihvi theatre. PFC’s D Santosh, Heeba Shah, Sudhir Pandey and Vijay Maurya were the actors. I can’t explain what a thrill it is to watch great actors perform on stage. And Vijay Maurya – god, he’s way beyond brilliant! A quick reminder for the as-yet uninitiated – he was the rapper in Bombay to Bangkok and Dawood Ibrahim in Black Friday. After seeing him in the play, I’ve added him to my list of favourite actors along with Boman Irani, Ranvir Shorey, Vinay Pathak and Om Puri.
Films I’ve Watched Recently
Premonition (Japanese) – 8/10. Very nice. Kept reminding me of Ringu, though.
Audition (Japanese) – 3/10. Didn’t see the point. Too slow to start and too gory at end.
Born To Fight (Thai) – 8/10. Second watch. Preposterous action, but fun.
The Dark Knight – 10/10. Need I say anymore on this?
15 Responses to “Ugly Aur Pagli vs My Sassy Girl, and You’ll See Me On TV This Time”
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well written :-) u an actor? u will make a good writer too..
hmmmm looking forward to that ad :)
u shud have written a bit more about the shoot than about ugly or pagli….thats more entertaining :)
Audition only 3 out of 10!!!!
Waahh, outside of the horribly violent end, this is one of my all-time favourite films. Anyone who wants to make a horror film should study how a film can be sinister and terrifying using mood and subtle, unexpected movements with little blood or gore.
I think you should do a post like this every week, always an entertaining read…
hahahhaha…good one kenny!! havent watched ugly pagli and dont feel like watching it after all the reviews said d same thing. sometimes i think the copied films do one good thing,they make the original very popular. c what sanjay gupta did for oldboy. before zinda, not mnay were aware of it. havent seen my sassy girl. now i want to c it. the dope from the bitches of bollywood is that mr pritish nandy likes the film very much and so he only handed the dvd to the director asking him to make a copy. poor director, its his first film…that too with mallika and ranvir…who will refuse. btw, will look out for ur left thigh! and can we please hav more casting and shooting ki kahaniyaan…they r great fun!!
Why cant or rather dont, the original producers sue these guys…then maybe they’ll wake up, think, and finally come out with some original…and hopefully interesting stuff.
There was some news of Sanjay Gupta being sued for Zinda…but haven’t heard much of that lately…
And My Sassy Girl’s very very nice.
@murali
Thank you. I intend to be both
@rusted rick
I wish there could’ve been something entertaining to write about the shoot, but it went very well. No masala. I’m sure longer shoots will definitely throw up some kahanis, though.
Oh hell, how could I forget! I’ll do a post about my first serial. Just hope the folks from there don’t ever read it.
@t!
Dhanyavaad. About Audition, the middle portions held quite a bit of promise for me. It’s just a personal thing with me - I don’t like gore. Same reason The Isle didn’t work for me either.
@Phoenixnu
Thanks a lot. You’re right, although I thought Zinda was a fairly decent adaptation for the Indian public. John was good. In future, I wouldn’t mind Mr Nandy handing ME a good DVD to remake, although I defintely would put in my own seasoning.
@shiv
I read somewhere that credit has been given to the makers of My Sassy Girl. Jo bhi hai, I’m not at all against remakes, because a beautiful story like My Sassy Girl deserves a much wider audience, which it definitely wouldn’t have got with subtitles. As long as great movies and books are transposed into the correct context and done with good actors and directors, I think it’s quite fine to remake them. A splendid example, would be A Comedy of Errors reworked into Angoor, easily one of the top 5 or 10 Indian comedies.
:-)…Well Written Kenny. This seems funnier than UaP.
There is a Hollywood version of the Korean one too named ‘My Sassy Girl’ . Flopped at the BO and was panned by critics as well. (IMDb rating is just 4.6)
Ugly aur Pagli was a major pain in the a**. Even though I haven’t seen MSG, I felt bad because I could still sense how badly they have butchered the original. Kuhu’s character had a nice sad undercurrent to it that could have been exploited to make her a flesh and blood releatable person, but Khot and Sherawat both prove incapable, incompetent and uninterested- they would rather shoot pornographic item songs. Even Ranvir Shorey felt deflated- though he looked inflated. There is no romance, no comedy, just a half hearted attempt at an encore of Pyaar Ke Side effects. Sad.
@ Jahan Bakshi - .”…pornographic item songs…”..made me laugh.
Thats exactly the case with My Sassy Girl. Gianna Jun’s character was a mix of an outward brashness while inside the girl was terribly sad because her boyfriend had died. And both the sides were shown so well - hence her charac was more alive and real.
The scenes where she breaksdown (in the park, at the sea-side) were pretty touching. Somehow they could actually make the love story between such a girl and a guy who is quite a sissy in a way so utterly believable. And thats where the film scores..
Yeah Kenny, do write more about shooting ki kahaniyaan.
Btw how does Ugli aur Pagli start? coz the beginning of My Sassy Girl was already copied in the disgusting Neal n Nikki.
a wonderful read and congo for bharat nirman :).
@arthi v
Absolutely spot on about how MSG could make everything so believable.
@Jahan
You are so right about the pornographic item songs. They simply killed Kuhu for me!
@neeraja & rbehemoth
Thanks.
I didn’t know Neal n Nikki had copied the hotel room scene - shiver -
i think karrena kapoor is the only alternative in bollywood we have for gianna jun’s character in My Sassy girl. i wish some intelligent director would have made a remake with her…My Sassy girl is too awesome a movie to be remade into crap like ugli aur pagli..
@kunal
I actually nearly thought WTF when you mentioned Kareena. But I grudgingly admit she was outstanding in Jab We Met. Although I still think we’d need someone who can be firm without being shrewish. Maybe Tabu