The first promotions that I saw of ‘Delhi Belly’ got me excited and I am sure that millions of movie buffs like myself were eagerly waiting for the movie. It is no secret that, more often than not, Hindi cinema fails to give us the treat that we passionate fans so thoroughly deserve. After all, movies and cricket are all most of us have/had when it comes to recreation. I admire the quality of Hollywood cinema - although both industries regularly dish out crap, I feel that on an average Bollywood produces only 2-3 memorable movies per year compared to at least 10 from Hollywood, but having grown up on the fantastically average movies of the 80’s and 90’s, the first whiff of a decent Hindi movie generates incomparable enthusiasm.
After waiting for a week to hear reviews (most of which were good) and crowds to wither down, my wife and I finally went for our Bollywood feast along with a couple of friends, one of who is an ardent Bollywood fan and one not so much. As it turned out, both of my strategies failed miserably: Even after a week, 11:55 PM show of a Hindi movie in California was full to capacity (we had to content with second row seats) and more importantly, the movie turned out to be a huge disappointment.
The opening, with wonderfully shot sequences of a perfectly shoddy apartment (I don’t know what else to call it) housing three bachelors, gave further hope but as soon as the three protagonists (Imran, Vir and Kunal) started talking in complete unadulterated English in their slumbers, I got an odd feeling. Okay, there must be people in some parts of India who are as conversant in Hindi as I am in Chinese but they certainly don’t live in houses like the one shown in the movie. Also, later in the movie, it is shown that Poorna who is a colleague of Imran lives in a pretty decent house. This mismatch further strengthened my belief that the director was trying too hard to show things that are wonderfully reminiscent of the Indian lower-middle class (The toilet, the wash basin, the street food that Kunal eats etc.) while maintaining a super cool urbane theme. I do not have a problem with depicting these very different versions of India and her people in the same movie, but it starts to look desperate when you try to infuse both into the same characters. A guy like Arup simply does not go to a barber with ancient tools in a trashy shop, charging 10 Rs for a haircut. So for me, the biggest problem with the movie is that it is not honest. I would much rather watch a movie by Sajid khan that is unabashedly stupid but stays true to its intent and identity.
One of my friends mentioned that some of the good movies in the past too had English-speaking characters when they were not meant to. He gave the examples of 'Gandhi' and 'Slumdog Millionaire'. Well, although 'Slumdog millionaire' was a much better movie overall, I did have my reservations about it. Call me nitpicky but I am just not ready to compromise with the originality and believability of the characters. My trust gets broken when the director tries to infuse something unoriginal due to an ulterior motive. In the case of 'Slumdog Millionaire', the movie was primarily targeted towards the western audience and although the director has every right to chose his target audience and make the film accordingly, I had a hard time digesting the fluent English coming out of Mafia Dons and Hawaldars.
Moreover, English speaking characters are not the only problem with Delhi Belly: The plot is predictable and dialogues are very average (take out the curses and nothing much is left). The best thing about the movie is its brilliant music and creative song picturization. Unfortunately, the movie has only glimpses of both.
The movie hits its lowest point right before the ‘Jaa Chudail’ song when Anup shamelessly boasts about the oral sex that he has had with his girlfriend who is abandoning him and marrying an NRI from Canada. Although the song is his imagination just after being betrayed, the words used here look forced.
Moving to performances, as usual, Vijay Raj was a treat to watch and very original in his portrayal of a goon from Delhi. A pleasant surprise was Poorna Jaggannath. With her background (She grew up outside India in many countries and attended college in US), one expected her to breeze through performing a free spirited urban girl but she managed the small sequence in which she plays the contrasting character of a not so urban muslim lady craving tacky jewelry with equal aplomb. Among the boys, Kunal looked the most comfortable and had the right expressions.
Overall, the movie was a very unsatisfying experience, especially coming from the Aamir Khan production. Even the item number from Aamir was goofy and not up to the actor’s usual standards. I would much rather watch a funnier, wittier, better-written story of another set of three friends – ‘Horrible Bosses’.
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