Jun 10, 2006 12:26 AM
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Bollywood´s laugther is dead! And we have no one but Priyadarshan to thank for it. The Comedy King is completely out of his element in his latest film. Heck, not even the biggest of stars and technicians can help him out.
'Chup Chup Ke' is the story of a young man Jeetu [Shahid Kapoor] who belongs to a small town and is knee deep in debt. He spends his entire youth running away from the lenders and situation reaches to such a worst stage that his parents too start blaming him for the misfortune that he has brought to his family.
He has a lovely fiancee too named Pooja [Sushma Reddy] who sticks to him inspite of the fact that his life is going nowhere. Disgusted with the way life is treating him, he finally decides to take a drastic step: He now wants to end his life so that his family could live on his insurance. And he does attempt that by jumping into the sea! What happens next? Do you really care?
I wonder what prompted him to attempt a Hindi remake of the dry-humour based Punabi House . Truth be told, the original flick put me to sleep, but I had high hopes for the Hindi version. After all, we do know that Priyan is a master with entertaining, albeit leave-your-brains at the door, remakes. The film´s tickle-your-funny-bone potential was limitless. But in the most critical places, it goes so woefully wrong.
Priyan and the screenplay writers forgot to invest time in giving the lead characters any quirks or depth. So we don´t care if any of them succeed in their efforts. Not even poor Shahid. What can the stars do if the roles they are given are mundane? Nothing, right? So don´t expect anything exciting in the performances.
The editing, oh, the editing! The editing is hands-down some of the worst you will ever see in a Hindi movie. We jump from one set of boring events to the next, with no logical connections. There is no fluidity or pacing. Some will argue that Priyan films are rarely logical, which is true. But his best films have always been smooth rides in terms of story exposition. This time, darn it, we´re on long and rocky roads.
But let us get back to the key success indicator for a comedic flick; the laughs. Where are they in CCK. Priyan used to be able to write a-laugh-a-minute dialogues, but that is not the case here. The jokes are tired, few and far-between. Most often, we´re just in agony watching the proceedings.There´s no novelty or excitement watching the film. It´s all stuff we´ve seen a million times before.
For a nearly three hour movie, the experience is torture. The idiotic comedy and melodrama in the last half-hour, particularly, insists upon dragging itself out to no end. The tacky house sets, Himesh´s peppy tunes, boring dance sequences or Kareena´s beauty, nothing can relieve the tedium.
We are forced to reach one of two conclusions having watched Priyadarshan´s CCK. Either the man needs a one-year break to regain his creative faculties or his talent has disappeared. For his sake and ours, I hope the former is true.
On the whole, Chup Chup ke is a weak fare and will find the going tough. Do not believe in Paulsb02's review .He had written that review without even watching the film !
