Beans, beans, bloody beans!. Review on Corporate

Years ago, to illustrate the point that variety was the spice of life, a friend told me this story –

One evening, a new bride makes beans for dinner for her starry eyed groom. He loves it, and rewards her with hugs and kisses and a night of passion. Encouraged, the next evening she makes the same dinner for her husband. She is rewarded with similar noises of praise. This goes on for a few days, and the increasingly unhappy man has no clue how to stop this without breaking his eager bride's heart. Finally, sick at the sight of his dinner, the man slams his fist on the table and shouts “Beans, beans, bloody beans! Can’t you think of any blessed thing else?” The bewildered bride stammers “But beans was good for you on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. What’s wrong with it now on Saturday?”

That’s the problem with our film makers, they give us the cinema version of beans, beans, bloody beans every time, and expect us to eat it up as eagerly the 10th time, as we did the first. Or is the problem with us, the audience, that we allow them to feed us bean, beans and don’t even make a whimper of protest?

Take Madhur Bhandarkar’s latest offering “Corporate,” for example. In the tradition of Chandni Bar and Page 3 (beans, beans) MB dons the role of the insider to take us into the glass and steel offices of a couple of mythical corporate houses, (both nasty in the extreme) and exposes their seamy underside with undisguised delight. What follows is a roller coaster ride of chickanery, duplicity, and wheeling dealing that make Machiavelli and our own Chanakya seem like toothless old men.

Corporate follows the ambitious Nishi (Bipasha Basu) as she strives to give her company, headed by the smooth Vinay (Rajat Kapoor), the edge over the competition- Marwa Group- headed by the pseudo religious, and more street smart, Raj Babbar (I forget his film name)

She has a strangely silent conscience and an amazing array of tricks in her bag to help her along – tattle tale secretaries who accept cash for information, fabulously endowed ladies of pleasure who will seduce lecherous competitors and reduce them to states of exhausted somnolence so that information can be stolen from their unprotected computers, a 'bad at business' lover who is given critical responsibilities in a crucial project, and so on. At times you feel like taking her aside to say "Tch, tch, girl, is this what your momma taught you to do, and is this what you learnt in your fancy business school?"

The rest of the movie is filled to the brim with tired clichés – corrupt politicians, conniving swamijis, oily ‘brokers’, flint hard women who will do anything to claw their way into fame and fortune, ‘poof’ movie makers, business practices that endorse profit at any cost ethics, NGOs in the pockets of these businesses, relationships sacrificed at the altar of prestige (!!) – the list goes on and on.

The movie is good in bits – it has some superlative performances. KK is good, the oily politician is great, Lilette, though she tends to do the pallu dropping act more and more often these days, is good too, and the asides courtesy the security guards and office peons, are still funny. The stone faced Rajat is adequate. Some of the dialogue is hard-hitting, and like in his other movies, the smell of greed, ambition and exploitation hangs heavy over the film. The ending is especially poignant.

But

Bipasha needs to go in for some acting lessons – she oscillates between two expressions – the perpetual pout and the “I’m about to burst into tears” look. Minisha and Samir have only eyecandy roles. Make up, especially on KK and Rajat is horrendous, wigs need to be ditched, and the wardrobe department needs to get a bit more real- which serious business woman of today swans about in cleavage popping outfits really! And most importantly, the scriptwriter needs to be ditched in favour of one who can see grey as well as black.

In spite of these minor annoyances, as the credit rolls for Corporate, you have to admit even this old wine is a far better offering than the tripe, romantic or otherwise, other film makers regularly dish out. As much as you dislike the way MB abuses your intelligence by feeding you rehashed ideas, you can’t help feeling sick at how it is actuality that has spawned this movie.

Mothers and fathers, stay away from this film – you will leave thinking the corporate world is all bad and that your babies are better off sitting at home making babies, or living the simple life, tilling fields.

As for Mr Bhandarkar, its time he took a break from filming exposes which are in serious danger of becoming caricatures. He needs to take a long look at Manoj Night Shyamalan, another talented film-maker who fell into a similar trap of his own making, and learn his lessons from there. Or maybe he just needs to have a serious chat with my friend. One more movie along the lines of Corporate, and his audience will be screaming ”Beans, beans, bloody beans! Can't you think of any blessed thing else?”