India's own comic book heroes. Review on Lage Raho Munnabhai

First things first. Vidya Balan is yummy.

There, I said it! Someone had to, sooner or later. Enough of “the-girl-next-door”. She is the kind of girl you tell you are taking home to your mother and then midway decide to take some place else more private.

Looking like she does, playing the proverbial Helen of Troy starting a war comes naturally to her. The Troy war had such devious ingenious means as gifting her a wooden horse full of soldiers (These guys had some explicit scenery in mind, and they say the youth of todayis getting corrupted!). This one, on the other horse, has six old men,emergency meetings in a loo, history professors, a star-crossed horoscope, private conversations on radio, voluntary jail stopovers,the 110th usual cameo from an unshaven Abhishek Bachhan, and incredibly in a move beating the British Raj for all it’s worth, Gandhi as cupid! This sure is one hard to please lady!

With that entire ensemble, I half expected this movie to take the “There’s something about Mary” route. In fact, it would have been fun to see the “kissing car” uncle pick up Circuit’s gun at the end and shove it down Munna’s throat saying “I was living in Second-innings all this while just to get close to Mary (or Jhanvi, if you so please)”. Or for that matter, Circuit himself. Or hell, Gandhi! Ah but Bollywood can get only so witty. And Vidya Balan can only hope for so much hair gel.

This is the third big-budget Bollywood movie in the recent past that has put some brains into the script and has come up with no answer better than radio. Lage Raho joins the league of Salaam Namaste, Rang de Basanti and such illustrious predecessors as American Pie II from the west in celebrating the radio as a medium, which everyone everywhere is forever tuned into. I don’t know if security arrangements at radio stations are beefed up these days or not, but post Rang De Basanti and now Lage Raho Munnabhai, radio is the universal answer to all revolutionaries,courting lovers, and the random drunk guy wanting to get live to the world. All it takes is a gun and a song sequence. Thankfully, no one has killed a few RJs as yet, but they should be scared, very scared.

But,in case I am implying it is a badly made movie, allow me to state things a bit more clearly. Lage Raho Munnabhai is an excellent movie.It has its script, actors, songs, direction, marketing, and most importantly it’s heart in just the right place. It is not merely quintessential Bollywood, but it is the definitive Hindi Comic Book adaptation. Just that such a comic book never existed, and it is an original script and original characters. More points to the writer! The characters of Munna and Circuit are our essential comic book heroes.

Cleancut goofy good-hearted men, with just the right amount of bad streak to make them interesting. They are loyal to friends, are steadfast in their approach towards a goal, and they forever do good. Even to enemies. This endeavor will just result in the best product for the kids for a long time to come, which would be ably supported by the parents as well. It is an excellent marketing opportunity for the filmmakers. The Munna-Circuit brand should be extended on to toys, a cartoon show, a comic book (of course!), and other marketing paraphernalia soon.

Talking about marketing, this movie features some of the most tasteful endorsements till date seen in Indian cinema.Worldspace and GoAir just blend into the fabric of the movie. This is the way forward for all future endorsements to take. It should be compulsory viewing for ALL old-world decrepit moviemakers.

When studying ways of mass advertising in B school, I was fascinated by the adage of a senior ad man that it takes a very intelligent man to dumbdown an ad enough for it to be palatable by the mass market. The whole idea of one being able to do much more, and yet deliberately dumbing it down in communication so that a wider section could understand it, was fascinating for me. Mass media had to appeal on various levels of thesocial spectrum in order to be successful.

The Munnabhai series does that admirably, affecting different points on the intellectual pyramid differently. The same could be accomplished by adding different characters that would do the same, a high and mighty leading pair who would appeal to the higher social points, and adding a buffoon comic who would appeal to the front benches. This way has been taken across through all historical Indian cinema. Indian cinema rarely experiments with niches in trying to strike the ball clean out of the park.Munnabhai and co. however, with each and every character put in the series appeals to the entire audience, and that again needs to pay allegiance to the script.

Boman Irani’s Lucky Singh and Arshad Warsi’s Circuit are examples of acting that should be celebrated for as much as the actors’ prowess, as the writer’s sketching of these characters. Boman Irani is brilliant in yet another flawless essay.Sanjay Dutt does okay, though to put it truthfully, he has quit acting long ago. All he does now is play himself in each new movie, adds a swagger here, a smile there and that does it admirably.

To push a cliche further, what this movie does most is gently push the message across for something larger than just entertainment. What is stunning is how playfully it has been delivered. Another reason why I feel there can be no medium better than cinema in exploring one's creativity. Rajkumar Hirani is the second film-maker this year (after Rakeysh Mehra) who would affect the young minds so vividly.

But Vidya Balan. Sigh!