Tashan: All Style No Gyan!

Now, talking about Yash Raj Films off late, how come such a well-known movie house goes for idiotic plots minus any appeal! The movie was already burdened with a succumbing amount of publicity and hype. Additionally, when you are making a movie that lacks the clarity of the very storyline which is the base for any good movie. You get glimpses of a jigsaw, which are good for being posters that makes a clumsy collage rather than a meaningful picture or even a solved puzzle. The pin-up actors are just too good to look at, but only if looks could win you the world! It seems that Director Vijay Krishna Acharya wanted to make a style statement than a full-fledged movie. To some extent he was right in thinking that movies like Race did click and had a certain amount of style. The con looks did win the audience but it may not work in every movie that comes.

Rating: 2.5/5

Now, this is high time for the directors of the slapstick movies to stop taking the audience for granted. The time has come for smarter and intelligent cinema not just synthetic eye candies. This may keep the theaters full for the first week but, what next. Even Kareena’s skimpy and sexy bikini can’t allure one to sit through this parabolic confusion. First of all, one should ask the movie makers, what really gave them hope in this otherwise hopeless storyline. The plot has unrealistic twists, which are not meant to be funny (though you wonder whether to laugh or stay resigned). Obviously, Tashan does hope to exploit the gullibility of the Indian audience and that is just too much.

Talking about the saving graces of the movie are; the excellent cinematography of our very own motherland, Bebo’s bikini shot (her fans would give anything to watch it life-size!) and without even a slightest doubt the man who again turns out to be a Khiladi (now, that is only understandable that who is the Anari here!), Akshay Kumar. I just felt why Shah Rukh and Saif tried their best to pull his leg at the Filmfare awards. Is he going to prove mightier with every film he is doing? Are the ruling lords of Bollywood scared of this raising star, well, they have every reason to be so. Akshay Kumar had given 4 continuous hits in 2007 and has started this year with a good show of his caliber, no matter whether the movie falls flat at box office. Bravo to the humble Khiladi, who stood all weathers to come out a winner, slow and steady wins the race. Coming back to the movie as an entity, the show which started off as an action thriller turns out to be a comedy at the end, with pinches of unbelievable emotional whiffs.

The movie’s plot, if you consider it as a plot, is pretty much simple. Pick your favorite clips from some of the retro cinema and put them together, any presto, you get Tashan, minus the styling factor, and Aki Narula deserves a round of applause right here. We have a small time don Lakhan Singh aka Bhaiyaji (played by Anil Kapoor, who gets on your nerves with his funny Hinglish and his love for the gora language) from Kanpur has hit it big and still finds it easy to store his money in boxes. Even with such unsophisticated outlook, the Bhaiyaji wants a Lily, a personal assistant (read a modern secretary), only this time, we get a break from the anglicized names and enters Pooja Singh (played sensually pleasing by Kareena, who is too hot for this summer and leaves you to want more!), who has her own schemes for donning the sexy assistant cap. Looking at Bhaiyaji’s unsurpassed love for English, she obtains a dashing and smart part time teacher named Jimmy Cliff (played by Saif, his acting demands no mentions, at all), who also works at a call center by the night and has access to all the VIP personnel’s personal phone number. You might wander what sort of a call center is that, only the white house might have such imperative information. Now, using her charm, she fixes a plan to loot the boss and flicks a box of money and runs off. When Jimmy understand the plan it is too late.

Here comes in our savior Akshay as Bachchan Pandey, who specializes in retrieving lost pieces of the jigshaw and gives his bachan to Bhaiyaji to handover his lost money and secretary in exchange of his life. The two men on mission meet and search for the sweet fugitive. Pooja, who first plunges into the clear waters of Mauritius, lands up in Haridwar to immerse her dead father’s ashes. The emotional saga behind this robbing act of hers is the fact that Bhaiyaji had killed her father. Seeing that Bachchan Pandey is turning out stronger of the two she tries to woo him in the second part of the movie. Here another twist waits for you and Pooja and Bachchan Pandey turn out to be childhood sweethearts (how sweet and conveniently theatrical!). The movie ends with the trio recovering the money that Pooja hides in different parts of the country, which takes you for a virtual tour of India, here the cinematography does command a bow. The climax is prolonged with unnatural fight scenes and some more of Hinglish. Vaibhavi Merchant’s choreography is nothing out of the box and Vishal-Shekhar should concentrate more in getting newer tunes that spending time at styling themselves.

Finally, the movie is good to see some great innovative costumes, which you can also see at shopping malls. The poster looks of the actors are good to be pinned to the wall of a Desi hair saloon. Let me stop jeering and be practical, the costumes look great on the big screen, the glimpses of India are just awesome and Akshay does deserve your love for this one. Now, spending your hard earned bucks on this movie, we still have some other options from previous weeks, if you have missed any of them!

Rating: 2.5/5