Movie Review: Tashan

What do you get when you have a debut director who insists on calling the shots with an uber colorful star cast, but forgets to weave them all together seamlessly, and instead has an insipid, threadbare plot to boot?

Three hours of torture, I’d say.

That yours truly inflicted upon herself.

And that too on the first day of the week, no less.

So you have a Bhojpuri don, Bhaiyyaji, played by Anil Kapoor (who is getting to be a fixture in almost every second movie these days), who is yet to wake up to a world of banks, and instead believes in the virtues of stuffing wads of Gandhi printed notes in large aluminum trucks, hauled (pun intended) by the now-as-light-as-a-feather Kareena Kapoor, playing the character of pretty girl-next-door, Pooja Singh.

Bhaiyyaji, when he is not blinding people with his garish clothes, and even more loud mouth, harbors a dream – that of speaking English the way George Bush does. The petite Pooja, has other plans in her not –so-dainty-mind, and ropes in an English spouting call center executive, Jimmy Cliff (Saif Ali Khan), who falls hook, line, and sinker in love with her. After a customary song and dance routine, Jimmy, completely under the spell of Pooja’s fluttering eyelashes, helps her loot a handsome sum from Bhaiyyaji, all to “pay off her father’s debt,” and while Saif is still in la di la land, Pooja does a quick vanishing act, playing out her character of con woman par excellence, and is seen shaking a pretty leg and showing quite a bit of skin in a lime colored bikini (that’s one up for the guys) in some exotic locales of Mauritius.

So far so good. Except that Jimmy, who is on the path of smelling sweet roses and love, has to contend with smelling gunpowder and looking straight into the barrel of Bhaiyyaji’s gun. Enter Bachan Pande (Akshay Kumar), a bumbling henchman, who, when he is not scratching his unmentionables (toolbox, if you will Ahem), keeps naively showing a gummy smile, and rattling off quotes of his allegiance to Bhaiyyaji. He and Jimmy go in search of Pooja, who’s done the disappearing act, and enjoying all that loot somewhere.

The rest is, as they say, completely clichéd – retrieving the money, another fixed song and dance sequence, the obligatory exchange of hands and dishoom-dishoom, and some strange hand of fate linking all the characters together.

I’d say that the opening scene is one well-done though. A red Mercedes is vrooming on the highway, its music station getting changed randomly between “Highway to Hell” and “Kabhi Kabhi.” Amidst violent zig-zag motions, it teeters off the highway, plunging into the blue waters below.

As for the rest, it’s like an ill-tasting gloss, hollow of substance.

Spare your money.

Buy yourself a drink instead.

At least your head will not reel, as mine did.

Sample the lyrics of one song in the flick, wherein the three protagonists don ill-fitting, ludicrous blonde wigs, and dance to in gay abandon -

"White white face dekhey
Dilva beating fast, Sasura
Chance marey re
Very Happy in my heart
Dil Dance marey re"

Enough said. I rest my case.

PS - If the Director is lissening, here's a suggestion. He could have tried renaming "Tashan" (style / attitude) as "Nashta" (breakfast) - Kareena, who looks straight out of anorexia land, sure could do with some...