Hisss (2010)

Once the movie has ended (if you have managed to actually watch it till it ends) the only thing anybody would say is: “what the hell was that?!”

Perhaps the fact that Hisss has an international female director created high expectations from the movie. Also, we were excited to see Mallika back on Bollywood screens after her surprising success in Hollywood. Finally, if you have a beautiful woman shedding clothes after every few seconds, quite a lot of people are bound to be looking forward to watching the movie out of curiosity.

Therefore it’s no surprise that the movie actually generated 6 crores on its opening weekend at the box office. But one thing has been reinstated by these results: Box office reports are rubbish. Hisss has proven to be a walking talking disaster, and anyone who has been brave enough to watch it till the very end needs to be given a medal of honour.

The plot itself isn’t so silly, therefore we won’t be so hard on the script writer. However, the director and the script writer are both the same. We are still trying to figure out what Jennifer Chambers Lynch was thinking.

The story revolves around a snake, who turns into a woman after her lover is captured in the jungle. She infiltrates the city to find the American, George States, who had kidnapped her mate. This man himself has brain cancer, and believes old myths which say that the nagin (Mallika Sherawat) has powerful venom which can help cure his disease.

In an attempt to lure her into his web, he kidnaps her mate from the jungle itself. What unfolds in the movie is how she follows him into the city, to find her love, and to seek vengeance.

Doesn’t sound so bad right? In fact, it sounds quite interesting; It actually sounds like a tragic love story. But don’t be fooled, the movie instead is an unnecessarily gruesome horror/thriller flick. Don’t watch it while eating food.

Hisss is filled with unnecessary rape scenes and bloodshed. Without exaggeration, there is blood in every scene, whether it has anything to do with the nagin or not. Everybody seems to be bleeding all the time!
Then there is lack of acting skills displayed by the prominent characters in the story. The American, (Jeff Doucette) is a monster in the movie. He is torturing and slaughtering everyone and everything that comes his way. Unfortunately, he can’t act.  We don’t think he has cancer in the movie, he looks like a psychologically handicapped person.

Plus he seems to enter a Star Plus land, where he is thinking to himself in his broken down Urdu (it’s weird that even when is thinking in his mind, he is thinking in Urdu even though he can barely speak the language properly. But during the movie, he is screaming and hurling abusive words in English to his servants.) We understand that maybe it was to capture the Indian audience that doesn’t understand English. But then, why put English sentences at all? It all seemed highly unrealistic
Plus Irfan Khan looked like he kept forgetting his dialogues. The man is a brilliant actor, and has done some amazing performances such as the one in Slumdog Millionaire, and The Namesake. Then why can’t he act as an Indian police officer, which is the most clichéd role in all of Bollywood?

Finally, the star of the show: Ms Mallika herself. She has done nothing in the movie, except not wear clothes and look possessed. We aren’t kidding; the nudity has been turned up a notch. Okay, so she is a snake who doesn’t know anything about human rituals, but then the nudity could have been tastefully done.  Instead, there are scenes where you are taken by surprise and are almost embarrassed to look back at the screen.

The movie has been edited poorly. They have tried to run two, three stories simultaneously to build up the plot, but all they managed to build up was confusion. First 30 minutes, and you aren’t sure which story to follow. Finally everything links up in the end in the most unrealistic and impossible way.

The movie will definitely have people laughing at the blatant absurdity of everything! There is nothing in the script or the acting that was normal. We are surprised that there is so much money in Bollywood to be wasted away like this.

Another thought that crossed our minds was that maybe this is a parody; maybe this isn’t the real thing. How could the directors overlook how silly everything was? Maybe that’s why the director has actually disowned the movie. When in the history of film-making has a director disowned his own movie?

Jennifer claims that the movie looks like a horror movie instead of the epic love story she wanted to make.
Apparently, the producer is to be blamed for this. The ‘original’ movie that was shot by Jennifer herself was much different from what the producer, Govind Menon, made it look like in the end.

Even though the movie has already received some extremely harsh criticism from critics, Hisss is being considered a hit. Mallika Sherawat claims that the ‘younger generation’ has appreciated her, and it doesn’t matter what the critics say. Sorry Mallika, but that isn’t true. Some of the critics and media people are from the younger generation too, and even they think the movie was rubbish.

We wouldn’t recommend anyone to watch this. The only thing you’ll get is a bunch of nightmares – Manal Faheem Khan

Rating:- 1 out of 5

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2010, Genre – Horror / Thriller, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Vikram Singh, Govind Menon, William Sees Keenan Director – Jennifer Lynch, Music Director – Anu Malik, David Kushner, Panjabi MC, Alexander Von Bubenheim, Craig Nobles, Julian Lennon, Cast - Irrfan Khan, Mallika Sherawat, Divya Dutta, Jeff Douchette

Billu Barber (2009)

Billu Barber easily proves what you already know: Shah Rukh Khan has tremendous star appeal but when it comes to acting, he can easily be upstaged, in this case by the better Khan – Irrfan Khan.

Billu is a story set in the picturesque village of Budbuda, where Billu the hajam (Irrfan Khan) struggles to make ends meet and where Sahir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan), the Bollywood superstar ends up with his troupe to shoot for his next film. In no time at all, word spreads that Billu and Sahir were once friends and the entire population of villagers – until now who had absolutely no sympathy for Billu – attach themselves to him with undying support. Suddenly his childrens’ school fees are paid, the broken chair in his salon is replaced by a 25,000 rupee revolving chair and every night the electricity supply, which has been cut off due to non payment of bills, automatically comes back on.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch though and what they all expect in return is to meet the superstar who travels with a human shield of bodyguards and police cordons around him. The villagers feel Billu is their ticket to Sahir Khan. Billu, however, instead of enjoying the attention cringes away from it and even considers moving out of town until the entire brouhaha dies down. He is all too aware of the status incompatibility between him and Sahir Khan and wants to avoid putting either in an uncomfortable spot. Whether or not he actually knows Sahir Khan personally or not is not revealed until the end of the film.
Coming from Priyadarshan, the director who gave Bollywood comic hits like Hera Pheri, Hulchul, Bhagam Bhag, Bhool Bhulaiyaa, Garam Masala, the film’s USP is essentially its comedy. But there is also an emotional sentimentality that connects and tugs at the heart. The film picks up in its second half after an unnecessarily long opening and ends with a predictable yet wholesome climax.

Billu is an adaptation of the Malayalam film Katha Parayumpol and reviews by critics who have seen the original suggest that it has been copied frame for frame. However, there are enough goof-ups in the film that have to be credited to Priyadarshan alone. For an immensely poor family with a scruffy father and children, Lara Dutta (who plays the role of Billu’s wife) is always immaculately made up: her saris, eyeliner and lip gloss always in place. That she has never looked better hardly makes up for the fact that she has been miscast as she is too English medium (which she cannot hide) to pass as a villager.

Secondly the film, which Sahir Khan is shooting for, is a futuristic Matrix type sci-fi flick. Why they chose to shoot in a village is incomprehensive, especially since they only shoot on sets that have nothing to do with the natural back drop. The three Bollywood bombshells Deepika, Priyanka and Kareena are added for their curve-appeal and they are limited to songs which are highly entertaining but again, irrelevant to the film.

Shah Rukh’s own role is glorified in an almost shameless way. From his ‘King Khan’ jackets to the body guards to the children wearing SRK masks to posters of all his films pasted to every wall in the village, it certifies that King Khan is the biggest superstar of India. It appears as a role close to reality, with the director portraying him as a star with a conscience.

It is interesting to see how Bollywood is being interpreted in films lately. From Om Shanti Om’s comic spoofing of the film industry to its flaws sketched out in Luck By Chance, ‘Bollywood’ itself appears to be Bollywood’s favourite theme these days. And Billu details it’s glamorous and yet biased towards good side only. In the end it is, like most Bollywood films, the star quotient and the soundtrack (which is quite catchy) that helps it work, not the story line – Aamna Haider Isani (Rating 2.5 OUT OF 5)

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2009, Genre – Comedy, Country – India, Language – Urdu/Hindi, Producer – Gauri Khan, Director – Priyadarshan, Music Director – Pritam, Cast – Shah Rukh Khan, Irrfan Khan, Lara Dutta, Asrani, Rajpal Yadav, Om Puri, Special Appearances -  Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone

New York

New York, directed by Kabir Khan of Kabul Express fame, has all the makings of a successful film if one just disregards the miniscule fact that the plot is at least five years stale. An endearing story of three friends whose lives meet a tragic fate, New York has it all: romance, humor, drama, heart wrenching pain and of course a mellifluous sound track that one must possess for long romantic drives!

A poignant story of three friends – all gorgeous in their own capacities – Omar (Neil Nitin Mukesh), the fresh off the boat desi boy, Samir (John Abraham), the macho man with the perfect life, and the love interest Maya (Katrina Kaif, as herself really) a charming bubbly pretty girl who completes the triangle. The plot revolves around the male protagonists and the film keeps going back and forth as Neil narrates his experiences at college and his relationship with his two best friends John and Katrina. Their life is all hunky dory albeit with its typical adolescent disappointments of your best bud stealing the girl you secretly love – and lots of lovey dovey songs in between. Neil’s encounter with the insolent FBI officer Roshan (Irrfan) generates some moments of sheer wit that add potency to the script.

Subtle things denote the attention to detail in direction like Neil’s cell phone ringing with the display showing ‘Museebat’- that elicited a lot of laughs in the audience- when Irrfan Khan is calling/pestering him, to the general interchanges between both Irrfan and Neil, even his opening dialogue ‘sir you don’t have to do this bonding exercise with me’ add humor at the most unexpected times in the film and certainly make it a very enjoyable watch.

The story however really takes a jump-start right before the intermission when John dramatically reveals his true identity to a naïve Neil. The next few scenes are powerful and awe inspiring as they reveal the potential that Kabir Khan has unearthed from John, and heart wrenching in the barbaric reality they expose. Moreover, this is where the 9/11 angle and its effect on Muslims living in America really comes into play.

An actor worth mentioning, although in a cameo role is Nawazuddin as the tortured soul Zilgai whose expressions are perfectly timed and executed and his portrayal of his character flawless, so much so, that he manages to shine through the glamour of the young heroes in the film with just a total of 30-40 minutes of screen time. If one thing Bollywood manages to do every time is to excavate these jewels to enhance and blaze the screens (remember Rustom from Munna Bhai or how Irrfan Khan himself started out).

So even though the plot is a bit stale, Kabir Khan manages to work with it and add his own fresh (as fresh as a eight year old plot could be) take from a NRI perspective on it. He also tackles the sensitive issue of the US government’s manipulative and hypocritical policies in the most diplomatic way and although the film’s end is too loose and simplistic Khan tries to project the goodness that Americans – South Asians included – have gained from living there such as (allegedly) values of freedom, liberty, honesty and integrity. Of a culture that Irrfan Khan proclaims allows for a terrorist’s son to be launched onto the shoulders of his football peers and hailed as a hero. Too cheesy and rose-tinted to gobble; had Irrfan not uttered these words in his characteristic sombre way one could have choked – and not from tears!

Despite the inaccuracies in the film – John managing to place bomb detonators onto the FBI building for one – New York is a fairly good attempt. And it’s always good to see Bollywood movies that are attempting to move away from the traditional boy meets girl masala. It’s not as powerful as Shoaib Mansoor’s own take on terrorism and a post-9/11 scenario in Khuda Kay Liye but then it’s Bollywood yaar! - Hani Taha Salim (Rating – 3 OUT OF 5)

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2009, Genre – Action, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Aditya Chopra, Yash Chopra, Director – Kabir Khan, Music Director – Pritam, Cast – John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Irrfan Khan