Doom-ed again!

This is my review for Dhoom 3. Do check it out: http://www.campusghanta.com/2013/12/23/doom-ed-again/

                                   

The Prestige by Christopher Nolan ripped off in an excruciatingly long time frame of 3 hours 20 minutes: that’s Dhoom 3 summed up in exactly seventeen words. The story revolves around Jackie Shroff running a flop show, ‘The Great Indian Circus’ in Chicago, while he has no money left to pay off his bills. The Western bank of Chicago seizes his circus, he shoots himself, and there! 23 years later, his son is here taking revenge, bringing the bank down, and re-starting the circus. And obviously the stud-ly Jai Dixit and his tapori colleague Ali are called for the rescue, called off it, and then they solve it together cause that’s what Bollywood makes actors do.

This was easily the most anticipated film of the year, and also the worst; even more absurd than Chennai Express. At least Chennai Express was original. Seems like Aditya Chopra, Acharya and the design team took Nolan’s magic and the Indian audience too much for granted; apart from stealing the key trick from the infamous film, they even replicated the entire set from Nolan’s film. Being a part of the frustrated average Indian audience who pays a good damn amount only for a complete disappointment, I would recommend Nolan to file a case of stealing his work of art. You’d rather spend 900 bucks on buying ALL of Himesh Reshamiya’s CDs only to throw them away the day after than watch this film. Getting into a little gossip, on Koffee with Karan, Aamir Khan mentioned he chose the film cause of the script. After watching it, you’ll wonder if he was blinded by the *possibility* of ‘style’ he could get (which Salman and Shahrukh have and he doesn’t, as he said on the show) and thus overlooked the utterly sloppy script. But his phenomenal acting was probably the only reason you wouldn’t get off your seat more than 5 times throughout the film.

Going on about the actors, let’s talk about their actual contribution to the film:

Jai Dixit aka Abhishek Bachchan

I start with him because he’s been there since the the first Dhoom, and even though he ain’t as good as tapori ‘Ali’, he’s sadly, still more important. Junior Bachan seemed elated after realizing he had some scope left in the film industry by starring in the Dhoom series as the star-cop from India, doing some noble work in Chicago. Maybe that’s why he overacted. I tried hard, but I honestly couldn’t find a reason better than that. His Dhoom 1 and 2 aura, not exactly an aura, but basically something that made the audience like the previous two films had gone for good in the 3rd one. His wife Sweety and her baby are missing. That’s pretty disappointing because a Dhoom film without the over-made-up Rimi Sen, and thus, the overacting couple is an incomplete film. Ah, now that I think about actors who overact, they really did take a lot into consideration while casting for Dhoom 1. Thank goodness that Abhishek had nothing else to offer apart from terrible acting. Yes yes, I know, his looks aren’t what we’d call pleasing anyway.

Ali aka Uday Chopra

Uday Chopra, the second guy who’s been there since the beginning. We all know the only good acting he has ever done was in Dhoom and Dhoom 2 with his tapori charm. His only art (or probably his natural self) was deliberately taken away from him only to stuff in more unneeded action in the film. Message for Aditya Chopra here: Uday Chopra was a good tapori bro! Let him be for once. Possibly, for the first time, your brother could have saved your ass.
He just repeated 2-3 dialogues from the older Dhoom films, apart from the middle of the film where he bestows a great revelation upon Jai that ‘ijjat’ is most important, in a 20 second dialogue. That was the only time he got some importance. Otherwise, he was left as Jai Dixit’s shadow, and even though people wanted to give a fuck about him, they couldn’t. He was funny when he spoke though. But not as entertaining as he was earlier. The director seized his charm. I feel for you, Uday Chopra.

Sahir/Samar aka Aamir Khan

Yeah, he has a double role, but that’s no surprise. You guess it in the beginning, just like you guess every other ‘secret’ they slowly, like really, unnecessarily, slowly reveal. Although his poor choice is left to ridicule, no one can deny that his histrionics was what held the film together. There’s no glitch in the perfectionist’s work, and he beautifully manages to arouse a range of emotions much needed to be stimulated by the film. In fact, his flawless work makes you want to cry for his wrong script choice. That’s it for him, he was good either way.

Aaliya aka Katrina Kaif

I had forgotten about her till I scrolled up to review my work. That’s her contribution to the film. She’s definitely hot, but you experience her sexyness for a grand total of about 9 minutes. Thank the Gods, she had more of dancing than acting to do, so she did a good job. The ‘Asian Beauty who can sing and dance’ in some Electricity jazz movement was her role in the circus. Now that I analyze the character, it’s quite funny. The film could’ve done without her but I guess every Bollywood film requires the actress to come in for 3 minutes of drama which leads to the climax. Also, she was needed for the glamour to accompany the grand-stolen sets.

The other actors were pretty sidey, and obviously didn’t have much contribution to the film. That includes Jackie Shroff. He must be content for the few minutes of fame he got from his 7 minute role, which was still more important than Katrina Kaif’s.

THE ACTION

The film was like a circus, in terms of action. You will see stunts that neither humans nor magicians can perform. They kept emphasizing on magician’s magic tricks to get away with every unrealistic stunt they pulled off. Not convincing Acharya ji. The crew has clearly taken the Indian audience for granted, thinking we’re fools to believe or get mesmerized by that crap. They forgot that the janta has voted for AAP and BJP in the recent elections; we ain’t that stupid after all.

You have Abhishek’s entry in an auto-rickshaw, killing villains while riding it, Uday Chopra riding his yellow-some-model-bike and Jr. Bachan flying off it, 10 meters high, bashing up a villain, and worst of all is Aamir Khan riding his BMW on a 10cm thick rope. Seems like the laws of Physics have been taken for a ride too. The film could’ve been 1 hour shorter, and would’ve still made the same amount of sense as it would otherwise, if they cut off half the action scenes. I walked off in the middle (I swear everyone did), and on re-entering I saw how 75% of the people were on their phones. Also, I walked off, and I still knew what was going on in the film. I had watched The Prestige, remember? And action sequences don’t reveal anything about the story or the strength and valor of the characters, Acharya and Chopra must know.

THE END

The end was sorely disappointing, just a modified version of The Prestige. You’d be like, “Woah, fuck that was.. how did that happen?-” in the 2006 film, but here, you’ll just be like, “Um, dude. Did we just watch a Karan Johar movie?” It’s dramatic and doesn’t go with the entire plot. But since they stole the idea, they had no other alternative and HAD to modify the ending. Ugh, I’m so disgusted right now. You’d expect something much smarter by the end of it. It would also be the last ray of hope you would have in the director to bring about SOME change in the plot, and make it a crisp, or smart ending, or perhaps an open-ended tale. But no, they decide to bring in Bollywood drama in the last chance where they could’ve turned the whole thing around and the viewers would’ve rated it 3.5 instead or 1.5.

On another note, the future of Bollywood has been ‘doom-ed’ by films like this. You’d rather spend a day off by aimlessly walking around somewhere rather than watching this ridiculous film.