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A Bollywood call that can safely be skipped…. Cinema

ANUJ KUMAR

Not much to offer: Director Atul Agnihotri’s “Hello” disappoints and “Babylon A.D.” brings nothing fresh for the viewers.

Not much to offer: Director Atul Agnihotri’s “Hello” disappoints and “Babylon A.D.” brings nothing fresh for the viewers.

HELLO

(Shiela and other theatres in Delhi and elsewhere)

It was long overdue. Bollywood could not have ignored life in a BPO any longer. Director Atul Agnihotri found an able ally in the form of novelist Chetan Bhagat on whose much talked about bestseller One Night@ The Call Centre this film is based. Still Atul has given us a film that engages us for moments, touches us in a flash, but leaves us pretty much disappointed in the end.

He has the advantage of being the first mover in a world where action begins at midnight. Where Ridhima becomes Rebecca and at times morality becomes as elastic as a Russian gymnast. Everybody is living an American dream which could be right-sized any moment. Alas! Atul frittered away the advantage.

The problem this time round is not with the script or the dialogue. Chetan has managed to hold on to the punch in Hindi for a large part of the film. But there is something lost in translation. And that something is the soul of the story.

The culprit is Atul, who has not been able to carve out his characters and ambience with a dash of reality. The way he has handled the crucial “God scene” is just too filmy. So is the comment on youth icons. The six protagonists in a swanky room don’t give the touch and feel of a call centre, which Chetan managed in his novel through words. What could have been a slice of life turns out be a rather phoney exercise. Anurag Basu’s treatment of the call centre plot in “Metro” not long ago was much more authentic.

Atul seems to have forgotten that there is a thin but distinct line between a character and a caricature. And some of Atul’s crucial players fall into the latter category. Result: you don’t identify with his protagonists, even if you have fallen for the narrative, where a dedicated bahu rushes for the night shift after managing her mother-in-law.

Atul’s choice of actors hasn’t helped his cause. Yes, the usually dependable Dalip Tahil is out of form, but you don’t expect Eesha Koppikar and Amrita Arora to essay a layered character. Gul Panag, who looks stiff in a glamorous role, is still passable. The saving grace is Sharman Joshi who plays Shyam with amazing spontaneity and conviction. His rib-tickling chemistry with Sohail Khan — one wishes Atul had shown a similar chemistry with Chetan — is one of the highs of the film.

Sohail rarely gets a well-etched character. Here he has given it all. But then Sharman and Sohail can’t sell more than a dozen tickets at the box office on their own. So Atul has brought in Salman Khan in a guest appearance to raise the tempo. The gamble could work against the film, as the star’s presence is an unwarranted distraction from the plot early in the film, and experience tells us that Salman’s hard-core fans don’t want to know what’s happening behind the walls of a call centre.

Go for it if cinema is a weekly “time-pass” for you. Otherwise don’t take this call.

BABYLON A.D.

(PVR Naraina, New Delhi, and other theatres)

Here’s another film which promises a lot but delivers little. This is yet another misdirected sci-fi adventure from Hollywood.

Mercenaries, viruses, messiahs… and of course the world is in danger…the film is full of the usual suspects. We don’t expect a nuanced script in a Vin Diesel starrer. But we do demand some high-octane action. Apart from the opening s equence what we get is what we have seen over and over again. In fact, the climax is an insult to the action star status of Diesel.

Set in the future, again the erstwhile Soviet Union is the land of scarcity and evil where a hardened mercenary Toorop (Diesel) is assigned to transport a beautiful young girl with strange powers from her Mongolian convent to New York and keep her out of the clutches of a sinister religious cult. He is aided by Michelle Yeoh who is not an ordinary nun and gives the mercenary solid company in the action sequences.

The script, adapted from “Babylon Babies”, hints at global warming, extinction of Siberian tigers, and, above all, has a Biblical connection. But all of this is not knit very well into a screenplay. What we get is an apology of a concern, and the end leaves you confused, with questions waiting to be answered. No wonder the director, Mathieu Kassovitz, disowned the film just before the release, alleging too much interference from the studio.

Diesel can sleepwalk through such a role and Michelle has not much to perform. A word here for the Censor Board and animal activists. The latter are out on the street every time a pigeon takes a flight in a Bollywood film, but here you have a cat sliced up and tigers caged but we have yet to hear from them.

Avoid the trip to a rather bleak future this week, and Diesel fans can wait for the DVD.

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY

(Spice, Noida, and other theatres)

Underdogs have a special quality in cinema. Unlike good versus evil, there is nothing like overkill with underdog tales. Here again director Bharat Nalluri etches an endearing tale of a governess in distress who by chance becomes the social secretary of a wannabe singer Delysia.

The singer has three suitors and she is unable to make up her mind whether to go for true love or use love as a ladder to achieve her ambitions. But when Pettigrew is around, making the right choice is not an issue. It is another matter she doesn’t know her job profile! She might not have the dress sense to move into the higher echelons of society but she knows more than a thing or two about commitment and care. Soon you fall for Miss Pettigrew’s pathos and her ability to find a silver lining where you assume there is none.

The way she saves Delysia from sticky situations is not only hilarious but engaging as well. Along the way, Pettigrew encounters a charming suitor (Ciaran Hinds) who offers the possibility of love for herself.

Frances McDormand delivers a nuanced performance in the title role. Never does she cry for sympathy and hardly ever is she self-righteous. As the hungry and desperate governess we laugh at her when she gobbles up the pieces of cucumber put on her eyes during a makeover and feel for her when she refuses a lavish spread because the situation demands restraint.

The adorable Amy Adams fits the part as the confused Delysia whose morals are in conflict with her ambitions. The two leading ladies are ably supported by Lee Pace, Mark Strong and Tom Payne as the three men in Delysia’s life.

Bharat has shown the promise of yet another director of Indian origin who could make it really big in Hollywood. His comments on morality and commitment do have an Indian underpinning without ever losing the connection with the London setting of the 1940s.

It is a pity that only action films from across the border get all the hype. Catch up with Miss Pettigrew before she is given a pink slip at a theatre near you!

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