The Hindu : New Delhi News : A dose of style and comedy, a bite of pure innocence

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Sunday, Jul 05, 2009
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A dose of style and comedy, a bite of pure innocence

Anuj Kumar

Highlights of the week: While debutant director Sabbir Khan’s ‘Kambakkht Ishq’ is high on mindless comedy and glamour, director Carlos Saldanha’s ‘Ice Age 3’ is a delightful mixture of fun and moral learning.

KAMBAKKTH ISHQ

(Delite and other theatres in Delhi and elsewhere)

You have yet another pop film here – high on hype, low on deliverance. Akshay Kumar has specialised in this variety – the tales of a goofy, lion-hearted simpleton who can desire and get whatever he wants – something Amitabh Bachchan achieved in the late 1970s with Manmohan Desai.

The good old khiladi has got what it takes. No one can touch him in action and his comic timing is improving with geometrical progression. He can get away with the silliest of lines and scripts with conviction. Alas! These are different times. To suspend disbelief today you need at least a thin board of reason and debutant director Sabbir Khan here is no Manmohan Desai.

No doubt the film is high on style and chutzpah! It starts with a bang and the end is equally high on decibel count, but in between it simply meanders. It turns out as a highlight package as the Nadiadwalas want us to be dazed by guest appearances of Hollywood stars and locations, which actually are available at the touch of a television remote in these changed times. The banner is known to take the leap of faith from the springboard of some catchy music (Remember Welcome?) but here Anu Malik thoroughly disappoints.

Though the actors try to give their best in some mundane situations, they are shortchanged by jokes which are mostly pedestrian, at times crude, and even if you leave your mind in a deep freeze, chances are it will force its way back by intermission.

A girl, that too a surgeon, doesn’t know whether the boy (someone she hates) she was with for a night made love to her or not. And when the boy’s brother assures her he didn’t, the doctor’s heart changes. Touted as the story of sexes, it is about a braveheart Hollywood stuntman Viraj (Akshay Kumar) from Punjab who believes girls are good for only one thing and that thing is not marriage. A surgery student, Simrita (Kareena Kapoor), who part-times as a model, also believes all men think the way the stuntman does and that stuntmen know only one meaning of action. Their paths cross when Viraj’s brother (Aftab Shivdasani) gets married to the surgeon’s friend (Amrita Arora).

The rest of the storyline moves on expected lines. Sabbir seems to have forgotten that love withers with predictability. Its very essence is surprise and amazement. He tries to shock us with weathered devices like the doctor leaving her watch inside Viraj’s abdomen during a surgery and it keeps ticking! He seems to think of his audience what Simrita thinks of stuntmen: Give them a few laughs, a flurry of kicks and they will sing along. Yes, mindless comedies could be fun but here constant insensitive buffoonery sounds obnoxious.

The lead pair’s sexist remarks and gestures are in bad taste and at odds with Akshay’s simple man image.

Kareena has given it all as the snob surgeon and looks very much the part. She even sings “Bebo Main Bebo….” leaving nothing to doubt. In the glamour quotient, even Denise Richards pales in her comparison. Wish the banner had given her something more than cosmetic to show off.

Go for this enterprise only if you like you to be dazzled by stars and their fineries.

ICE AGE 3

(BIG TGIP, Noida and other theatres)

This summer is proving to be real fun for kids. The third instalment of Ice Age series is a visual delight and comes with some enduring lessons on human values. Manny and Ellie, the lovely woolly mammoths, are expecting their first baby. Unsure of his place in the inter-specific family, Diego, the tiger, who learnt to co-exist with his vegetarian friends, is looking for a new adventure despite advancing age.

In moments of fun, Sid, the enterprising sloth, finds three huge eggs. He adopts them to have a family as he is feeling a little jealous of Manny and Ellie. But when dinosaur kids come out of the shell, he finds them too huge to handle.

As his parental instincts take over reason he tries to make them vegetarian and well-mannered. Things take a booming turn when the mother dinosaur comes looking for her kids. Sid doesn’t want his labour of love to go waste and in the ensuing mayhem the monster drags him to the underworld, the world of dinosaurs, along with her three kids. No, don’t expect logic or scientific truths here. When tiger can make friends with squirrels and sloths, Jurassic and Ice Age can also co-exist.

The family decides to help their member in need and eventually they also reach the tropical land unmindful of the mammoth task ahead. As they are about to give up, they find a friend in shrewd Buck, the weasel, who has his own axe to grind with the biggest dinosaur of all, the mighty Rudy. He shows them the way, teaches them the tricks of the jungle and, after a long drawn battle, the fittest or we can say the wittiest ones survive.

Director Carlos Saldanha has made the staple situations of chase, fall and jump immensely believable with some smart lines and amazing animation.

The scrat and scratte episodes, in between the main plot, are not only full of energy but have a lyrical feel to them. As Scrat the squirrel goes out to retrieve his precious acorn, his efforts are countered by Scratte the flying squirrel with whom he is instantly smitten.

Go for it to feel the grip of unalloyed innocence!

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