Half the films Anees Bazmee has directed have random English words for titles. No Entry, Sandwich, Welcome, No Problem, Thank You . And now, after Ready , you are more convinced than ever that this filmmaker does not care for such things as title, relevance, story, plot, theme or, simply put, meaning.
Yes, the medium is the message. But the medium here is not film but Salman Khan. In other words, get this: Fans are actually paying to watch Salman Khan tell them that Salman Khan is a huge star who has fans paying to watch him play Salman Khan. Yes, it's the unintentionally meta-movie Charlie Kaufman would write the day he finds himself mentally ill.
Ready? Seriously, if the idea was to introduce one English word every few months to the masses, why not something like sesquipedalian or perspicacious? One, Bazmee himself wouldn't have the slightest clue how to do either. Two, people he's targeting probably don't care for such things. And that is probably the picture he has of people who seek escapist entertainment: They know limited English. They have seen No Entry signs on the road, eaten sandwich at the stall by the street corner, seen Welcome written on everything from doormats to weddings they've been to and their daily quota of English is limited to Thank You and Ready. Also why all his titles are commonplace yet foreign and made up of words that would suffice to pretend you know the language.
It is this love for imported ‘phoren maal' that seems to be the underlying hallmark of an Anees Bazmee film infested with foreign locations yet populated by Hindi-speaking characters. This is a filmmaker who is no different from the guy pretending he knows English. All he knows is what he's seen someone else do. If French Kiss became Pyaar Toh Hona Hi Tha and Primal Fear became Deewangee at the beginning of his career, we now have Ready that's a remake of Ready in Telugu (it's now officially a trend to name the remake after the original like Ghajini or Singham ) and there's more coming with the official Hangover remake in the pipeline at this end of his career.
The director's attempt to adapt the Telugu film for the Hindi audience has resulted in a strange hybrid. Ready packs the worst of three worlds — the lowbrow crass, chauvinistic flavour of the South Indian hero, the cloyingly sweet joint family of the North Indian hero (specifically, from the house of the Barjatyas) and South Indian sensibility masquerading as North Indian (specifically, the Priyadarshan comedies).
Looming large over this mess is the star persona of Salman Khan, who, sporting a Superman T-shirt, dismisses the sole conflict (of girl taken away by relatives who have their eye on her inheritance) like it's no big deal. He tells the girl he's already rich, he can beat up the bad guys in no time but since they need a story to tell their children, he decides to do it the hard way like Shah Rukh Khan in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge .
He then does the drill of winning over the girl's evil relatives but only after teaching them a lesson (this includes beating up a kid, that too masked!) and none of this is even remotely engaging because Salman Khan has already told us it's no big deal. Since he has to provide the solution for the conflict he has chosen to create for want of a story to tell his children, he ghost-directs Paresh Rawal and scripts his way into the hearts of the girl's family. Indulgence is taken to new levels of idiocy with inane jokes and lowbrow slapstick as nothing happens.
Since Bazmee won't stop repeating his fare and continues to assault our senses three or four times a year, maybe it's time at least we critics stop repeating ourselves. Here's a title for your next film, Mr. Bazmee. ‘No more'. Also, a sequel. ‘Please'.
Ready
Genre: Drama
Director: Anees Bazmee
Cast: Salman Khan, Asin, Paresh Rawal, Mahesh Manjrekar, Sharat Saxena, Manoj Pahwa, Manoj Joshi and Akhilendra Mishra
Storyline: Salman Khan basically… takes care of everything. He's the story, the conflict and the resolution
Bottomline: If you will settle for anything, this title is totally meta.
