Shah Rukh Bola Khubsoorat Hai Tu.....and she believed it......I Guess Only She And The Director Believed It!

 Somebody please tell me Makrand Deshpande was suffering from chronic alcoholism while making this movie, because that would be the sole reason I would cut him some slack.

The only reason my heart,head and feet agreed to watch SRKBTKH (the abbreviation would give Karan Johar a complex) was because it was directed by Makrand Deshpande . A renowned theater actor/director, some of his plays have been quite exemplary and therefore I got lured into believing that his film would follow suit. But alas, i was in for huge disappointment. Because the movie was not just bad it was VERY BAD!

So, picture this : I reach the ticket counter and when I start saying the name of the movie, it takes me two minutes to finally say the full name followed by a smirk from the guy selling the ticket. That was my first cue, that i should just turn and run but then the movie buff in me said ” What would this fool sitting behind the counter know about cinema anyway, he s dismissing it just because the movie has a funny name! ” So, I took the ticket and went inside the theater where I got my second cue : The theater had just three people including me! But again the eternal optimist in me said “Most of the people would not watch it because it is a small budget film, and not as hyped” and so I sat on my seat awaiting a treat in the name of cinema. Instead what I got was a cinema aficionado’s nightmare. After the first fifteen minutes the only reason I sat through the entire movie was because as a’ responsible movie buff’, I had to write this review to prevent my compatriots from making the same mistake.

The movie is the story of Laali ( Preetika) who lives in a shanty in Mumbai and sells flowers at the traffic signals for a living. One day Laali bumps into Shah Rukh Khan at one of the signals and he tells her that she is beautiful. This one compliment brings about an entire paradigm shift in her life. She starts ignoring he ex flame John, who in turn is being ardently pursued by Champa, the local prostitute. But John loves Laali and Laali post the compliment becomes as staunch a devotee of Shah Rukh Khan as Meera was of Lord Krishna. She starts treating SRK as god, and has this belief that he would save her from any adversity in life. In between all of this there is a small time ‘bhai’ (Makrand Deshpandey) who tries to force John to marry Champa ( the prostitute) and a journalist who wants to make a story on Laali’s life. If I were to draw parallels between SBKHT and another movie I’d say it is the most skewed version of Devdas, with Paro becoming the ‘Devdasi’ of SRK and chandramukhi (champa) trying to kill Paro to win Devdas’s (John) affection

In a nut shell, the  movie is about the effect of cinema and  film stars on the lives of small timers. It tries to explore the psyche of  your archetypal bollywood fan who keeps his favourite movie star next to and at times even at par with god. Interesting perspective I agree, but the treatment is completely flawed. Considering the fact that it is a small budget film, I was not expecting brilliant cinematography or out of the world camera work but  i was expecting  a gripping narration, crisp editing, display of some brilliant performances and a lot of depth and substance. Unfortunately, I got none. The acting was below average, Laali at times seems too polished to be a flower seller living in the slums of Mumbai, John her lover has a constant dead pan expression on his face and Champa the prostitute is far too over the top. Makrand Deshpande paints a dismal picture as the local ‘BHAI’. Rather than looking macho he looks funny, especially the fight sequences. Never in the history of Indian or World cinema has a quintessential ‘bhai’ been so scrawny,and it is funny and highly unrealistic to watch him beat up four men at a time. The narration is weak and does not follow a thread, by the end of it you wonder what was the director trying to do? and one of the reasons the narration seemed poor was bad editing. The editing made the movie  jerky and rough most of times and at times too slow. That explains why I slept off in the middle for ten minutes or so. In my opinion Makrand Deshpanday faltered because he tried to incorporate everything into one film, he tried to make it meaningful and realistic with all the commercial flavours induced. The result quite obviously was a complete hotchpotch. What could have been made into an outstanding film, turned out to be a director’s feeble and disastrous attempt at trying to make meaningful cinema.

Despite the movie being a disaster, the entire experience did teach me a few things.

a) If the guy at the ticket counter of a movie theaters smirks when you take the movies name: Without batting an eyelid go for another movie, this one is surely disastrous.

b) If there are few people in the theater to watch a film, it is not because the ones who decided to skip it are foolish, on the contrary the ones who have decided to see it are!

c) Every small budget film is not good and therefore need not be promoted only because it is small and needs to be encouraged.

d) Reviewing movies is not such a cool job after all, enduring a bad film just because you have to review it can be as bad as getting tortured by the Japanese.

Despite my warnings and sharing of my learnings if you still decide to give this movie a shot, then please do review it as well. I’d love to read it!