Mehbooba - the review

ever opened your fridge and found stale food in it n then told urself 'too old, cant eat this'. ever excavated thru ur hard disk n found these sissy songs u used to love once but r too embarrassed to listen to them now? thts precisely the feeling this movie generates the minute it starts. this movie is old and it clearly shows tht its out of place. how old is this movie? a quick scan thru sum of the mehbooba facts:


- the shooting of the movie started in the mid 90's or sumthing
- by the time the shooting got over, manisha koirala had forgotten the actual plot of the movie
- the lyricist of the movie as per the credits is 'late anand bakshi', poor guy died waiting for its release i guess
- one scene shows kadar khan in his younger days wen he cud actually jog for a scene
- manisha koirala is thin during the initial part
- sanjay dutt loses a majority of his hair midway thru the movie

i always had my doubts abt this movie which had crawled out of nowhere and was all set to sting the audience. but really, all u need is an IQ of 5 and a whole lot of patience to sit this one out.

the movie starts with 5 minutes of 'thank you' frames with mr director, afzal khan thanking one n all for helping him in his career(????). the director probably was overwhelmed with emotion wen he knew that his dream project(lol) was finaly goin to
reach the audience, hence the stretched acknowledgments. the next few hrs in the theater wud perfectly epitomise darwins theory of the survival of the fittest.

the movie starts with a weird scene which shows karan(ajay devgan) travelin across an open maidan in a horse drawn carriage. the camera angle is from a chopper in the sky. to give u an idea of how bad the production is, u can actualy hear the sound of the chopper in the background. so much for the attention to detail. immediately, we see the first of some 12452 songs in the movie featuring the love hunter karan, henceforth refered to as 'useless chap'. he is singing about his dream woman who looks exactly like manisha koirala and comes in his dreams (nightmares?) every night.the song is over, the movie crawls along. we never get an idea as to wat this useless chap does for a living. all we know is he lives in budapest and dreams about this woman. the character is such a lowlife that wenever his frds meet him , they ask
him 'tujhe apni mehbooba mili?'.
he finaly spots her at the airport but loses her. turns out that she is the niece of kader khan who is the lawyer of our useless chap. its pretty moronic of the director to show kader khan comin to useless chaps home and seein the paintings of his dream girl and wishin him luck to find her...all this wen the face in the paintings is of his niece payal(koirala).
useless chap finds koirala, henceforth refered to as 'fatwoman', and tries to woo her and eventualy finds out that she is the niece of his incompetent lawyer.useless chap coaxes incompetent lawyer to convince his niece to marry him.she refuses citing her hatred for men.flashback.

in comes sanjay dutt, rich industrialist, playboy, cardboard face. he owns the cliched 'S.D. Group of companies' and believes that aurat is a bazaar mein bikne wali cheez. to illustrate the minimal effort that has been put to get the dialogues on par with the world today, sanjay dutt, henceforth refered to as 'SD' talks on his cell phone on his yacht (which have the obligatory bikini clad blondes to highlight his
personality) and tells his assistant 'meine tumhe kitni baar bola hai mere satellite fone pe mujhe call mat kia karo'. oh well....whatever, this is 2008.

the attention to detail in the movie is pretty atrocious. in a particular scene, one can clearly see sanjay dutt having 2 completely different styles of sideburns on him wich looks pretty retarted. SD spots fatwoman, called varsha in the flashback, and wants to tak her to bed. he gives her a job and gifts her a car. fatwoman receives the car with a fit of terible acting suposedly emoting a happy person. she later comes to know that SD wants to tak her to bed on new yrs eve.
wat follows is a tuneless new yr party type number the lyrics of wich no one understood.after the song she openly slaps SD and tells the crowd of his bad intentions leaving a raging SD(yet looking cardboard). few days hence he apologises to fatwoman and asks her father for her hand in marriage. some rubbish scenes follow that no one is bothered about and they get engaged.
later that night fatwoman and SD cross all the boundaries of love. she is well and truly in love wit him. next mornin she wakes up and runs towards him to giv him a hug and in turn SD gives her a tight slap after wich the whole cinema hall bursted into laughter probably cos its in tht scene that fatwoman finally realizes shes a very dumb woman. SD it seems was jus takin revenge and throws her outa house after wich she leaves the city forever n goes to budapest.

back to current day and incompetent lawyer realizes the hardships fatwoman has gon thru but stil urges her to marry useless chap. fatwoman very hilariously then says that 'mujhe ek aur experiment nahi karna hai'.surely tht dialogue cud have been penned in a better manner.
rejection does not go down well with useless chap and he drags her in his horse cart (lol) to his house in the middle of nowhere and shows her all the paintings he has drawn of the thin version of fatwoman who then tells abt her past to useless chap. a couple of awsom dialogues like 'chalne ko tayar ho uss raste par jispe kisi aur ke gande paav ke nishaan hai'. an awsom way of conveying that she has been used n thrown once.
some more crap follows and he somehow convinces her of marriage. useless chap goes to rajasthan to his home and mr director's idea of grandiose is showing the udaivilas or sum 5 star hotel from the outside as his home.how tacky.he is greeted by his family by organising a 'jashn' which means tonnes of flowers, thousands of extras in the background, and music-dance by the customary moronic set of relatives. useless chap signifying his uselessness says to mother 'yeh sab ki kya zarurat thi'.
in comes sanjay dutt again, with half the hair mysteriously gone who turns out to be our hero's brother.they both then discuss their loser lives together in a bath tub. to put it mildly its a very disturbing scene seeing 2 overaged brothers discusing their lives in a place lik tht.if seeing a sissy shahrukh khan in a tub wasnt disturbing enuf, our two heroes raise the bar and mak shahrukh look macho. a few ppl walked out of the hall folowing this scene.this was officially a survival of the fittest scenario now.
remember a horribly overacting woman called himani shivpuri? she is fondly called choti by our loser brothers.things are getting even more ambiguous and the audience is clearly losing their bearings now. next up is the done to death scene whr mother explains useless chap their 'khaandaan ki parampara' that no paraya mard can see brides face till engagement. so the owner of the gande paav ke nishaan, SD, still doesnt know tht its indeed fat woman who is useless brothers bride.
after tht is an entertaining item number. the lyricist deserves an applause for this song. i wonder wat inspired him to come up with ingenuous shit like 'babuji bahut dukhta hai'. im sure he himself chukled after writing tht, but knew deep down that this is the most that the movie deserved.

after successfully wasting a few more scenes and losing a few more members of the audience, SD eventually sees the face of the bride in a terribly stretched enactment. he thinks she is takin her revenge by spoilin the already non existent life of our useless chap. in a hilariously useless scene, we see SD draggin fat woman to a desert hill in the middle of nowhere and slappin her. why there, all the people asked themselves.rather than cooking their brain even more, a few members in the audience chose to tak the easy way, out of the theater. this was jus like AXNs reality show SURVIVOR.

the actors at this stage were clearly given a briefing by the director that the hapless audience must be pulverised into submission. they do a mighty good job at it too. in a remarkably odd series of dialogues between useless chap and fatwoman wen chap comes to knows that his bro had used her once and the now payal was once varsha.
fatwoman: har payal ke andar ek varsha hoti hai
useless chap: nahi, karan hona chahiye
i jus ran this dialogue a couple of times in my mind and realized that it was one horibly horibly written dialogue.
then there is the typical love triangle shit in a burst of bad acting which brings us to the much awaited climax. reportedly, the shooting of the climax scene took 18 long months to shoot. the scene was jus lik the baby of the director who wanted it to be
'perfect'.but alas, the scene jus had the already numb audience rolling on the floor in splits of hysterical laughter. the scene is unfortunately too too pointless to even describe. the only thing imp enuf to know is SD is involved in a car accident with a train in the middle of a desert, while saving his bro and bride. but of corse, a hero in a briliant movie lik this can never die str8way even after being hit by a train. he has to say sumthin, give a message and then die, which he does. what the
message is, is irrelevant. the funny thing is that i thot i could see a hint of smile on SDs face wen he is dieing. clearly he was happy that the shooting is over after almost 10 yrs.

the director did well to mak his dream project a nightmare for all of us. the only guy who deserves some credit is koiralas dress designer who did well to hide her fat ass.
the audience comes out of the hall, all smiles knowin well that they hav passed the test of self torture. i personaly walked out of the theater and felt as if i was in there for sum 3-4 days.
the unique thing about this movie is that even if u walk in with absolutely no expectations at all, u are still disapointed after seeing it.
the acting standards are virtually nil. sanjay dutt it seems did the whole movie wearing a cardboard mask of himself. the music director shud hav ideally been called the 'noise director' for his tunes.
for those who r interested, mr director did have a fit of inspiration and realized that the movie must b marketed as per the new age ways and he has created these 2 awsom communities on facebook and orkut for the 'untapped youth market'. hats off to
sum sadist MBA workin with afzal khan for this.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=55520655312
http://www.orkut.co.in/Community.aspx?cmm=52106038

all in all, an enjoyable viewing for 50 bucks in a single screen. i did not risk this in a multiplex (pat on the back to myself)


my verdict - *** (recommended, but for masochists only)