If you thought Jeena Sirf Merre Liye was the worst you saw from the Hindi film industry, there is stiff competition from David Dhawan's latest film, Ek Aur Ek Gyarah. If India had its own version of the Raspberry Awards, here is one film that would walk away with a rich haul.
The most imaginative portion of this film is its animated title sequence, after which each one of its 18 reels progressively gets worse. By the end of it, you are deafened by Govinda's high-pitched gags and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's inexcusable score, dumbstruck by the sight of the two remarkably dense heroines and numbed by the assault of Dhawan's catastrophic concept of comedy.
In fact, you start squirming in your seat the moment Taraji (Govinda) and Sitaraji (Sanjay Dutt) jump out of a cupboard and unleash their Punjabi wisecracks on your unsuspecting nerves. The middle-aged actors are supposed to pass off as charming and 'innocent' crooks on the run who accidentally land up in a border town.
Do not even ask which border or town since these minor details are of no relevance to the story. Wicked siblings Cobraji (Ashish Vidyarthi) and Pantherji (Gulshan Grover) are busy trying to smuggle sophisticated arms out of an army base, which is manned by men who look nothing like army men and every bit like film extras.
Along comes upright officer Ram Singhji (a very jaded Jackie Shroff) who spoils their plans and puts Pantherji in the army's high-security 'lock-up'. You may wonder what this has got to do with our beloved Taraji and Sitaraji. Honestly speaking, I cannot remember, and frankly, if you asked Dhawan, he might give you the same answer.
But somehow, Taraji, Sitaraji, Cobraji, Pantherji and Ram Singhji keep bumping into each other under the most implausible circumstances. In between all this, Taraji also bumps into Ram Singhji's sister Pinkyji (Nandini Singh) while Sitaraji finds her friend Pritiji (Amrita Arora) and together, they sing a few inconsequential songs.
Finally, when you are almost down on your knees begging for mercy, the director puts you out of your agony as Tara-Sitaraji bundle out the baddies to become universal heroes by virtue of their 'noble' deeds.
If any other filmmaker had engineered this mess, one would not have been quite as disgusted. But Ek Aur Ek Gyarah is produced by Subhash Ghai, who is described as a 'showman' and is one of the most influential figures in Bollywood. And Dhawan is made out to be some kind of comic genius, especially when accompanied by Govinda.
Govinda is so over-the-top, you wonder if he is making a desperate bid to bring back the old magic. Dutt is not known for his comedy so there is little one can expect from him. The heroines are not even glorified extras, they are extras who have to only wear skimpy dresses and gyrate to indifferent music.
Even a bright actor like Rajpal Yadav is reduced to a pathetic buffoon while Shroff looks totally uninterested.
Ghai had addressed the fourth estate recently on the enormous changes taking place in the Hindi film industry and how his company Mukta Arts plans to play a major role in shaping the new Bollywood order. Ek Aur Ek Gyarah is amongst the first steps in that direction, we were told.
If this is the future of Hindi cinema, it is time for me to look for another profession.