Extended weekend and in a mood to watch a mindless movie? Here comes ASHOK’s FIVE reasons NOT to watch #Ghoomketu now streaming on #Zee5. What do you reckon when a movie boasts names such as Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Ranvir Singh, Sonakshi Sinha and the Big B and of course Anurag Kashyap? Written and directed by Pushpendra Nath Misra of Taj Mahal 1989 fame (Netflix), this is the story of a rustic outsider in Bollywood but watch it at your own risk!
1.I do not know where to begin reviewing Ghoomketu. Am still struggling to describe it as a comedy or a spoof or a collage of movie plots from the seventies. There is graphics, animation, black & white flashback Tarentino style segments and even a Chaplinisque section, all this told in a narrator-speaks-to-you format. The initial ten minutes set in the rural background of Mohena in Uttar Pradesh and the last ten minutes that are deeply ironic are the best part of the film.
2. Nawaz plays a 31-year-old aspiring writer living with his family in Mohena. The family consists of his father Dudda (played by Raghubir Yadav), Santa Bua (Ila Arun) and Guddan Chacha (Swanand Kirkire) and his newly wedded wife. He applies for a job at the local “Gugudi” periodical but is handed a cheat book on writing Bollywood scripts by the chief editor. He runs away to Mumbai and struggles to become a writer. Here he plays cat and mouse with corrupt Inspector Badlani (Anurag Kashyap hamming his way all through) and both end up counting down on a thirty-day calendar. He does come up with some quirky lines and which do find their way into a mainstream film but that again is a quirk of fate and an altogether different story.
In my endeavour not to miss a single Amitabh Bachchan movie, I sat through the ordeal and there is a moment or two of delight at the end which makes you reflect on how much life is a bit of hit and miss but as I said in the beginning do it at your own peril. There is this WhatsApp meme going around about how two men are digging for diamonds and the one who is perilously close to a bunch of gleaming diamonds abandons his post and moves to the other’s position since he has already found a stray diamond there but eventually strikes oil and is submerged in the mine! Ghoomketu’ s climax is something similar as Siddiqui comes that close to making it big!
3. The film launched was made in 2015 and launched with a five-year delay; as a result, most of the actors look different from how they do now. In an attempt to make the characters quirky, Misra has overdone them and Raghubir Yadav as a hot-headed rustic is guaranteed to give you a headache. Ila Arun and Kirkire go through the motions without inspiring anything in the viewer. Siddiqui could have been the saving grace with his quirky mannerisms and witty one liners but all that remains with you at the end of the film is his Mithun Chakraborty – meets- Randeep- Hooda- in- Extraction haircut dyed an awful red!
4. Created by the now defunct Phantom Films and Sony Pictures, the film has some cheesy lines with a lot of unnecessary cuss words. There is one item number that actually goes “Teri chassi itni hilti kaisi” by the inimitable Bappi Lahiri. The attempt to recreate the seventies Bollywood magic is extremely limp and Ghoomketu is also not so bad that it could be termed good!
5. Its an ordeal to figure out that the objective of the film; it does have the tiny moments that reflect on life – for example is it about finding happiness by staying content within your means or is it that life is about a bit of luck too? Ghoomketu sits precariously on a couple of ideas that could easily have been cooked well and made into a taut comic caper. Instead it meanders into the ordinariness of the daily sunset with the forced attempts to bolster the humour quotient.
I wish I could say that Nawazuddin Siddiqui carries the film on his shoulders but unfortunately that’s not true. There are a few hilarious moments in the film like when Ila Arun pretends to be scared wit Siddiqui’s rendering of the horror plot but later confesses that she didn’t want to break his heart. That scene reminds you of Mehmood and Om Prakash in Pyaar Kiye Jaa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFVH4oSjqOE and suddenly I am tempted to shake out of my Ghoomketu and go watch Padosan !
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