ZERO MOVIE REVIEW 2018
So to his latest Zero which could have been that rare film about the insecurities, dreams and aspirations of imperfect people, their resistance to support even while searching for emotional anchors, their inability to connect with others because they haven’t quite bonded with themselves. It could have also been a fantastic opportunity to cut down to size the larger than life romantic persona of SRK, to bring his brand of love and longing down to the grassroots so to speak. I did see heartening glimpses of it in Zero — the 'Mere naam tu' song and dance on the wheelchair seemed to point at the possibility of love, leading to sex, for all and not just the able.
To be fair SRK does fit in well with this motley crowd with his wicked, obnoxious, self-obsessed, crude Bauua and seems to enjoy playing the pest. But I suspect there is the larger effort here to assimilate and channel what SRK seems to have stood for the writer-director duo — like the falling star motif that I identify deeply with in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. To me Bauua seemed like a deliberate variation of the blemished and fallible Sunil in KHKN. There the defects were internal, that most of us could empathise with; here they get physical, propped up by special effects but lacking the strong emotional connect.
There the plot remained believable, here things spin out of control, careening in all kinds of strange directions, specially post interval — a lovesick, smudgy-eyed heroine Babita (Katrina Kaif is very likable, perhaps she is made for such batty roles), a confused Aafia (earnest and invested Anushka Sharma), a baby, a chimpanzee, a rocket to Mars and a retinue of stars marching on in cameos that is so Naseeb and Om Shanti Om, well past the sell-by date to elicit any wows any more, even though it may bring the late Sridevi back in all her gorgeous glory on screen.
Then there are the scripted moments that make you smile in their subversiveness — the jibe at Muslims not getting the American visa, SRK as Bauua sporting the ultimate Brahminical symbol, the janeu, even rolling it on his
eight + six = earlobe when using the toilet and invoking Mata Rani all the time. It’s as though SRK is deliberately pointing out to some commentators and critics (remember the debate post Raees) that he is not just about embracing his Muslim identity on screen. Touche!
This Review is entirely from my point of view , so kindly no hate comments !!! Peace .
Thank you for reading Come back again and if you like my work you can help me by donating some amounts . by clicking the green button below.
- Director: Aanand L. Rai
- Starring: Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif, Shah Rukh Khan, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Sheeba Chaddha, Brijendra Kala
- Run time: 164 minutes
- Storyline: Short statured Bauua Singh finds love, or something like that, in cerebral palsy affected NASA scientist Aafia Yusufzai Bhinder but hankers for filmstar Babita Kumari
The characteristic outstretched arms of SRK get smaller, as does his height, the creative ambition gets bigger but the film stays resolutely middling when it could have been much more!!!
Shah Rukh Khan films nowadays have a method for winding up more about what could have been than what we eventually get the opportunity to see. There is that underlying troublesome start, that craving to bother the universe that in the end dwindles down in the more than two hour odd run time to get securely packaged into the well-worn and the long recognizable. Do I at that point see the glass half unfilled or half full?
So to his latest Zero which could have been that rare film about the insecurities, dreams and aspirations of imperfect people, their resistance to support even while searching for emotional anchors, their inability to connect with others because they haven’t quite bonded with themselves. It could have also been a fantastic opportunity to cut down to size the larger than life romantic persona of SRK, to bring his brand of love and longing down to the grassroots so to speak. I did see heartening glimpses of it in Zero — the 'Mere naam tu' song and dance on the wheelchair seemed to point at the possibility of love, leading to sex, for all and not just the able.
On the other side, take the physical states of the leads — Bauua's (SRK) dwarfism and Aafia's (Anushka Sharma) cerebral paralysis — away and the film winds up playing on a similar old tired figure of speech of responsibility fear. All exemplified in the discussion of koyal, ande, ghonsle — about the cuckoo laying its eggs in another person's home. It's about a very regularly observed change — for this situation of Bauua, who constantly needed to flee however at long last chooses to stick around.
Zero commences with a comedic succession that doffs its cap to the American Westerns, Luc Besson, Anurag Kashyap and Imtiaz Ali et al — more Farah Khan than Aanand L. Rai. It's the 70 mm, beautiful, filmi Meerut that is Rai's and author Himanshu Sharma's own. The town where ladies move to 'Aaja sanam madhur chandni mein murmur' at women's sangeet, the disguised animosity, contemptuousness and unpleasantness of its occupants, the pleasant spread of a solid supporting cast that we ought to have in a perfect world been served considerably more of — Tigmanshu Dhulia as Bauua's dad, Sheeba Chadhha as the mother and Brijendra Kala as the marriage fixer — and a portion of Rai's tart lines conveyed with sharpness by the entertainers.
To be fair SRK does fit in well with this motley crowd with his wicked, obnoxious, self-obsessed, crude Bauua and seems to enjoy playing the pest. But I suspect there is the larger effort here to assimilate and channel what SRK seems to have stood for the writer-director duo — like the falling star motif that I identify deeply with in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. To me Bauua seemed like a deliberate variation of the blemished and fallible Sunil in KHKN. There the defects were internal, that most of us could empathise with; here they get physical, propped up by special effects but lacking the strong emotional connect.
There the plot remained believable, here things spin out of control, careening in all kinds of strange directions, specially post interval — a lovesick, smudgy-eyed heroine Babita (Katrina Kaif is very likable, perhaps she is made for such batty roles), a confused Aafia (earnest and invested Anushka Sharma), a baby, a chimpanzee, a rocket to Mars and a retinue of stars marching on in cameos that is so Naseeb and Om Shanti Om, well past the sell-by date to elicit any wows any more, even though it may bring the late Sridevi back in all her gorgeous glory on screen.
Then there are the scripted moments that make you smile in their subversiveness — the jibe at Muslims not getting the American visa, SRK as Bauua sporting the ultimate Brahminical symbol, the janeu, even rolling it on his
eight + six = earlobe when using the toilet and invoking Mata Rani all the time. It’s as though SRK is deliberately pointing out to some commentators and critics (remember the debate post Raees) that he is not just about embracing his Muslim identity on screen. Touche!
This Review is entirely from my point of view , so kindly no hate comments !!! Peace .
Thank you for reading Come back again and if you like my work you can help me by donating some amounts . by clicking the green button below.
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