Writer-director Sanjay Chhel is no Stanley Kubrick, and yet I suspect he was somehow able to strike the same deal with his producers, as Kubrick did with the studio that financed his last film. It's popularly believed that Kubrick didn't allow Warner Brothers to see any rushes, any scenes of Eyes Wide Shut before he delivered his final cut, even though the studio had poured millions of dollars into the film. Watching this comedy written and directed by Chhel, I think I can safely say nobody but the film's creator could have had any clue what they were going to see. Of course, in the case of Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick delivered a haunting portrait of marital loneliness. With Maan Gaye Mughall-e-Azam, on the other hand, Chhel has created a wretched mess of a movie -- a jumble of footage in search of a plot. Paresh Rawal and Mallika Sherawat star as a married couple who're part of a theatre troupe in a small town in Goa who must yet again stage their version of the classic period romance Mughal-e-Azam, because the police fears their political satire might be a little too sensitive in such difficult times. The film after all is set in 1993, shortly after the communal riots that rocked the country. Rahul Bose plays what appears to be a seemingly jobless RAW officer who falls for Sherawat when he sees her on stage, and subsequently conducts an affair with her behind her husband's back. Kay Kay Menon stars as a ghazal singer with underworld connections who disguises himself as an undercover cop. When Bose learns that Kay Kay is working closely with a Dubai Don on a plan to blow up the country, he gets this theatre troupe involved in a mission to foil the Don's sinister operation. Liberally borrowing the premise of the Mel Brooks starrer To Be Or Not To Be, writer-director Sanjay Chhel turns in an asinine farce that one can't expect anyone with even the slightest intelligence to actually find funny. The dialogues are full of repetitive puns, characters respond to each other in rhyme, and far from following a cohesive screenplay, individual scenes end with punch-lines and clap-traps. I understand this film's meant to be a comedy and one's expected to make allowances for logic, but Maan Gaye Mughall-e-Azam isn't just illogical, it's seriously lacking in any common sense whatsoever. It's also a showcase of the worst performances you'll see by some very fine actors - Paresh Rawal, Kay Kay Menon, Pavan Malhotra and Zakir Hussain seem to have sent their acting skills on a holiday while they were shooting this film, and even the comically gifted Mallika Sherawat isn't in particularly good form. Rahul Bose has precisely three expressions in all, and he alternates between them through the entire duration of this film. I must go back to the point I made earlier - did really no producer, no actor, nobody associated with this film in any capacity have any idea what film they'd gone and made? Because I'm not sure you could find a worse movie than this if you went searching for one. There's no question of any rating for this film, they're lucky we don't have a negative rating scale. I suspect the members of the Censor Board fell asleep while watching this film, how else could they have allowed the use of so many expletives. Every other character uses the words maa ki and behen ki very freely, one character's name is Bashir Bastard, and one chap even uses the F-word. There's a very good chance you'll be swearing just as much when you're leaving the cinema.
Maan Gaye Mughall-E-Azam
(2008)
Maan Gaye Mughall-E-Azam is a jumble of footage in search of a plot.
19 December 2009