Title: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
Director: Aditya Choprah
Starring: Shah Rukh Khan, Vinay Pathak, Anushka Sharma
Length: about 2 hours and 45 minutes

Plot: The movie is essentially about an ordinary couple who get married in exceptional circumstances. Surinder Sahni (SRK) is a very ordinary, quiet, middle class man who goes to attend the marriage of his teacher's daughter - Taani (Anushka Sharma). The bus carrying the groom and his family meets with an accident which no one survives. Ye sunke bechaari abhaagan dulhan ke pitaji ko dil ka daura padta hai (sob sob) and on his deathbed he expresses his desire that his daughter should now marry SRK. They both agree, get married. When they return home Taani tells SRK that she will be a good wife and all but can never love him. Suri however wants the same old bubbly Taani back. To get her back he agrees when she asks him to enroll herself in a dancing competition. With the help of his best friend (Vinay Pathak) Suri changes his dressup and enters the same competition as Raj. By a freak coincidence he also ends up as her partner. Now Suri must win her heart as Raj and must also help her out of this perpetual sadness that stays in her heart.

My Psychobabble: You know it is very surprising to see a SRK movie that is so low key and so low budget. There are no big fancy sets, shining dresses or that starry eyed dreamy feel that accompany his almost every movie. RNBDJ is simple. Very simple. Its theme, execution, sets, props, locations are far from extravagant and I liked that bit. In this regard it is almost like Welcome To Sajjanpur. A story of few simple ordinary middle class Indian citizens living their ordinary life. The story is interesting if unrealistic. SRK's portrayal of Surinder Sahni (Suri) is quite good. His body language, facial expressions are all as you would expect of a normal middle class Indian man. The typical "SRK" arrogance is completely missing from the character or Suri which my dear readers is a first. I do not recall watching any SRK movie where his acting is not reeking with this particular brand of "SRK arrogance" which is one step short of him actually branding something like "I AM GOD" on his forehead. A surprisingly slimmer Vinay Pathak is amazing in his character. But then he is one of those actors from whom you will expect nothing less. Anushka Sharma (Tanni) is simply irritating. She looks awful, has the acting prowess of an orangutan and can move her body only as gracefully as an 18 wheeler truck trying to do a Salsa number. Paying to watch her contorted face at her horrendous attempt at acting was like shitting a cactus from my arse and then wiping it off with sandpaper - painful.

By the way didn't an orangutan act well in a Hollywood movie? Well strike that statement of mine then. Even monkeys can act better than she can.

While the movie is passable as good, there are loads of directorial mistakes the most prominent being the characters themselves. The switches between Suri and Raj are frankly put - stupid. It would have been OK if Raj was presented as Suri's alter ego and not just a face or a persona he "deliberately" puts on at times. As an audience you cannot help but think how in the world can Suri be so outgoing and witty with his words. Who taught him to say all that? Where is this confidence coming from? Director apparently didn't want to bother himself with too much attention to detail as far as the characters are concerned. The movie is rather long and after a certain point it just seems to drag on and on forever. The director loses his hold over the movie completely and you are left to wonder just "what the fock is going on now!". Songs are irritating and often just creep up on you when you aren't expecting them in the least.

Verdict: Again an interesting basic concept but a shoddy execution. The movie is passable as good but is not brilliant or a typical "SRK" movie in any sense. It would be helpful to go to the cinema expecting to sit on dog poo on your seat. That way you will have at least one thing to feel good about when you don’t find any on your seat! If you do...well you will have something worse to cry about than the movie!

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No Preamble. Read on and you will know why. Warning, spoilers in my psychobabble.

Describe the movie in one word: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

Vital stats:

Title: BhootNath

Director: Vivek Sharma

Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Juhi Chawla, Satish Shah, Rajpal Yadav, Aman Siddiqui.

Length: 147min

Plot: Shahrukh Khan is a Chief Engineer (whatever that means) aboard a cruising ship. Wherever the ship goes he goes with it (doing whatever a chief engineer does over a ship). He is married to Juhi Chawla who is an ideal bubbly yet decent, funny yet sensible, sexy yet not sleazy kind of a wife and a very yum mum kind of a mother to their son named Aman or as he is affectionately called – Banku.

Shahrukh’s company rents a house for him in Goa (heaven knows why) where he puts up Juhi and their son before leaving for his ship. This house is supposedly, oh hell it is actually haunted by the ghost of its previous occupier – Amitabh Bacchan. Now Mr. Bacchan’s ghost doesn’t like anyone staying in his villa so he tries to scare the family out. For some reason he starts with not the adult Juhi but the kid Banku. Obviously he fails, falls in love with the kid (the paternal kind you sick pervert!) and allows them to stay. Oh heck he teams up with the boy and they have the usual Bollywood movie style fun in the boy’s school etc. etc. Towards the climax you get to know why Mr Bacchan’s apparition didn’t like anyone staying in the villa and what ultimately happens to his ghost or soul or whatever he/she (do ghosts have gender by the way?) is.

My Psychobabble: GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!! WTF does this B.R. Chopra (BRC from now on) dude has against the Indian children (I am not talking about Banku’s character in here). If you have seen his previous movie Baghbaan you would know what I am talking about. I mean this guy BRC is like male Ekta Kapoor of the big screen. She casts black shadows of evil on mother in laws and daughter in laws whereas this BRC guy aims his evil splattering gun onto the sons in the family. Marry this BRC and Ekta Kapoor and presto! You have the worst possible traditional Indian family living together under the same roof with bahus torturing saas-es, saas-es torturing bahoos and sons hatching and conjuring up evil schemes to torture their parents sneaking up in their dark corners with evil horns sprouting on their head and a forked tail banging the ground behind them!

This BRC guy always portrays boys who have grown up and are married as direct descendants of Satan whom the Satan unleashed on this world to inflict ultimate super cruel misery onto their parents! Ah fock! I mean what is his focking problem! When his last movie Baghban was released, damn I had had a nightmare watching it with my dad (I lost my mom about 7 years ago to a freak medical incident) who was in constant tears throughout the goddamned movie. By the time the movie ended I was wishing for the floor of my third floor flat (in Delhi then) to give away, for me to fall through it and promptly land on the guy who lived on the second floor (mostly because I didn’t like that bloke and I value my life a bit. I just didn’t want to be in the same room as dad.). When the movie ended, my dad gave me such repulsive looks as if I were the single most ghastly evil untouchable creation of God who hasn’t taken a shower for an eternity and who stank so much that my dad would like nothing more to pick up my cricket bat and beat me to a pulp with it.

And now this Bhoothnath that directly, yup my readers directly hits at the relationship between a son and his father and that too a son who leaves his father and his sick dying mother to go abroad and then turns into this evil money minded gold digger! What’s even more he marries a perfect “I speak Hindi with Amrikan accent” Amrikan kudi who in the evil deptt. is the mother load of Satan himself, doesn’t give too hoot for the traditional Indian Bahoo culture and couldn’t care less about her father in law.

Oh man my life is ruined. The moment my dad watches this movie I am so disowned, disavowed, disbarred and generally dissed. Damn I would be the topic of so many conversations between my dad and his brothers and sisters and their families with each conversation starting something like – “hai hai wo to chala gaya sab chodhke, hai hai! Ab aapka kya hoga hai hai! Bhagwaan ko ye din bhi dikhaane the hai hai! Appne kya karam kare the jo aapke saath is umar main aisa hua. Hai hai, hai hai!”

Yes I know I went on a tangent and fock me but I don’t care! I hate this BRC guy, his production house, his mentality, his movies, his basic general approach to life and am thoroughly disgusted with his parents who decided to mate and produce him! Did he forget that he too was a son at some point in his life and was not really grown on a mango tree, that his parents probably had ambitions from him too!

Saala is BRC ki to “£$*%*(£$^*£$(%”)(“)£()”£$)”£$%(£*^$(DFIKGJKT$%^*(*!!!!

The movie was good for the first half. It was almost kiddish really but good fun. Mr. Bacchan’s character and the character Banku do have some innocent fun which is amusing and interesting at times. Juhi Chawla looked superbly ravishing and as usually has completely gelled into her character with utmost ease. She does such an effortless acting really; I mean it is absolutely brilliant on her part. Rajpal Yadav’s character is stupid with no sense whatsoever. His talent has been completely wasted in the movie. Satish Shah gives some much needed humorous moments during the movie which would surely crack you up.

Verdict: Watch the movie if you must but when the movie begins a slow drive to hell by divulging Mr Nath’s past life, make a run for the exit. If you live abroad then don’t, I repeat don’t talk to you parents for at least a weak if you come to know that they have seen this movie. I would have considered this movie good had it not been for that sickening last one hour of the movie which is actually quiet boring never mind my personal grudges.

I am still sticking to my oath of impartial reviews and still advising you to go watch the movie despite personally hating its last one hour. If you ask for my personal opinion then I suggest all the Indian sons should drink hell loads of beer and I seriously mean hell spattering heaven shattering “collectively embarrassing all Germans and British and Americans” kinds freaking loads of beer and make a beeline for this BRC’s house. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to pay my drunken bladder bursting tribute onto the walls of his house.

“Hai hai”