Review
Bridge ke peechhe kya hai ?
Film: Anjaana Anjaani
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Boxer Shorts.
Director: Siddharth Anand
Rating:
They snooze, booze and are quite screw-loose. Afflicted by personal trauma, they have met over suicide bids on a New York bridge. As it happens, the rippling water below is colder than the world's most powerful 'fridge. And so they chitter chatter, driving you pretty insane with their nitter natter. Such mad Hatters! As improbable as a low-cost airline serving caviar-'n'-champagne, the weakest aspect of Siddharth Anand's Anjaana Anjaani is that it's not the kind of romcom you'd recommend to your nana-naani. Or for that matter, to anyone of your acquaintance. Why-o-why? Sigh. Simply because despite a few stray cutely comic moments, it doesn't make you empathise with either the Aana or Aani. Moreover, right from the first frame to the last, the outcome is ewww-so-predictable that you can foretell the twosome's titters, tears and tattle-prattle. Oof. Like it or not, the screenplay is strictly deja phew, cobbled from diverse sources such as Sweet November (uptight guy thawed by a femme jabberwocky), The Bucket List (making whoopee before the last day on Mommy Earth) and voila, even La Fille sur Le Pont (bridge ke peechhe kya hai?). Plus, there is little or no motive for locating the dramarama in the U S, except for the delusional belief that the audience prefers plots about NRI Indians rather than domestic desis. Please! And there's a key screenplay boo-boo, glossing over the fact that the jilted Anjaani lives in San Fracisco. Why travel all the way to New York for the fatal plunge? Surely, San Fran's Golden Gate Bridge is as,if not more, photogenic. But then she wouldn't have bumped into the Anjaana who's made a mess, miles away, on New York's Wall Street. Wonder what Gordon Gekko would say if he had a dekko. Really. Anyway, over to the slew of contrived coincidences. Oops, Wall Street boy (Ranbir Kapoor) has landed his buddies in all sorts of soups. They look at him with testy Lalita Pawar-style facial expressions. Which is reason enough for him to think suicide. Meanwhile, a breath away, the vodka-swigging, spurned, 'Frisco girl (Priyanka Chopra) is chuckling ceaselessly as if she'd just watched a bunch of Charlie Chaplin DVDs. Hyuk hyuk. Next: these strangelings in the night land up in hospital bed (separate) and are garbed in lime green smocks. But before you can say, ouch, they sprint away to a Bollywood-chic apartment which reminds you of the excessively fussy couches-beds-wall-posters of the Aditya Chopra-Karan Johar bon bons. Aha, after all the dcor is handled by Chopra-Jo's regular production designer Sharmishta Roy. Ahoy after much debate, the suicidal pair now schedule to end their lives on December 31. Cool, this gives sufficient time for director-and-co-writer Siddharth Anand to stuff your head with sheer kerfuffle for the rest of the 16 reels. Boy Wall and Girl Vodka take off for a holiday – from what, pray? -- to Las Vegas. They drive through the colour corrected desert in a fire-engine red convertible which they very mysteriously called Blush. Don't ask for logic, hush. Just watch them check into a Vegas motel where they behave like chaste teddy bears at a picnic. Gee!
In between, you do find two set pieces which are humorously written and directed. One involves a splash in the Atlantic ocean, where Mr Wall Street and Ms Vokda are scared out of their wits by a shark. Jaws like that. Turns out to be the boy's boxer shorts. Tee hee. And there's a witty male strip tease at the end of which our Wall Boy is carried off by a gay hunk. In fact, the sequence is so ha-ha that it nearly pardons the earlier homophobic digs taken at an interior designer 'fairy'. Man, too much Dostana going yawn here. Umm, so the New Year's eve double suicide pact is nearing. Boy and Girl dart Sad Sack faces. Worse, the cad (Zayed Khan, unwatchable), who once jilted Gal Vodka, returns to the scene. Ergo, several life-affirming decisions have to be taken, including a casual whisper or two about returning to good 'ole India. Aa ab laut chalen or what? The second-half drags, which may compel you to grab 40, or even 400 winks, since the plot isn't going anywhere except toward Boredompur. If you don't wander off for a stroll, it's essentially for Ravi K Chandran's agile, moodily lit cinematography, the inspired music score by Vishal and Shekhar, and the ritzy production values. Bahut ho gaya, the dialogue has far too much angrezi. Yet ridiculously, an American coast guard chief speaks in Hindi. Next, it'll be Sanskrit.The editing slouches, particularly in the pop philosophical exchanges between Anjaan and Anjaani. Also, the supporting parts are so sketchily conceived that the eponymous twosome hog the footage throughout. A doctor (Tanvi Azmi, competent as usual) pops in to sermonise about life and death, but poof, she vanishes into the chloroform. Frequently, overacting can be mistaken for good acting. Sorry but Priyanka Chopra goes over-the-top so often that she grates on the nerves. One of the most cherished waeapons of an artiste's craft is to be still and listen to what the other person is saying in the course of a scene. Ms Chopra appears to be unaware of that nicety, always nodding, blinking, batting lashes or pouting to make her presence felt. Inevitably, the show or whatever there is of it, belongs entirely to Ranbir Kapoor. He's restrained and believable, often enhancing the material with his eye language and alternately gung-ho and gentle dialogue delivery. But for that performance, you're likely to forget Anjaana Anjaani as soon as the lights come on in the auditorium. Truly, it's more anjaana than fiction. |
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