Conventional wisdom in Bollywood is that star power will make or
break a movie. In practice, it’s not quite that simple, but there is
still an element of truth to the idea; I know that I, at least, tend to
mentally classify films by actor, and I’ve often selected a movie
because I haven’t seen, say, Saif Ali Khan in a while.
If you happen to have a lot of money to finance your film, the Bollywood star system is great. For smaller producers, it causes problems; even if you can scrape together enough cash to hire a known actor, that actor is probably shooting up to six movies at once, and naturally the higher paying films will be given a higher priority for shooting dates. Some producers solve the problem by making what you might call “duplicate” movies; hire unknowns who look kind of like the big stars (at certain angles, in bad lighting, while wearing huge sunglasses) and trust your audience to suspend disbelief. That way you can make something like the movie you want without having to worry about money or scheduling or egos or petty celebrity feuds. Hum Hain Khalnayak (1996), for instance, features a duplicate Shahrukh Khan, duplicate Sanjay Dutt, duplicate Govinda, and duplicate Madhuri Dixit.
Our ersatz Maduri (played by someone, but neither the DVD cover nor the imdb will tell me by whom) is obsessed with Bollywood. She is determined to marry a major film star, but as a modern, reasonable girl, she’s willing to keep an open mind about exactly which one. Her father (Rajesh Puri) is desperate to marry her off to the new police inspector, despite the fact that he hasn’t even seen the man yet. Madhuri is having none of it, until she discovers that Inspector Gouri (Anand) looks just like Bollywood superstar Govinda. (He doesn’t, really, but he has the body language down.) Seeing him, Madhuri falls instantly in love, but Gouri is reluctant; it turns out he’s a bit shy around girls, and especially girls who form instant, obsessive attachments based only on a slight resemblance to a well known celebrity.
Meanwhile, film director Sunhashbhai (Tiku Talsania) has a problem. He has financing for his movie, but it will take at least seven months to line up a star, and the the producer (Arjun) wants filming to begin within the week. At a bar, Subhash watches a performance by Gouri’s old college friend Raju (Rashind Khan), who happens to look just like Sanjay Dutt (again, not really), and suddenly, he has a star. (And in a nifty little metatextual scene, Subhashbhai explains the reasoning behind the whole “duplicate movie” concept.) Along the way, Raju clashes with local criminal Tikka Singh. (There’s a lot of dialogue about how Tikka Singh resembles character actor Shakti Kapoor, and he really does, mostly because he’s actually played by Shakti Kapoor.)
Shahrukh’s duplicate, cunningly named Marukh (Shabbir Khan), has a more complicated plotline. As near as I can figure, while he was in college, his girlfriend Mehjabeen went to a party with some friends, who stood by and watched while friends of theirs attempted to molest her. Naturally, Mehjabeen was forced to commit suicide. Years later, the girls who betrayed her are all Bombay’s top call girls, and Marukh has dedicated himself to tracking them down and killing them, pausing only to make the occasional phone call to his dead girlfriend.
The interesting thing about Hum Hain Khalnayak is that each of the duplicates is approached differently. While Gouri really only behaves like a Govinda character during Madhuri’s musical fantasy scenes, Madhuri and Raju’s characters are clearly based on general impressions of Dixit and Dutt, respectively. Marukh, on the other hand, is very clearly and specifically based on SRK’s performance in Darr, right down to the stutter and the staccato giggle. I’m also impressed by the attention to detail; while the dance numbers are clearly not choreographed by Farah Khan, you can see a definite attempt to duplicate the dancing styles of the stars. Even the fight scenes capture the right feel; in the climactic battle, Marukh is beaten to a pulp but fights on, while Raju is a battered and bloody engine of destruction. And while no one really looks like the celebrity they’re supposed to look like, the hairstyles at least are spot on.
It’s a pity that the writing didn’t benefit from the same loving attention. Simply put, this movie is confusing. The Gouri/Madhuri romance, which dominates the first half of the movie, vanishes entirely during the second half and is never actually resolved. Marukh is introduced very late in the film, and when his plotline is finally integrated with that of the other characters, he’s welcomed as one of the heroes and everyone conveniently ignores the fact that he is, for all intents and purposes, a serial killer. Entire plot twists are introduced and then dismissed during the final fight scene; there’s a lot of “Aren’t you dead?” “No! It was part of my plan to fool you!”, which would be fine if someone had mentioned the characters in question supposedly being dead at some point before we find out that they are not.
All things considered, Hum Hain Khalnayak is a reasonably entertaining bit of fluff. Still, the trailers on the DVD manage to showcase Govinda’s dancing, Dutt’s swagger, and Khan’s incandescent charm. Duplicates are fine, but there’s no substitute for the real thing.
If you happen to have a lot of money to finance your film, the Bollywood star system is great. For smaller producers, it causes problems; even if you can scrape together enough cash to hire a known actor, that actor is probably shooting up to six movies at once, and naturally the higher paying films will be given a higher priority for shooting dates. Some producers solve the problem by making what you might call “duplicate” movies; hire unknowns who look kind of like the big stars (at certain angles, in bad lighting, while wearing huge sunglasses) and trust your audience to suspend disbelief. That way you can make something like the movie you want without having to worry about money or scheduling or egos or petty celebrity feuds. Hum Hain Khalnayak (1996), for instance, features a duplicate Shahrukh Khan, duplicate Sanjay Dutt, duplicate Govinda, and duplicate Madhuri Dixit.
Our ersatz Maduri (played by someone, but neither the DVD cover nor the imdb will tell me by whom) is obsessed with Bollywood. She is determined to marry a major film star, but as a modern, reasonable girl, she’s willing to keep an open mind about exactly which one. Her father (Rajesh Puri) is desperate to marry her off to the new police inspector, despite the fact that he hasn’t even seen the man yet. Madhuri is having none of it, until she discovers that Inspector Gouri (Anand) looks just like Bollywood superstar Govinda. (He doesn’t, really, but he has the body language down.) Seeing him, Madhuri falls instantly in love, but Gouri is reluctant; it turns out he’s a bit shy around girls, and especially girls who form instant, obsessive attachments based only on a slight resemblance to a well known celebrity.
Meanwhile, film director Sunhashbhai (Tiku Talsania) has a problem. He has financing for his movie, but it will take at least seven months to line up a star, and the the producer (Arjun) wants filming to begin within the week. At a bar, Subhash watches a performance by Gouri’s old college friend Raju (Rashind Khan), who happens to look just like Sanjay Dutt (again, not really), and suddenly, he has a star. (And in a nifty little metatextual scene, Subhashbhai explains the reasoning behind the whole “duplicate movie” concept.) Along the way, Raju clashes with local criminal Tikka Singh. (There’s a lot of dialogue about how Tikka Singh resembles character actor Shakti Kapoor, and he really does, mostly because he’s actually played by Shakti Kapoor.)
Shahrukh’s duplicate, cunningly named Marukh (Shabbir Khan), has a more complicated plotline. As near as I can figure, while he was in college, his girlfriend Mehjabeen went to a party with some friends, who stood by and watched while friends of theirs attempted to molest her. Naturally, Mehjabeen was forced to commit suicide. Years later, the girls who betrayed her are all Bombay’s top call girls, and Marukh has dedicated himself to tracking them down and killing them, pausing only to make the occasional phone call to his dead girlfriend.
The interesting thing about Hum Hain Khalnayak is that each of the duplicates is approached differently. While Gouri really only behaves like a Govinda character during Madhuri’s musical fantasy scenes, Madhuri and Raju’s characters are clearly based on general impressions of Dixit and Dutt, respectively. Marukh, on the other hand, is very clearly and specifically based on SRK’s performance in Darr, right down to the stutter and the staccato giggle. I’m also impressed by the attention to detail; while the dance numbers are clearly not choreographed by Farah Khan, you can see a definite attempt to duplicate the dancing styles of the stars. Even the fight scenes capture the right feel; in the climactic battle, Marukh is beaten to a pulp but fights on, while Raju is a battered and bloody engine of destruction. And while no one really looks like the celebrity they’re supposed to look like, the hairstyles at least are spot on.
It’s a pity that the writing didn’t benefit from the same loving attention. Simply put, this movie is confusing. The Gouri/Madhuri romance, which dominates the first half of the movie, vanishes entirely during the second half and is never actually resolved. Marukh is introduced very late in the film, and when his plotline is finally integrated with that of the other characters, he’s welcomed as one of the heroes and everyone conveniently ignores the fact that he is, for all intents and purposes, a serial killer. Entire plot twists are introduced and then dismissed during the final fight scene; there’s a lot of “Aren’t you dead?” “No! It was part of my plan to fool you!”, which would be fine if someone had mentioned the characters in question supposedly being dead at some point before we find out that they are not.
All things considered, Hum Hain Khalnayak is a reasonably entertaining bit of fluff. Still, the trailers on the DVD manage to showcase Govinda’s dancing, Dutt’s swagger, and Khan’s incandescent charm. Duplicates are fine, but there’s no substitute for the real thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment