Saturday 24 December 2011

Don2: An honest review

Perhaps I should start by telling you the emotions the movie evoked. Imagine a bright, sunny morning at the SCG. You've got the best seat in the house and you sit their, sipping on a tea or beer, watching a Sachin straight-drive. Now think of the equivalent of this pleasure in terms of pain and multiply it by 3 hours. That should pretty much describe how the movie will make you feel. We went in with low expectations but only after the movie did we realise as to why the Police in 11 countries is looking for him. All the citizens want their money back!!!

In the first scene, SRK tries to walk in with a swagger but comes across as a bad case of osteoporosis. It is just funny that the uncrowned king shows up himself to take a consignment. With the recession around and plenty of unemployed youth around, you'd wish he had hired a few to do the dirty job. At least that would save us the agony of watching SRK trying so hard to be the cool Don.

Hoping against hope, we were certain that the movie shall pick from there. It did, as Priyanka Chopra sizzled in her scenes looking every bit hot and delicious. But that seems to be the only upside to the 3 hour long torture. But she also provides lessons in manipulations as she fires orders at her colleague, making him do the clerical work but takes all the credit herself. That poor chap seems to have a thing for her but with his zombie-like expression, it is tough to tell whether he is scared, angry or concerned.

Boman Irani, who seemed to match Don's wits in the 1st movie, is made to look like a complete fool as SRK breaks away from the jail in which he's been rotting for 5 years. I think the jail food hadn't been all that good for his IQ. The scene in which he questions Lara Dutta's ability could be likened to the Opposition's questions to Rahul Gandhi; we keep expecting a witty response but none arrives. To top it all, I present you Kunal Kapoor, a genius hacker who has impregnated a woman without any source of income. I'd like to visit the country where women are ready to hook up with unemployed youth.

When it comes to the action sequences, the less we talk about, the better. Personally, I have never understood the reason behind a car chase. Even you manage to outpace the escapee, you can't force him out of the car because you won the race and banging your car in to his is plain stupid. But that's another story for another day. The point here is, a car chase has never made me yawn, until now. And the underworld seriously needs to get its act together if SRK can beat up those thugs with bare hands, however unconvincingly.

The dialogues and those one-liners are the best part. Looks like there was a holiday discount on defective dialogues and all the characters shopped to their heart's fill. Some of them are so bad that they come around all the way to be good again. In one particular scene Boman Irani asks SRK if he can ask him a question. SRK quips; "no". It used to be funny when I was 10 but the movie unfortunately, is 15 years late.

All this, only until the first half and a bit. I'm sure the latter half too deserves to be written about but fortunately for yours truly, he could not bear the torture and passed out for the better part of it.

PS: As we left the movie hall, plenty of scathing comments were tossed about. My favorite: "Amitabh should file a defamation case against SRK for ruining Don."