Jaane tu ya Jaane Na.. kab call karein.. kab na

I have always felt that the climax of this movie is on of my all time favourites.. and that is why I have watched this movie more than a few times.. each time mainly to enjoy the last half hour  or so. From the moment, Jay breaks up with Meghana, then bashes up Sushant at his place and gets jailed. The funniest moments are in the police station between Jay and Inspector Waghmare (fabulous Paresh Rawal!!)

here goes... a series of shootthebrain moments from the climax...

1) Jay's mom of course is aware that Aditi is flying to the US the same night when Jay is taken away by the police while on his way to Aditi's. He has already told his mom that he is going to stop Aditi and confess his love to her. But when Jay is taken away by the police, she starts calling everyone frantically but Aditi. A small shoot the brain moment?? Perhaps one could argue that the mother is obviously worried more about the son's release from lock up instead of thinking of the love of his life going away to the US. It could have atleast been the last call she made.. or atleast a call to one of his friends to pass on the message to aditi??
Never mind, move on, but we will come back to this point later..

2) While in Jail, all Jay wants to do is make a phone call to Aditi and ask her to stay back, not go to the US. Naturally, Waghmare does not allow him, even as he pokes fun at Jay's desperation.

By the time Jai is released with the help of his influential cousins, things have gotten very close.. Aditi would be flying out soon and its going to be a race against time to get to the airport to stop her. Almost a touch and go situation.  10 - 15 minutes back all Jay wanted was to call Aditi once and stop her and then he didnt mind spending the night in jail. thats what he tells waghmare.
But now that he is released, and his cousins are still around, he does not think of calling and making sure she does not go. He chooses to be adventurous?? Even that would have been ok, had the character been like that throughout the story. On the contrary, he is a cool, level headed guy, so it is indeed a shootthebrain moment, to suddenly turn him into an adventurous sort for dramatising the climax

3) contd from point 1, Aditi is on the phone with someone, who is narrating the events of the evening. Who is it?? friends?. Nope. they don't even know what Jay has been upto. The only person who could narrate in detail is Jay's mom. So finally she did make that call to Aditi, by which time it is redundant since Jay already manages to catch up with Aditi.

Notwithstanding that this movie has now featured on this blog, it will continue to be one of my favourites.

SBI Home Loan TV Commercial - disastrously wrong script

For a change, lets look at how the makers chose  to forget logic while scripting this commercial for State Bank of India (SBI) home loans..

This ad is being aired  so often , its hard to miss..during the Indian Premier League  (IPL -2013) (its a domestic Twenty 20 cricket tournament in India), I thought it was aired almost in every second commercial break. So a lot of money spent on airing it. So disappointing that this commercial  which is full of blunders is the flagship ad for  home loans from SBI, India's largest bank

First some positives to which the commercial could not do justice

- product itself - really competitive rates

- the punchline of the commercial - EMI hua kam, ghoomne chale hum (roughly translates to "EMI has come down so we can afford a holiday now"). so a smart thing to air this during the holiday season and promote the home loan

Despite  the second point which goes in the commercial's favour, one cant help but notice how some things are just stuffed illogically in the story

- father has shifted the loan already and its a surprise surprise for the wife??.. So he never bothered to inform her while he was shifting the loan? shifting a home loan from one bank to another does not happen with a blink of an eye. With two banks involved, clearances and documentation with both the banks, its a long and dreary task and throughout the process wife was not in the loop?. Come on. the wife does not come across as someone who wouldn't understand finances. In fact, she also questions the husband why is he promising a holiday to the kids while the home loan EMI takes away most of the income. So she is indeed in the know on the finances of the house and yet husband has not kept her in the loop about the loan transfer

- isn't it odd that the husband has no other situation in which he would announce to his family that  he has shifted his loan, EMI has come down and now they can afford a holiday. Why does he wait till the son and daughter complain about not getting to go for a holiday.. whats with the suspense boss... its almost as if the father is not  interested in sharing this with his family and only when he feels he has no other choice, he makes the "happy announcement". Funny, since I think this should have come from the father suo moto and not as a reaction to his son's whining

- a third point, not so severe, though yet illogical The son gets all padded up and goes to play a match and comes back dejected that no one turned up. I think a teenager would have the good sense of confirming & co-ordinating with this friends whether they are coming for the match. . Especially today's kids can and so easily do such co-ordination on SMS or instant messengers. Yet this fellow doesn't.

- casting and performances are so ordinary that they do nothing to save the commercial.

here's my take on what I think should have been the script.. father entering the home one evening, with holiday tickets, wife and husband exchanging glances as if the wife is trying to confirm something (basically confirming the shifting of the loan) and then both of them jointly announcing to kids of holiday surprise. and then the commercial could have ended with the husband discussing  with his wife what a good decision it was to shift the loan.

while it is often argued that one needs to be relatively liberal while questioning logic in advertisements (since the story is not the product here, it is only supporting the promotion of a product), my problem is you cant completely leave logic on the attic, which I feel is the case with  most of the elements of this commercial

Am really curious how was this script was approved. Large organisations have such elaborate approval procedures for the smallest of decisions. and yet here you have a  on air commercial with so many flaws. 

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara - Kabir and Natasha get engaged in a freaky moment?!!!

yeah, sometimes.. freaky things happen in movies which change the course of the movie. Mostly though, such  freaky moments are either in an action scene or a comedy scene. For example, this brilliant "divine intervention" scene from Pulp fiction. Actually this movie is full of such freaky sequences..and put together in a non linear narrative.. one would have to see twice of make sense of things.. and sense it does make

Well, anyway Pulp fiction is not the subject of this post and will hopefully never feature on this blog :).
This post is about  how Kabir Dewan and Natasha get engaged in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD)

Two people get hitched in a freaky moment..and these are the two characters

- they are from the affluent section of the society
- qualified, independent, 'global indians', supposed to do things after thinking through

So the story teller wants us to believe that they get engaged because - of a 'freak' moment of misunderstanding where natasha takes it that kabir has got a ring for her on his mom's birthday and in the middle of the birthday celebration is proposing to her.. she assumes all this and does not once  try to confirm her assumptions before starting to jump up and down about the engagement... 

considering that this character is insecure and super fast at jumping to conclusions is also shown later in the movie when she assumes that Kabir is gallivanting on his trip with some strange female (laila). Natasha then  ends up being there stealthily on the trip to catch Kabir the thief and spoil the fun! So I guess, one would pass on this as her character trait and move on.. so lets move on.. but I have another problem with the scene and that is

Why did Kabir not tell natasha of his planned gift for his mom's birthday before the birthday party, didn't they meet, didnt they talk, SMS, whatsapp??
 hell these guys are shown so tech savvy, they even communicate through video chat while Kabir is on the road trip and plan his wedding suit on video chat.. .. So the story teller wants us to believe that Kabir had no way of sharing with Natasha what he plans to gift his Mom on her birthday before the birthday party..

and this leads to the 'accidental engagement' and that my dear reader becomes the  Kabir Dewan and Natasha's track in the movie .. or  should I say 1/3 of the movie

Couldnt find the video of this engagement scene after searching high and low on youtube

Film: Jab We Met - Geet, call home

So here is my first post about what I find inexplicable - in this sequence from Jab We met.

Geet is stranded in the middle of the night at a railway station, with all her luggage left in the train and she is being teased by shady characters.

Now this one is an educated, city bred, independent girl. Question is why doesnt she bother calling home? and informing them of her situation, better still asking them to come and fetch her.. I would call my people first thing If I was in that situation. Most of us would. Geet does not. Is it because she does not want them to get worried? Come on, at that moment is her safety a priority or is it how her family would react. Her family of course has enough young and not so young Punjabi men who would have been able to tackle the situation.

Why doesnt she. Is it because, otherwise she would not feel insecure and to save herself she would not run in to Aditya's arms?  Did the story teller not have any other pretext under which he could get Aditya and Geet to meet again?

Of course, there is a another bit of abusrdity in she running out of the station and into the lonely streets of Ratlam. I mean she could have easily tried to find a policeman or at worst gone back inside the station master's office. When she runs out, she does not know Aditya is out there and with that knowledge she runs out. She just runs out in to the streets to feel more secure. Wouldnt staying back on the station been more secure.

But how would she then meet Aditya and how would the story progress :). Well, leaving this bit of running out from the station aside, main issue I have with this sequence is - Why didnt Geet call home?

What this blog is about?

"....all this is so humbug....!!".

Remember these conversations you would have with people around or even with yourself while watching something obviously irrational in a movie?

A very basic example that comes to mind is the done to death sequence from  Hindi films of '80s where 'The Hero' is never hit even though the villain gang has sharp shooters with the latest guns to their disposal even as 'The Hero' with hardly so much as a revolver is able to exactly target all of the villain gang - not to mention he is also able to protect and save his lady love or mother or sister or money or whatever there is that he is trying to protect from the villain gang

We have moved on largely from those kind of  formulaic "action & family drama & Romance & comedy" films.. Of course, they have been replaced by another kind of formulaic films about mushy love stories, family dramas, leave-your-brains-at-home comedies, meant-for-NRI-movies. Even then, that's not the problem I have with story tellers. Let them be as formulaic as they want to be, let the stories be repetitive and let the formula live on forever. No worries. Problem is sometimes films have impossible to explain moments. Read on.

Am sure all of us have many times felt at wits' end  trying to fathom the logic or reasoning behind some actions or non actions of characters in  films. Fact is, the story teller, (supported by his entire creative team from pre production, production to post production) sometimes, chooses to make the characters do things  which are logically inexplicable only for the sake of taking the story forward. In bad films, this done in an obvious manner, while even the leading film makers do it subtly in their good & successful films.

Funnily enough, sometimes the all important twist in the tale is brought about in the movies and the story is taken forward by resting on the shoulders of such irrational actions which the poor characters are made to do.

and this my dear reader is an insult to our intelligence.. where the people making the film choose to screw logic to get the story moving. In other words, these are the moments / scenes in our films where the story tellers choose to shoot the brain - or as the classic song from the film Satya goes.. Goli maar bheje mein, (kyunki) bheja shor karta hai!!!

Will start discussing the specific instances  from the next post..