Let me start by saying that this is not a four star review for the hit movie. You may stop reading if you’ve decided to relate to Siddharth (yes, I dare use his entire name) on a very deep and a personal level and stand a great risk of offending your mush sensitivity. In more honest words this means you see yourself as a loser on screen. You can go back to sleeping with your shoe on your face so that I may continue with uncovering the great conspiracy that has driven the existence of this movie.
This conspiracy begins with an elementary realization that possessing a plot to justify even an average movie-making effort today is as difficult as possessing a solid reason to siphon state funding towards a humungous mid-sea Shivaji statue. An ingenious solution to the predicament has surprisingly taken so long to be reached upon by the exponents of creativity from Bollywood. Some might argue as this being the case for a long time. I would agree still, but they’ll have to concede that it has never been so openly exploited.
PART 1
Plot less-ness has always been excusable as long as it serves the viewers something more than what they leave home in paying the movie for entertaining them. Any less than this should be punishable by ‘vacated cinema halls’. In the worst cases a movie has at least been easily breakable into beginning, interval, climax and end. The makers of ‘Wake Up Sid!’ should have been told that a well-defined interval alone cannot be considered an achievement.
Like all dangerous conspiracies the malevolence is not clearly visible at first view. Malevolence in this case is the absence of anything that can be classified as cinema. It takes effort on the part of a few to expose the evil and it happens to be me in this case. What troubled me was the sweeping positive response in spite of absolutely no cinematic activity in the movie. Here I have laboriously plotted a graph of Time vs Scene Intensity for a few examples of what I consider cinema to win you over to my side.
Now compare these to the graph of ‘Wake Up Sid!’ …
…and you’ll begin to see the cinematic worth your hard earned money was denied by the movie.
Why is it that this movie is as big a hit as it is?
Why is it that everyone is recommending it everyone?
I’ll tell you why.
It has a top star at the helm and offers nothing more than ordinary daily life. The movie is just a glorified celebrity MMS clip; much longer and minus explicit sex at that.
Consider any MMS scandal and you’ll notice that with-
!! No plot,
!! Below average to rarely mediocre performance,
!! No stars,
!! No Budget.
Their success convincingly dwarfs any major Bollywood release with-
!! Always spent on yet rarely acquired one, a script
!! Outright unavailable to fleetingly visible acting skills
!! Stars, star sons, star daughters, star brothers, star sisters, star cousins, star directors, star producers.
!! Big Budget
It was only a matter of time before someone capitalized on the idea. What came as a surprise was that a major production house (Dharma Production) would give in to the temptation first. So the next time you see a major movie by a major production house marketed for the young as a family movie be wary as it has its origin in something the youngsters indulge in when the family is out (possibly watching a movie).
PART 2
One major idea underpinning the progress of the movie is that Konkana Sen Sharma’s character, a migrant from Kolkata, can easily find lodging in an apartment comfortable enough (or “cute” enough) for her to dedicate screen time to Ranbir Kapoor’s ‘coming of age’ proceedings. The apartment is affordable to an unemployed Konkana Sen and is in a sea-facing building as well. Mumbai’s sea-facing real estate regularly lists itself among the most expensive in the world.
So what? You may ask.
Well, don’t you think this gives a wrong picture of the migrant-lodging scene in Mumbai. Starry-eyed latent strugglers from rural areas will show up in hordes hoping to secure a sea facing flat to direct their struggling aspirations from only to end up on the walls of seedy photo studios with characteristic struggler panache. In moving to Mumbai the strugglers also add to the anger of ‘martial political parties’ which are strongly opposed to anyone moving to Mumbai anymore.
One such party’s protest over the use of Bombay instead of Mumbai following the movie’s release was just a pretext for opposing this invitation that the movie has subtly handed out to strugglers countrywide. I’m sure you had overlooked this political undercurrent in the overbearing ‘sweetness/cuteness’ of the movie.
I hope this article has opened your eyes to all that’s not openly visible in media. If you have any such startling revelations mail them to us.
P.S. The above piece required no effort to write. 3 drafts of this article were fully prepared (even the graphs) by the time I left the cinema hall. This is a reproduction of the third draft. My point is, do not subject yourself to this movie unless you have a conspiracy theory to write.
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Posts: 5
Reply #5 on : Mon October 19, 2009, 21:43:31