Starring: Fardeen Khan, Vivek Oberoi, Amrita Rao and Esha Deol
Director: Indra Kumar
This week's new release at the cinema halls is Bollywood director Indra Kumar's Pyare Mohan, a film that's centred around the lives and loves of two buddies - blind Fardeen Khan and deaf Vivek Oberoi. Now despite their handicaps, the two young men make the most of life - singing, dancing and making merry.
If there's anything that's missing from their perfect existence it's the absence of a soulmate for each. That's a cue for Amrita Rao and Esha Deol to make their entry as two pop-singing sisters who the boys fall hard for.
But when our hapless heroes lay their hearts bare to India's answer to the Spice Girls, they are informed that the girls never really saw them in that light. After all, just because they danced around trees with the boys and let them fondle them here and there doesn't mean they have a special connection.
Come on, a girl can't marry a guy who doesn't have all his faculties intact, can she? Barely have the boys had enough time to mend their broken hearts, that the girls land into a Bangkok Hilton style situation when they are falsely implicated in a crime they didn't commit, while on a trip to - where else - Bangkok itself. Our handicap heroes brave all storms to rescue the damsels in distress and eventually prove that love conquers all odds.
It becomes evident right away that the director and the writers of Pyare Mohan had no idea what film they really wanted to make. First you're led to believe this is a slapstick comedy, then comes the whole gooey, mushy angle.
And just when you find yourself being seduced by the schmaltzy turn that the story has begun to take, you're thrown into a roller coaster action ride. The film doesn't take itself too seriously and neither should you.
When you're watching a seemingly coherent film, you do expect attention to detail and continuity, you also expect the use of logic and reason. But really, when you're discussing a film like Pyare Mohan, how can you even expect that anyone involved might have actually used their brain?
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A mish-mash of many genres it may be, but problem is Pyare Mohan is still extremely predictable. You know from the very start that these young men are going to end up with these young women, whatever may happen in between.
Also the comedy in this film is so juvenile and so amateurish that even class four students would find it too childish. The Tom & Jerry-like scenes of slapstick humour between Fardeen and Vivek really begin to get on your nerves after a while, making you want to throw something at the screen to end the misery.
Saddled with such a lifeless script, can you really blame the cast for failing to inject any enthusiasm into their performances? At best, Fardeen Khan stands out from among the clutter, drawing some attention to his until now dormant comic timing.
The rest of the actors play out their roles almost mechanically, sleepwalking through their scenes like they're really blind or deaf. Boman Irani playing a goofy underworld don is probably the only actor in the film who stays in character throughout, maintaining the spirit and the tempo of his role and the film.
But to waste an actor of his caliber in an embarrassing role like this is a crime the filmmakers must pay for dearly. And I have just one question for Esha Deol - darling, didn't you learn anything at all from watching your mum and dad's films?
Pyare Mohan is exactly the kind of film we ought to have outgrown. But if you end up laughing at a few jokes here and there - a man landing smack in the posterior of a horse, or then the handicapped heroes fighting a gang of crooks, please remember that you desperately need to get a life.
So that's one out of five for director Indra Kumar's Pyare Mohan a film about deaf and blind characters that will make you wish you were deaf or blind just so you didn't have to suffer the ordeal.
Rating: 1 / 5 (Poor)
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