Ghajini

When I saw Lagaan, I thought this is the ultimate and one cannot do better that this. Then Aamir came up with Dil Chahta Hai and Rang De Basanti and I was in the same state – Nobody can do better than this. But, again to my pleasant surprise, he proves me wrong by coming up with Tare Zameen Par. This time also I was expecting Aamir to come up with something fresh, something different. But after watching Ghajini, I felt – Is this really an Aamir khan movie? How can he do such a bad movie which even a new comer in 80s would think twice before signing? The movie is by far the worst movie I have seen in 2008.

The only person acting in the movie was Aamir khan; the rest were overacting. The screeching body languages of the actors complemented the clichéd, needless, baseless and ridiculous dialogues. It appeared that no proper dialogue writer was hired for the film. The dialogues seem to be written by the spot boys and/or some struggling actor. Or it could be that a competitor exchanged every script before the shot. I am just trying to guess all possible justifications for such bad dialogues.

The actors, especially (Asin Thottumkal) Kalpana and Jiah, seem to be doing a lot of theatre these days. They looked completely oblivious of the camera infront of them. Nope, I am not complimenting them. They forgot the difference between theatre and motion picture. They were acing in the movie as if they were acting in a play where there is no microphone and they have to enact everything out to be double sure that the audience understand the sequence. Asin’s showing three fingers when talking about three ambassadors (now what’s wrong with that? How many fingers is she supposed to show?) reminds me of the song “Lambi Judai” where the ‘banjaran’ enacts the lyrics of the song.

Let’s take the plot now. Ghajini is introduced in the movie as the chief guest of a medical college fest. What kind of people do you expect to be invited as chief guest at a college fest? A scientist? A military personnel? An ex-student who is very successful in his field? A politician? No. You are wrong. This medical college has Gajni, a goon, as the chief guest! [BTW, a few of the readers said that he was introduced as a pharma giant. But this doesn't change anything. That pharma giant comes with gunman and himself carries gun!] This doesn’t end here. The host of the fest was a professor of the college! Script writer, did u ever go to a college fest or a college for that matter? Our script writer's fantacy doesn’t end here. He makes the professor, the anchor, ask the students to be silent when the chief guest, the goon, Ghajini was going to come. Lols.

Asin is cornered in the last of the go-through compartmenet of train by the gundas. Now she doesn't close herself in the bathroom which she had earlier done. But the muscle girl Asin opens up the shutter which separated two bogies with one hand very easily! Bravo. And guess what? There are military ppl on the other side! The director made even Aamir’s girlfriend so healthy. Sir, have you ever opened a shop’s shutter – which is opened and closed daily?

The end was even more hilarious. Aamir Khan has enormous strength. I particularly remember one sequence where he twists the head an ‘aadami’ of Ghajini by 180 degrees and he dies on-the-spot. Now when Aamir khan hits Ghajini, he does a lot of time pass where he could have killed him in just on go. This gives Ghajini enough opportunity to insert an iron pipe into Aamir’s stomach. But Aamir khan doesn’t die! He gets up and kills Ghajini. Now the best part, Aamir still remains alive and lives in an orphanage. I thought he required medical treatement or some rehab center but definitely not an orphanage. This hero-always-survives ending wouldn’t have been acceptable even in the 80’s.
I can keep going on about the pathetic treatment of each scene. Maybe, I’ll add it some other time.

The spiderman-types action/acting of Aamir Khan looked unwarranted. The action shown in the movie was too raw and unrefined. The action, nevertheless, was infected by the Rajanikanth-syndrome. The music didn’t really have any role to play. The songs were picturised in tollywood way. I remember watching a south Indian song where just the color of heroine’s dress changes automatically like disco light. Similar picturisation is shown here. This is okay. It wasn’t all that bad, if the other things were congruous.

The only nice part of the move was the flash back and the mild love story between Aamir and Asin. Yeah, that was the only thing in the movie which was not yelling.

If you have a colleague/classmate/neighbor who has been irritating you and you want to teach him a lesson, then gift him a ticket to Ghajini and you would have over compensated for his deeds.

- Cheers!