Rocket Singh review: Mice mice baby

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Gauhar Khan, Shahzan Padamsee, Chopra Prem Chopra

Director: Shimit Amin (drowsy)

Rating: Two stars

Oho, here’s a quote room drama. Everyone, including micro-minor characters drop the kind of dialogue you could only hear in the movie-shovies. Some gems:

*“In business you shouldn’t be counting numbers, you should be counting people, strictly people.”

*“Out here you can either go up..or down” (whoa, what a thought)

*“What nice nice! Mice are nice also.” (oh?)

*“You taught me so many things in life but you forgot to teach me dishonesty.”

That’s story-screenplay-lyric-dialogue writer Jaideep Sahni working far too strenuously for director Shimit Amin’s Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year. The ouchcome is a laboured, old-fashioned harangue about why honesty is the best policy, which even revives that defunct moment of a corporation’s honcho chucking wads of Rs 500 for a bribe. Cursed be this tribe, say Shimin and Co, as if they had recently discovered that the world isn’t either pancake flat or yummily utopian.

Indeed the plot – which has shades of the Raj Kapoor movie Shriman Satyawadi (1960) and Hollywood’s The Boiler Room (2000) – is so naïve that you wonder if Sahni and Amin need to get out of the Yashraj Studio Fantasyland and understand that there are no free munchies in this town. Or any town.

Which is why their hero, Harpreet Singh Bedi (Ranbir Kapoor), appears to a cute but ultimately clueless clown. Frown. With lousy graduation marks, he still hopes to find immediate employment. And hallelujah, he does, as a computer salesboy who’s immediately assigned a desk near the loo, and hoo-hoo teased by all of his colleagues, behaving like hyenas out of hell. Oh well.

The hyena gang chucks paper rockets at him (you worry about the wastage of tree resources), his supervisor wears a weird Salvador Dali-like beard, and the oily top boss calls him a “zero” and “a bastard” till you want a messianic stunt director to arrive and bash up Boss Oily. Cluck, no such luck.

Logic would have enticed our Cutepreet to resign, snag a job at a call centre perhaps (a friend even suggests that), but no our self-pitying hero insists that he must suffer like a duffer. Otherwise there would be no film…which stretches on and on and on for 16 reels, uninterrupted even by entertainment relief points. No dance, no romance, no (real) song, no tension, you’re mostly locked up in that stifling office which ranges from the plush to the unbelievably grungy (please note the electricity dashboard). Odd.

Next: Cutepreet teams up with the more accommodating office log to initiate a parallel computer-selling trade. Soon they’re rocketing. Upset by his plummeting sales, Boss Oily is seething-snapping-scowling. Growling. Now get this. Cutepreet insists that he’s only borrowing the office facilities and intends to pay Oily some day, complete with interest. Commit a crime now, repent later.

Although the dramaturgy ends up blurring the line between scamming and honesty, a holier-than-thou attitude is maintained throughout. Sure do tell us that corruption and shortchanging the customer don’t finally pay… but please tell us that with clarity and conviction. As for the finale, centering around a phone call, it happens so much by coincidence that it doesn’t ring true at all. Without revealing the resolution, suffice it to say that it’s as deflating as a punctured tyre.

Any redeeming moments? Um, yes the banter between Cutepreet and his granddad (Prem Chopra), their morning prayers, and the no-nonsense attitude of the telephone receptionist (Gauhar Khan, impressive), as well as stray vignettes from the opening graduation party. On the techfront, Vikas Nowlakha’s cinematography and Manas Choudhary’s sound design are A-grade. The editor needed a sharper scissor though. Woe. Saleem-Suleiman’s music is eminently forgettable.

Debutante Shahzan Padamsee is wasted in a briefer than brief role. Frankly if Rocket Singh…is worth a glance it is essentially for three remarkable performances. Naveen Kaushik, as the weirdo beardo supervisor, is marvellously mercurial. As the garrulous top boss, Manish Chaudhary, is convincing. Above all, Ranbir Kapoor keeps you engaged despite the ill-written script. For instance, his backstory is missing. Whatever happened to his parents? Why was he brought up by his dadoo? Gentle, courteous and repressing his anger, Ranbir Kapoor is excellent. Alas, the rest of Rocket Singh…isn’t.

Akki: Action required

When comedies compel you to weep, you know that the ha-ha formula needs to be reinvented — and pronto.

And today, no other Bollywood actor needs a changeover more urgently than the comedy-friendly Akshay Kumar who has delivered five disappointments in a row this year: From Chandni Chowk to China, Kambakt Ishk, Tasveer 8 x 10, Blue and now De Dana Dan.

Director Priyadarshan, who has been hacking out more films than you can count on your toes and fingers, sought to revive his Hera Pheri team, bringing Kumar and Sunil Shetty back with the infallibly feisty Paresh Rawal. Yet, star value is certainly not enough. The inordinately lengthy De Dana Dan (two hours and 40 minutes, no less) bored most viewers to tears. Oddly enough, in the post-interval portion, Kumar was assigned scanty footage as the screenplay chose to keep him (literally) hidden in a hotel suite’s closet. Not only did Kumar’s loyalists feel let down, but supporting characters like Shakti Kapoor and Rajpal Yadav ended up dominating 
the show.

Also, the dialogue did not have the sparkle essential for a laugh-raiser. The finale, showing a flooded five-star hotel in Singapore, was extremely tacky in a bid to replicate the glug-glug aqua effects of say The Poseidon Adventure. Don’t even think of Titanic, please.

Clearly, Kumar — who can be overwhelmingly funny and adept at action stunts — needs an enterprise that can rescue him from the career doldrums. His saviours could well be directors Vipul Amrutlal Shah, who is completing Action Replay with him currently, and Farah Khan, who will film Tees Maar Khan with him in March next year. In fact, the alliance between Kumar and Farah has sent shock waves in showbiz circles since the choreographer turned director seemed to be working exclusively with Shah Rukh Khan (Main Hoon Na, Om Shanti Om).

It is no trade secret that Kumar has always longed to become as popular, if not more so, than Shah Rukh Khan. There is nothing wrong with wishful thinking.The actor needs smarter public relations, since there isn’t sufficient buzz about him in the 
market.

He is striving to project himself as a family man, and inevitably ends up doling out tedious interviews about his wife, Twinkle, and their son Araav, and how wonderfully happy they are.

His Casanova image which linked him with a range of actresses from Pooja Batra and Raveena Tandon (it was even rumoured that they were married for a while) to Sushmita Sen and Shilpa Shetty, has been exhumed. If a story is circulated that he has checked into a hotel after a quarrel with his wife, he denies it vehemently and cuts off ties with the journalist who reported the story.

Indeed, the 42-year-old Kumar (born Rajiv Bhatia) can be childish, constantly whining that he is being unfairly criticised.

Once he called up the owner of a newspaper and TV channel to complain that he should not be criticised. If that continued, he threatened, he would cut off relations with the channel instantly.

So, the critic resolved not to write about him at all—to blank him out — but Kumar did not like that either.

Like every actor in Bollywood, he suffers from the praise-me-praise-me syndrome. Unlike others, though, he is willing to see reason and does not turn vindictive. That much I can say about him.

As for the rumours about him editing out his colleagues’ scenes from the final print, they seem to be less vociferous than before. Perhaps, his co-stars have accepted the fact that if they are in a Kumar movie they must be prepared to give him centrestage. Saif Ali Khan, Arjun Rampal, Sunil Shetty, and even Amitabh Bachchan, have found their roles abbreviated in their films with him. Indeed, Kumar even made a self-mocking reference about this ‘editing interference’ in one of his more successful films, Namaste London.

Obviously, after this year’s failures at the cash counters, Kumar needs to reassess his calibre and redesign his projects. He has not been seen in an emotional 
drama lately.

A film in this genre could perhaps just do the trick to refuel his stardom. After all, earlier he has been remarkably restrained and impressive in love stories like Dhadkan, Andaaz, and even in a brief appearance in Dil To Pagal Hai. Truly, we have had enough buffoonery and eve-teasing chauvinism in the name of comedy from the actor. He has a strong screen presence and he can be endearing when he wants to be. Honestly, how you wish you’d see a new improved Akshay Kumar very soon. Until then, you can only go oh-no-no over such pains in the neck as De Dana Dan. Ouch.