A few days ago, a flummoxed Paresh Rawal rued the inclusion of an item song in his first production. He couldn’t fathom why an otherwise small budget film would need a large chunk spent just on that song. And you know what? He was a 100 percent, resoundingly right. There was nothing wrong with ‘Go Govinda’, but if ruling out that song would have given me five more minutes of Paresh Rawal and Akshay Kumar, by god I would have taken it any day. Having said that, equally true is the fact that the inclusion of the item number lends more mass appeal OMG Oh My God, thus expanding its chances of better box-office returns. It is these returns, which will pave way for more such small but meaningful productions, which are truly god’s gift (no more puns, I promise) in this era of Rs 100-crore tortures.
OMG (we’ll be adopting the abbreviation henceforth) is based on the 2001 Australian comedy The Man Who Sued God and the Gujarati play Kanji Viruddh Kanji. It narrates the story of Kanjilal Mehta, a staunch atheist, who earns his living by selling religious idols. Life is smooth as Kanjilal goes on with his business unabashedly choosing convenience over forced faith, reason over blind belief. But when an earthquake levels his shop to the ground and the insurance company refuses to grant him his claim, citing the quake to be an act of God, Kanjilal goes ahead and sues God.
Such a delicate topic in a god-fearing country like ours needed a treatment equivalent to that meted out to fragile glass. Director Umesh Shukla achieves that, with support from an able cast that understands that.
It’s a Paresh Rawal film through and through, a four-minute item song lasts only that long. And my god, he delivers (Ok, now it was really required). Akshay Kumar as Krishna Vasudeva Yadav aka Lord Krishna in a dapper, tech-savvy, riding a batmobile-like (only its white) avatar is so refreshing. He has also produced the venture along with Rawal. Bless you dear Akshay.
OMG works because it’s teaching without preaching. And it targets everything that’s wrong with religion today, religion not god.
For too long we’ve lived with the ‘he visits a mandir everyday, he’s a good boy’, ‘she didn’t keep that fast, that’s blasphemy’ thumb rule.
The film doesn’t question the existence of Jesus, Ram, Allah…it questions the mela that surrounds faith in god around the world, and India, in particular. Never has religion been a bigger multi-crore industry, and yet never have we been a race so dissatisfied.
We floated away from the film feeling closer to the thought of being connected to a power divine, and not stressing about the dos and donts of the almighty.
OMG Oh My God has a lot to say, listen to it with an open heart and mind. After all, isn’t that also a message prescribed especially by God.
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