A movie so bad, the joke's on you!

From the whirring of the machine that churns out tickets, to the popping sound and wafting buttery fragrance of the popcorn maker, to the dimming of the lights once you’re seated, and the build-up of seeing some new trailers…there’s nothing about experiencing cinema that doesn’t delight and excite! So it was surprising to go in to watch Joker dragging our feet, armed only with the best wishes from friends and dear ones. You see, we’ve all seen Tees Maar Khan. Enough said.

Could the writer of that film and the director of this film, Shirish Kunder, have improved on that torturous script masquerading as a film? In a way he does. So we’re out of the torture but we’re in for the ridiculous.

Everything: the acting, the story, the special effects, the costumes, the humour…it’s like one big catastrophe of that which should never have existed. (Maybe if we keep taking its name, more such films will come our way, aka the Voldemort theory)

In 1947, when borders were being drawn, one little village Paglapur (named so for it onced housed a mental asylum) lay forgotten and became a no-man’s land decades later. Akshay Kumar, a resident of Paglapur, escapes his village stagnating for want of water and electricity and migrates to America, to become a successful scientist and start chasing aliens. Forced to come home one day, he hatches a plan to put Paglapur firmly onto the map of interest. So they carve crop circles and the villagers dress up as aliens with the aid of capsicums and karelas, while the whole world (including the FBI, the CIA, US president) shows up there thus putting Paglapur into the spotlight.

How Kunder convinced an entire star cast that includes sane people like Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Shreyas Talpade, Vinddo Dara Singh to act in such a film is nothing short of amazing. Now that’s something that a movie should be made on.

Akshay Kumar has been a notably missing from the promotion of this film, that incidentally has been produced by his own banner Hari Om International. And while Kunder and Farah Khan may cry themselves hoarse denying that anything is amiss, we don’t really blame Akki. It could not have been easy being part of potentially the worst film of 2012. The joke’s on the Joker.

Note: Image courtesy Wikipedia. This review first appeared in the 1 September edition of FW