Madhur Bhandarkar has proved himself as a
filmmaker that doesn’t shy away from a matter-of-fact portrayal of life and all
its ugliness. But he also last proved that in 2007 (Traffic Signal). Its been
downhill since then with films that in its quest of exposing get exposed
themselves for their fake storylines, outlandish dialogues, weird caricatures
and a lot of overacting.
Heroine was supposed to be Bhandarkar’s
take on the big, bad glamorous world of the biggest film industry in the world
through the eyes of a female protagonist. A tale of how it really is…the
struggles, the triumphs, the workings.
But if you’ve seen Fashion save yourself
the trouble, and the money. Shockingly, Heroine is Bhandarkar’s rehash of his
own last film, only worse.
This time you land from the modelling world
into film star Mahi Arora’s (Kareena Kapoor) world where the designers are
still taking funny, the page 3 types are still just dropping honeys and
darlings and where scheming women twitch their lips and narrow their eyes in a manner
befitting only saas-bahu serials.
Mahi
is a talented, beautiful, successful actor who has everything going for her.
There’s just one hitch. Her love life is less than ideal which transforms Mahi
into a simpering, painful mess. Such a mess is erratic Mahi that she constantly
flies off the hook landing herself from one embarrassing situation to another.
Get it? I didn’t.
Mahi then tries to overturn her image,
hires superslick PR (Divya Dutta in a saving grace role) and once again treads
her way to the top. Another failed love affair, bitter moments, arty film gone
wrong, internal politics later she once again loses the plot. Get it? I didn’t
again.
Mahi begins again because the love life
improves and so renews her initiative for a successful career. A vaguely
promised role by boyfriend doen’t materialise and she goes cuckoo. Ok, now I
really didn’t get it at all.
Bhandarkar sets no base for Mahi’s madness
(except for a broken home and extreme lack of self-confidence) So by the end of
it you feel bad for everyone Mahi comes in contact with, including yourself.
Sigh.
Insecurity in Heroine is shown as something
that only female actors feel, go through, and endure. Forgive me, but I really
don’t know when this unisex emotion became restricted to one sex.
Everything that Bhandarkar tries to show
bad about the filmi world are topics not really worth touching upon, issues
that really exist everywhere. There is competition everywhere Mr Bhandarkar
coupled with nasty gossip and extreme bitching, even in our mundane lives. So
important topics like why its only the heroine in our industry that has a shelf
life, why a 40-something actor can romance a 20-something actress and not the
other way round, why a 100-crore project is never launched on just a heroine’s
shoulder, why marriage changes the game only for female actors is not even
touched upon. Those are the real tribulations of big, bad Bollywood.
Of course Kareena Kapoor will be convincing
as an actor (she is one herself), bringing to her larger than life role the
right myriad of emotions. She looks spectacular but is mostly reduced to a heap
of crying mess. The other actors have limited parts with idiotic dialogues, the
only saving grace is Arjun Rampal. As Mahi’s boyfriend, superstar Aryaan Khanna,
you genuinely feel bad for him all the time. And it helps that he looks smoking
hot.
To pay tribute to Bhandarkar’s bad to worst
clichés we’d like to end with a cliche ourselves: Somewhere a green-eyed beauty
enjoying the bliss of motherhood must be heaving a sigh of relief, thanking god
she wasn’t the heroine of Heroine.
Note: A copy of this review appeared in the 22 September edition of The Financial World
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