Mere Dost Picture Abhi Baki Hai: Movie Review

 

Mere Dost Picture Abhi Baki Hai is a satire on the formulaic functioning of the Indian film industry. In the film, Suniel Shetty plays a budding filmmaker who tells the lead heroine of his film to underplay while on camera. Sadly every actor in this film goes over the top. The film ridicules every formula in filmmaking from item numbers to rain songs but while doing so it conveniently resorts to them as well. It emphasizes how a picture can start as a pure plot but is often muddled with an overkill of external elements like action, emotion, sex, romance, family drama, foreign locations, et al. But while saying so, the film itself falls prey of these peripheral portions.

The story is about Amar Joshi (Suniel Shetty) who learns filmmaking from London and aspires to make a film in Bollywood. He writes script about a rape victim protagonist and wants to make a realistic film on it. However, the inflexible attitude of the impractical filmmaker keeps him jobless in Bollywood for months. Until he stumbles upon a random PR Agent (Rakesh Bedi), who agrees to produce his film. But Amar's struggle doesn't end there as his storyline is altered day in and day out over commercial considerations, till the point that his film ends up turning a different product altogether.

To be fair to the film, writer-director Rajnish Raj Thakur chooses a promising theme but unfortunately doesn't have the aptitude to craft it into a fine film. Like Zoya Akhtar's Luck By Chance or Chandan Arora's Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon that took a look at the film industry from the point of view of an actor and an actress respectively, this one had the potential to be the director's POV of the predetermined film world. Unfortunately Rajnish Thakur lacks the sensibility and sensitivity to come anywhere close to those masterpieces.

The director does employ characters that one would often associate with film industry from an asinine actress (Udita Gosami), her interfering mother (Neena Gupta), an underworld financer (Deepak Shirke), a confused producer (Rakesh Bedi), an 'inspired' music director (Suresh Menon), a masala -maker writer (Om Puri) - but sadly he ends up making caricatures of each of them. Not only do the actors ham, they end up as exaggerated and extreme characters. At several instances esp. in the first half, Thakur stereotypes Bollywood as an industry full of nymphomaniacs or superstitious people. With Thakur's typecast, uninformed, one-dimensional and, more or less, fictitious view of the industry, it seems like a frog-in-the-well syndrome.

Despite the immense comic potential in its subject matter, the film falters due to the director's lack of sense of humour. He isn't sensibly able to pull off a spoof nor does he have the sensitivity for a smart satire. Rather the film resorts to almost every element that it spoofs thereby making a mockery of itself. While it mercifully steers away from being a slapstick, the loud and hysterical acts cause much harm.

It's almost a decade since Suniel Shetty gets to play the solo lead (if you ignore the unmemorableRed Alert). He is the only one who underplays in the film while everyone else hams. Rajpal Yadav is boisterous but his broken English lines occasionally induce laughter. Rakesh Bedi, despite an awfully fake moustache, is endurable. Om Puri and Neena Gupta are plain average.Udita Goswami, Shyan Munshi and Shawar Ali can't act for nuts.

In the end, the idealistic Amar Joshi does get manipulated by the big bad world of Bollywood and thrives in mediocrity. We just hope the audience doesn't fall for such tackiness!

Verdict: Average
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