Monday, May 15, 2006

the nadir of bollywood plotting

Even Zero's keyed up about the new poll on Rediff. They're asking their loyal readers to Predict Fanaa's climax. Seems like official sanction of the lack of originality in the excerebrose wlatsome oligophrenial mephitic quilian frass that Bollywood continues to dish out. The weak soundtrack's out; a big banner's backing the film. An initial return is guaranteed at the box office (especially the overseas market that thrives on the economic principles of appealing to the multitudinous bourgeoisie. Here're a few contributions to the guess pot (who cares about the premise anyway? We've shamed Eisenstein and Kuleshov with our unmatched ability to splice and dice our sources into a patent-pending incoherent blend of ketchup).

Aamir takes the blind Kajol to watch Amar Akbar Anthony and the divine SFX blast that restores Nirupa Roy's eyesight extends to restore Kajol's eyesight; Stupefied by the power of Bollywood, Aamir renounces terrorism and embraces Kajol; Tabu, in a cameo as a kamikaze projectionist, smiles at the two from the projection booth, before pulling the pin and blowing the whole place up; The word Fanaa rises out of the bad CGI explosion as you hear Lata plaintively wail kabhii Kushii kabhii Gam

Kajol isn't blind at all, but a member of the same mathematically and cryptographically challenged anti-terrorist squad seen in Dus; she confronts Aamir just as he's lumbering up to his target with a body bomb, and after a long emotional scene complete with bullet vision, a nasal riff of anguish on the background by Kumar Sanu (in a special vocal appearance), and some slow motion tricks involving a monkey, a lemon and a pomeranian high on tharraa, they embrace; however, the bomb doesn't go off; Furious, Aamir claws at the packaging, finds a support number, fishes out his cellphone (insert suitable brand here for product placement revenue) and dials the number; it goes all the way around the world and then down to Bangalore; a desii voice identifies itself as Chris and offers assistance; in keeping with official protocol he butchers Aamir's name, sputters in broken English, and drives Aamir into an insane rage; He discovers that his power animal is a 3D parrot named Raja, and then launches Project Mayhem to blow up all the call centres in Bangalore under the name of Dhanraj Tandon. The end credits roll against an original CGI sequence travelling through Aamir's brain.

Aamir and Kajol discover that they're siblings, as revealed by a dying Tabu, who, despite a bad CGI job with the makeup, plays their mother; Shattered and disgusted with what they've been up to during the course of the film, Aamir and Kajol decide to do a tribute to Dil Se, but spontaneously combust milliseconds before the pivotal blast

The climax of the film is presented in 3D and features an item song (not on the soundtrack) by Payal Rohatgi; while the audience gets a lesson in geography and contours, Aamir trips and falls off the edge of a cliff, just as he is preparing a bomb to blow up Kunal Kohli's office; after his death Kajol gets his eyes and begins to develop a strange affection for Juhi Chawla

Aamir has a double role: the good brother is a struggling writer, and the bad brother is an anarchist; the former indulges in familiar arboreal amorous pursuits (transplanted to boats and such in keeping with the location) with the blind Kajol while the latter pursues a hot steamy intellectual relationship with Tabu who knits sweaters by day and fights grime by night (she heads a local mom-and-pop outfit for crop and forest sprays); the former is facing writer's block trying to work out a screenplay for Sanjay Gupta based on the lost rare complete cut of Stroheim's Greed, Eastwood's The Bridges of Madison County, Café Flesh and two videos by Vikas Bhalla; the latter is writing a screenplay that looks like the screenplay of Fanaa; before the climax unfolds, every reel in every projection room across the world catches fire and disintegrates; at this point, Aamir wakes up from what has been a bad dream, rides pillion on the way to the defence minister's residence, shoots him dead during his morning walk, etc. etc; he then takes over a radio station and plays Himesh Reshammiya songs while attempting to justify his actions; Kajol, who is listening attentively, cannot stand the aural assault of the mu[sic] and dies of an acoustic neuroma that mutates into a fatal variant of itself. The end credits include acknowledgements to Gems[sic] Joyce and Luis Panvel[sic].

Thanks to a series of unfortunate events, Aamir's last job, before he gives it all up for his blind lady love Kajol, goes horribly wrong at a concert venue and the performer is killed; the accidental death of burgeoning nasal talent Himesh Reshammiya makes Aamir a star and saviour of millions, whose senses have been wrecked asunder; Aamir manages to get Kajol's eyesight restored, and then they go to a multiplex to watch a new film called Fanaa. The end credits do not include any acknowledgements although the uncredited music comes from Howard Shore's score for The Lord of the Rings

Aamir is a super-terrorist who has retired from duty and conducts coaching classes for an outsourced wing of a feared international terrorist group headed by a mysterious figure in the shadows named Colonel X; He works as a tourist guide and watches reruns of Guide for tips; he runs into Kajol (or, to be precise, she walks straight into him, since she's blind) -- and the consequences of the impact inspire the title of the film; Aamir is called back into action to annihilate (another reference to the title) a burgeoning rival terrorist organisation led by Baba Jalandar, who sounds suspiciously like a mix between Om Shivpuri and Shreeram Lagoo; Aamir assembles a crack team comprising an old friend, a transportation expert a background operative (respectively small-to-medium roles for Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh and Lara Dutta) and embarks on a mission (initially named Asambhav, but, fearing a backlash from Rajiv Rai, renamed Impossible) that primarily involves rescuing Kajol from the chu.ngal of Baba Jalandar (who, in a remarkably original tour de force filched from movies like Manmohan Desai's Kismat) is revealed to be Kajol's father (Rishi Kapoor); his vamp, played by Tabu, takes a bullet shortly after revealing, through a flashy CGI-assisted miserable montage of sepia and filters, that Rishi Kapoor was the person responsible for the accident that robbed Kajol of her eyesight; the climactic shootout results in the loss of several pieces of set furniture, 3 graphic artists, several toys from Leo Mattel (subtle product placement), and a poster of Mithun Chakraborty's Sanyasi Mera Naam; in a splendid example of the use of deus ex machina, Shekhar Kapur guest-directs the post-climax wherein a ripple in time suddenly appears and envelopes Aamir and Kajol, whose eyesight has been miraculously restored thanks to a combination of sulphurous fumes and emotional trauma (thanks to the revelation of her father's identity and past deeds); they are whisked to another time and place (that looks like stolen footage from What Dreams May Come) where they resume their adoration and circumlocution of the family of Ficus benghalensis.

TARFU. Time for some floccinaucinihilipilification folks.

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