Bhaag Bhaiya Bhaag

Rating: 3/10 (16 July 2013)

A friend of a friend of mine had implored him to watch this movie . The friend had claimed that missing it would be "criminal" . Being Law Abiding Citizens(no pun intended) me and my friend went to the theatre for the Nine P.M. show after booking the last two remaining seats of the hall, at the nick of time. The hall would be full, and this was a promising sign . Or was it? In the recent past full halls have hardly had anything to do with good cinema . Brushing aside such pessimistic hopes we reached the theatre on time and accommodated ourselves on fairly comfortable seats , all set to watch the movie.
To be honest, the film did not put us off in the early minutes . In fact, interspersed were some genuinely entertaining scenes , if not entirely due to their quality then at least due to the imbecile reactions they exacted from the audience .
The Director had evidently succumbed to the temptation of underplaying the script and dialogue , which to be sure in in vogue in Bollywood these days.
Small town settings . Attention to meaningless details and a deliberately instilled contempt for much needed cinematic propriety.
Apparently , the film had all the elements which constitute a contemporary Bollywood Flick. And this is precisely why the movie may turn out to be a runaway flick and may even inspire a few individuals to nurse galloping aspirations , taking after the name sake.
The cinematic reality of this pretentious and poorly directed flick is however quite different.
The Plot is sound (being the story of a living person) . But the screenplay writer lost it somewhere . The story jumps abruptly and the narrative doesn't exactly sympathize or compliment the flashbacks and flashforths.
Vague transitions . Unattended subplots . Shallow characterisation and many more defects make the film less than imperfect .
The actors , however , haven't done that badly . I would rather blame the Director, Mr. Mehra for unsatisfactorily using them in his movie. Despite the length of the movie , no one, not even the protagonist gets the chance to actually define his on screen persona. He is prevented from leaving any impression whatsoever on the audience .
Many scenes have been shot with appalling mediocrity and bear testimony to the fact that Bollywood hasn't changed one bit.
A sports movie , especially one based on a living legend's life, ought to leave some kind of impact on the viewer's psyche. This film did no such thing.
By the end of the movie , it became unbearably predictable and intolerably mundane .Everyone knew how it would end , but the way this movie journeyed to it's conclusion left us disappointing and discouraged to ever take the risk of watching Mr. Mehra's movies again .
And yes, Prasoon Joshi 's lyrics border on the line of being called grocery store squabbles . He should seriously seek help . If you ever see him, (I know I won't) please inform him that disjointed words , signifying nothing cannot be passed for song lyrics .