Sai Paranjpye's Chashme Baddoor is both fresh and funny

Chashme Baddoor Directed by Sai Paranjpye Starring: Farooque Shaikh, Deepti Naval, Rakesh Bedi and Ravi BaswaniParanjpye directing Shaikh and Naval: A miu of the plausible and implausibleTo her fans, Sai Paranjpye's latest offering might seem like a betrayal. After winning three of the notoriously elitist National Awards for her first film Sparsh, last year, the fact that her next film lacks any pretensions to "art'" or "seriousness" will, in all likelihood, raise the familiar jumped-on the-commercial-bandwagon criticisms. But it is unlikely that the box-office will be so demanding. For Chasme Baddoor is a cleverly handled movie which, while it sticks to a formula plot and goes through with the song-and-fight routines, borrows from Hrishikesh Mukherji the ruse of spoofing contemporary films and film stars without being substantially different from the subjects of the spoof yet it manages to be both fresh and funny. Explains Gul Anand, who produced the film: "I'm very much in the commercial rut, but every once in a while I make films on themes I really like. Yet I try to avoid those larger-than-life, escapist movies which nobody can relate to."Baddoor, notwithstanding Anand's protestations to the contrary, is distinctly escapist in its plot. Clearly aimed at the commercial market, the film takes its viewer through the boy-meets-girl-and-love-blooms routine, the all but final rift caused by rumours about the girl, and finally the cosy reconciliation. But the story, fortunately for all concerned, fails to dominate the film. From the start it is Paranjpye's handling of the theme which stands out. The casting is masterful, the songs, barring one, have been woven convincingly into the film's fabric, and both the plausible and implausible mesh together in her treatment of this unabashedly romantic comedy.Plot: Located, for a change, in New Delhi, the film is about three college-going boys who share a barsati. Jomo (Rakesh Bedi) fancies himself a poet, and rarely speaks in anything but Urdu couplets. Omi (Ravi Baswani), is a Majnu of the worst kind, translating his hero-worship of film superstars into the bravado of cat-calling and eve-teasing. And Siddarth, played by Farooque, is an anti-hero hero, an exaggeratedly studious bookworm who only notices the big bad world when Neha (Deepti Naval) walks into his life. Omi and Jomo set the ball rolling when each, separately, tries to patao (win) Neha. The poet gets mistaken for the plumber's assistant, and Omi, who masquerades as a film and talent scout, gets bashed up by Neha's brawny brother.Unwilling to admit to failure, each one invents a fantasy about how the girl flipped for him. Finally each renounces his lady love in a sacrifice to friendship - "Dost, Tere liye main pyaar ki quarbani karne ke liye tayyaar hoon", and so on. Quite my mistake, Siddharth meets, woos, and wins Neha, but by now his friends are convinced that their fantasies were true. The "inexperienced" bookworm is told that she is the wrong girl for, him, a flirt and a mantrap. The lovers break up, and only after many sleepless nights, an abduction, car chase and rescue are they finally reunited.Spoof: But it is the little things which lift Baddoor out of the trite, conventional class of movies. Paranjpye proves that it is possible to have fistfights, songs, and a brief car chase without letting them become ends in themselves. Farooque plays a convincing real-life lover when he sings with a huge flower stuck in his ear and streaks of kaajal on his cheeks. Two songs by Neha in her singing class and one by the friends on a motorcycle blend well into the framework of the film and into the story line itself. And Omi's fantasy-scene, in which Neha auditions before him for a screen test, is simply superb. Taking off on Meena Kumari in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, Zeenat Aman in Qurbani, Sadhana in Raj Kumar and Nutan in Paying Guest, Paranjpye manages to spoof commercial cinema even while she injects some borrowed tinsel and glamour into the film.Quite extraneous to the plot, and yet essential to the movie is Saeed Jaffrey's Lallan Mia, a paan-bidiwala who is both creditor and confidant to the friends. Jaffrey is superb in his kattha-slaimd kurta and skull cap, and his acting lifts the movie out of any mundane slots it might have dropped into. Baswani and Bedi, both veteran actors on Delhi's stage, fit neatly into their parts, and Farooque looks just right for the anti-hero image. Deepti Naval carries off the part of a dull, unexposed, home-loving girl a little too well, but then commercial cinema has never looked for good acting in its leading ladies.Paranjpye's success lies in the fact that she has succeeded in making all the standard ingredients come to life; in neatly mixing together the cliched variables into a palatable whole. She has used non-stars, virtually unknown singers and a minute budget to put together a movie to compete with multi-starrers. And if Chashme Baddoor does only half as well as the movies it spoofs, she will have proved her point.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 21, 2013 13:06 IST--- ENDS ---

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Sai Paranjpye's Chashme Baddoor is both fresh and funny

Chasme Baddoor is a cleverly handled movie which, while it sticks to a formula plot and goes through with the song-and-fight routines, borrows from Hrishikesh Mukherji the ruse of spoofing contemporary films and film stars without being substantially different from the subjects of the spoof.

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