It would be fair to say that a movie titled ‘Rock On’ was sufficient warning by itself. Anyone with a modicum of taste would know that. However, the world is a cruel place and sometimes men who ought to know better get dragged into fetid Gurgaon malls by their wives, to watch colourless, annoying, dull fare for 300 bucks a pop. Let me say this again, I never wanted to watch this flick. It smelled of shit a mile away. I walk into the hall, watch 10 minutes and it only reaffirmed my initial instinct that Farhan Akhtar, the auteur of Hindi cinema is a hack and possibly a homo. Where do I start? The plot? What plot? Here’s the story. A couple of college kids hang out in an artistically grungy (read F,A,K,E) basement and slap each others backs and sing pathetic songs that sound exactly like what they are – translations of Hindi poetry written by a 60 year old with Americanised inflections (like laundry stub) to make it more ‘rock n’ roll. If it was plain bad I wouldn’t have bothered to write about it, but it was so bad it was making me angry. These scenes are shown as a contrived flashback using clichéd devices like old photographs. All the four losers have some job now where they seem constipated and dramatically unfulfilled. Constantly looking into the horizon, sad, wistful. Jesus, we get it. And all through, the feeling you get is, that this Farhan guy is nothing more than a clothes-horse. A preening show-pony who just dreamed this ‘movie’ up as an excuse to wear a bandanna and well-cut business suits. The suits are nice, mind you. But that’s about it. There are guitar riffs in the background when he’s in his clichéd workplace (key in ‘finance + office’ on Getty Images and take a look at the first 10 results) with clichéd office workers. The guitar riffs bring back jump cuts of subconscious memory back when he used to high-five and embrace muscular male models in basements. This is the essential plot. A band reunion. And that took kick-ass director Farhan Akhtar some 45 minutes to get to. Throw in a dolled-up soap-opera star as his wife. And a really, really sad fake moustache for Arjun Rampal. Plus an in-your face plug for Channel [V]. After the interval, it gets even more dull and annoying. Remember those long painfully boring bits of dialogue in The Gladiator between Joaquin Phoenix, his sister and the Senator that made us a little restless to get back to the ass-kicking? This is like that, with even more boring dialogue, and no ass-kicking scenes to look forward to. Just to make his movie a little ‘deep’ Akhtar makes a cheap grab at our emotions by giving the keyboardist a brain tumour. And he only has a few days left to live. This is his last chance at fulfillment. Boo hoo. At this point, I was rocking back and forth in my chair, for the popcorn was over, and had my head buried in my hands. I blocked my ears so I didn’t have to listen to the dialogue. I would have happily watched Doordarshan’s enlightening Krishi Darshan fourteen times over in a loop than spend another half hour watching this drivel. That’s when, wedding vows all forgotten, I walked out, leaving the wife alone in her chair, saying I would watch Gurgaon shoppers trying on sweaters at the Benetton store for the next half hour. She joined me five minutes later. I guess I’ll have to buy her something big soon. My rating – well, all Hindi movies begin at Zero. And if they do something to redeem themselves they get a couple of points. Like ‘Wednesday’ did, recently. Or the very entertaining 'Khosla Ka Ghosla’ did in the recent past. ‘Rock On’, according to me is a minus 45. And I’m being kind.
14 comments:
I agree! That is why I watched it on DVD and fell asleep while my wife watched it!
have you noticed 'rock on' has two exclamation points after it in the poster? f.a. is obviously a fag trying on clothes. they should send a dvd to sid vicious' kids and tell them they should be glad their dad isn't alive today to see this.
rock on is an out and out chick flick. it's the story of a harridan and a princess with a bit of wildchild thrown in on the side. we see their three men just as they see them, angsty little pretty boys.
this is possibly why your wife enjoyed it past the pop corn and why i watched it...erm, twice.
I saw this poster outside some punjabi restaurant (it didn't have the requisite enhanced cleavage chick on it, which was enough to keep me away from it forever...)
But, that "cheap emotional trick" about a member of the band with a terminal illness? There's a very cool last performance by The Ruts, when their gutarist was diagnosed with cancer.
Henry Rollins' post about it : http://rollinscauses.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/paul-fox-benefit-concert-the-ruts/
So I am not alone in thinking it's the most uncreative stupid story in the entire universe and brain tumour thing is just absolutely irritating. But Arjun Rampal does look cute.
liz
You are as immature as ever Nirmal. And as big a moron as ever. It seems you have lost your balls too to be deleting comments.
Well… garbage usually goes where it deserves but since today was an unusually quiet Friday and this is beginning to really amuse me, I think I’ll allow your comment ‘Anonymous’. Let’s start with the question of ‘balls’. Really rich coming from an ‘Anonymous’ commenter. Next, I admit to the charge of being stupid and immature. But it’s my blog and I’ll write whatever the hell I like. If you don’t like it, don’t read it asshole. I can see from my blog stats that the IP address that posted this comment has visited my site over 25 times over the last week. How sad is that? Go find another blog to drop your anonymous turds on.
Tch Tch
You getting all worked up? Go easy on that blood pressure. And next time you try and make fun of anything and everything, remember calling someone a 'homo' doesn't make you look good. Homo. See. You sounded as bad as I did.
Yours,
Anonymous Turd
Blob. Dropping down on your blog.
ha ha .. dear turd, what makes you think i'm doing this to 'make myself look good'? i'm doing this to infuriate sanctimonious knobs like yourself. and so far it seems to be working.
good one kickah -Anonymous turd is obviously a closet homosexual who gets off watching arjun rampal in tight t-shirts
Dear two-and-a-half people who read my blog, people who stumble upon it by mistake and senders of hate mail:
in a move that will no doubt leave you shattered and broken, I’ve decided to switch comment moderator on for a short while to filter out one curmudgeon (anonymous turd, take a bow) who it seems has nothing better to do than visit my blog and make vicious, personal attacks. Sorry about that.
Dear Anonymous, whoever you are: I assume you’re one of the countless idiots I’ve pissed off in some way during my time in advertising. From your (deleted) comments about my ads, I can see you take your career very seriously. I might I even go so far as to venture that advertising seems to be your raison d'être. Congratulations. While I occasionally do have fun making ads, at some level, it is still just a job that I do for money. This blog has nothing to do with advertising. Matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve even shared it with anyone remotely connected to advertising. It’s just a careless catalogue of scraps of thoughts and bits and pieces of curious information that captures the zeitgeist. I don't do this to impress anyone or 'make myself look good' as you say. As far all the indignation, ‘Rock On’ is a movie in the public sphere and Farhan Akhtar is a public figure so I’m well within my rights as a social commentor to take the mickey out of both. And as you can see from the above comments, I'm not the only one who thought this movie sucked. About the use of the word ‘homo’, it’s obvious to anyone (even to homos) that I merely employ it to illustrate a point. [For further elaboration on this, you might want to read the writings of Jeremy Clarkson, who I believe, has taken homos to task in no uncertain terms]. Most importantly, if you don’t like it, mate, like I said earlier, walk away. This is my party, my house. If I get up and pee on the walls and you don’t like that kind of thing, then surely the cool thing to do would be to just walk away and not come to my parties anymore. Instead you’re the sort who keeps coming back, night after night, sniffs the peed on walls and says ‘What the fuck?’ and get all outraged about it. Sorry about the elaborate urine allegory. Got a little carried away. So if you like reading my thoughts and want to take a dig now and than, that’s cool. You seem like an articulate chap with a decent turn of phrase. Welcome to my blog. If not, brother, get a hobby or go make another ad.
That's the best destructive review i ve read in the recent past. But having said that. There is no better way to describe "i'd rather not say the name too". Well defamed! Though i understand you were being kind.
Nirmal, change that to 3.5 people. I I read "tea parties and candle-light vigils" and came back for more. After reading Nirmal vs Anonymous turd, I intend to be a regular.
If you hated RO!!, go watch Luck By Chance. Actually, get it from a friend. Or get your wife to go buy it. Then watch it in fast-forward, like I watched Ghajini. (Honestly, I just wanted to see the inane ending for myself.) Train-wrecks in progress, how could you possibly not watch?
Post a Comment