BILLBOARD
QUOTE MARTIAL
MAKING WAVES
SHORT TAKES
SOUTHERN SPICE
ROUGH CUTS
MEMORIES
ARCHIVES
MOVIES CHAT

It shouldn't happen to you

Suparn Verma

A still from Bade Dilwala. Click for bigger pic!

1994.

A film called It Could Happen to You releases in Hollywood.

Nicholas Cage is an honest-to-goodness New York City cop runs out of money to tip a waitress, played by Bridget Fonda. Instead, he promises her half the prize money of his lottery ticket if he wins. He does and so hands her half the money. But Cage's all too greedy wife, Rosie Perez, wants all of it. The rest of the yarn is about how Cage and Fonda come together while his wife chooses money over hubby.

January 1999.

Sunil Shetty is a honest-to-goodness cop. Delivering babies in BEST buses, even running after terrorists who hijack an empty BEST bus, playing cricket with his kids, and being henpecked by his wife are what he revels in.

A still from Bade Dilwala. Click for bigger pic!

He too, like Cage in the movie we mentioned, promises a waitress, Priya Gill, half his prize money (Rs 25 million), instead of a tip. And he too wins the lottery.

The wife, played by Archana Puran Singh, goes berserk when she hears that her husband is giving Sunil will give half the money away but is mollified when told that her face will be on every tabloid as the woman who gave away half her money.

In the meantime she falls easy prey to Mannubhai (Paresh Rawal) a smooth-talking con with whom she plans to make a film called Aaj Ka Mughal-e-Azam, a modern version of the classic.

A still from Bade Dilwala. Click for bigger pic!

In her greed, Puran Singh drives her husband and daughter into Gill's arms. But since Priya has the other half of the booty, Puran Singh finally takes her to court to try and prise the money out.

Sunil Shetty tries in earnest to play the good guy but even he seems out of sorts at times.

Archana Puran Singh, trying to ape Rosie Perez, hams, screams, grimaces and rolls her eyes so much that she puts you off not just her character but the movie itself.

A still from Bade Dilwala. Click for bigger pic!

Priya Gill looks decent. She doesn't have to bat her eyelids and look innocent every time she faces the camera. Sunil Shetty's daughter in the film, Baby Erum, may look cute but the director's idea of making her sound cute consists of making her repeat her lines time and again. Annoying isn't the word.

Paresh Rawal is responsible for some hilarious moments on screen though he is impaired by dialogues that never capitalise fully on his comic potential.

With this, Shakeel Noorani joins the ranks of the directors who rent a LD one day and announce a film the next. Though Noorani had a well-made film to remake in the first place, he messes it up first with songs that, save one, aren't even hummable.

A still from Bade Dilwala. Click for bigger pic!

The pace is further marred by his need to capitalise on Sunil's action hero image, needlessly adding a couple of fight sequences.

Art director Vasant Katkar really doesn't have much to do, but he has to add that extra effort to be in the reckoning. So, for a song shot in the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland, you suddenly find the two protagonists lying atop what looks like multi-coloured syrup. It is only when you get a top shot that you realise that the ice has been sprinkled with colours including bright yellow, pink, blue and green. Yuck!

The score by Aadesh Shrivastava is passable, except for Baant Raha Tha.

The idea isn't a novel one, but audiences always love to watch the shrew being tamed. But not quite this way.