Friday, February 17, 2012

NEW: Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu: I couldn't feel any depth.

So I was supposed to go see Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu last week, but I waited because others wanted to go see it with me. I still ended up seeing it alone this week, but I was excited because in addition to it starring Imran Khan (♥!) and Kareena Kapoor (on a ROLL), I read such great reviews about this one. They were all glowing.

I wasn't wowed.

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (previously called Short Term Shaadi) is young and a little off-beat. It's fun and goofy. But it just kind of...flounders. Not much actually happens. The plot is thin, and I felt like it just kind of lacked depth.

I missed the first 15 minutes (traffic, ugh), but from there on, the basic premise is this: One drunken night in Vegas, straightlaced Rahul Kapoor and zany, rulebook-out-the-window Riana Braganza -- both out of work -- get hitched. After agreeing to get an annulment, they become close friends. When Riana's thrown out of her house, Rahul lets her stay with him until she gets back on her feet. And then Rahul, whose world has been turned upside down by ever-happy and ever-bubbly Ri, realizes he's fallen in love with her. But when he finally plucks up the courage to act on it, she rebuffs him, saying she loves him like a friend but nothing else and she doesn't want to be in a relationship now. And so Rahul narrates an epilogue in which they repair this rift and both get jobs, but they just stay friends even though she tries to push girls his way and he turns them away because he loves her.

Sum total, I think in that depressingly antiromantic kind of way, it kind of resembles 500 Days of Summer. It goes the hipster route and tries to be cool by being purposely antitraditional. And I don't really think it works.

I heard people comparing Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu to Wake Up Sid and Jab We Met (Vegas version), two films I love. It is kind of like Wake Up Sid in reverse: Instead of the woman teaching the man to take responsibility, she teaches him how to let go of a responsible exterior. And that's also what happens in Jab We Met, where a bubbly Kareena character helps a depressed guy loosen up.

But in both of those films, those storylines are the catalyst to things happening in the relationship. In Ek Main, the two characters fight and Rahul goes home to his repressive family, where his father still picks his ties and his mother still tells him how to chew his food. Finally fed up, he tells his parents off. And he goes back and talks to Riana. And they become friends, get an annulment, and that's...it. Riana refuses to have a deeper relationship (without much explanation, might I add) so they don't.

I liked the film's first half, even though it dragged. I liked part of the second half. But then...nothing happens! It has no climax and no satisfaction. It's a wasted half.

So, sum total, that's all about the film.

But on a slightly off-topic note, the theater-going experience was perhaps too interesting (a story you already know if you follow me on Twitter). It involved some rather rudeness from desis. There were two guys in the theater for the film, sitting like five or six rows behind me, and after interval, the one guy left the other and came and sat down right behind me. And he didn't SAY anything. He just sat there. And stared. And when I left the theater, the two guys were outside, smoking, and as I left they just kept staring! I understand if you're curious why there's a gori in the theater, but at least ASK me something. It was very strange, creepy and rude. I know enough Hindi to have told the one guy off or at least snapped at him, and I probably should have said at least, "Aap ka problem kya hai?"

2 comments:

  1. You should've - Indian people always get very surprised when they hear a gori speaking Hindi, and I think it would've shut him up.
    About the film: I think I'll catch it on DVD, but my expectations are not too high.

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    1. Exactly my thought process. I've had a couple of times where I've just wanted to snap something brief in Hindi to shut people up. Like the time an auntie and uncle in a theater were talking about me in Hindi loud enough for me to hear. But they at least were amusing. Someone told me to use the line, "Ghar mein maa behen nahi hai kya?" next time. ;)

      And yeah, waiting for the DVD is wise. It's still worth seeing. It's just not worth paying theater prices.

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