Review: "Coolie No. 1" and "AK vs AK"

A David Dhawan comedy that is precisely what the trailer promised us to be and an enjoyable experiment that bears uneven results.

It is the duty of a film critic/reviewer to sum up positive energy, put on a happy smile, and surrender to the screen without any prior judgments. I believe if one is not allowed to judge a book by its cover, then one should also not judge a film by its trailer. Sometimes, a trailer informs about the quality of a movie, and sometimes, it also misleads. With David Dhawan, I have not yet experienced the latter and his latest Coolie No. 1 - a remake of his own 1995 film - too, is as bad as the trailer promised us.

When Jeffery Rozario (Paresh Rawal), a wealthy businessman, insults a pandit Jai Kishen (Javed Jaffrey) for bringing a not-so-rich (they travel in the bus) family to marry his daughter Sarah (Sara Ali Khan), Kishen swears revenge on Rozario. "Bahut mahanga padega tumhe yeh tumhara ego," threatens Kishen. This scene reminded me of Chanakya vowing to destroy Dhana Nanda after he was insulted by him. However, Chanakya's story goes to exciting places. Kishen goes to a railway station and loses Sarah's photograph to air, which lands it on a coolie named Raju (Varun Dhawan). A glance at this picture is enough to make him fall head over heels for Sarah. Kishen finds his revenge card in Raju. Within no time, he disguises Raju to a billionaire Kunwar Raj Pratap Singh. Kishen pretends to be his secretary and converts Raju's friend Deepak (Sahil Vaid) into a driver.

It would be foolish to further describe the non-existent plot as movies like these base themselves on mindless entertainment (read paisa vasool). Hey, I also want to laugh at the jokes as much as the next guy without using my brain. The problem is simply...simple: It is not funny! Consider this - An innocent girl is trapped in a scam because of her narcissistic father and is married away to a nut-job (watch Raju slipping into different personalities as he beats up goons). If you can digest the tomfoolery of the characters or are able to buy into foul manipulation in the name of Varun Dhawan's "cuteness," you are the target audience of Coolie No. 1. I got unhappy after spotting Sarah sweeping the floor. The activity was not the reason for my disappointment, but the feeling of seeing a blameless girl wrapped in a vicious game saddened me. Viler is the fact that all of it is sold to us in the name of love!

David Dhawan uses Coolie No. 1 as a stage to vent out bad jokes/puns/gags. Dhawan's laziness is visible in his methods to build scenes from one point to another. Jeffery hands out a honeymoon package merely to introduce Husnn Hai Suhaana. Raju is made to cross railway tracks while a train approaches, and this scene is echoed later when a kid sits on the tracks for a toy. Don't try reasoning with it. The kid is deaf (he fails to acknowledge the train), Jeffery is blind (forget disguises, at one point, he fails to notice Raju bending right in front of him), and according to Mr. Dhawan, we all have IQ's similar to the characters in his movie. If you really want to find anything new, Coolie No. 1 distributes the hero's creepy behavior among the heroine's father and an agent.

Vikramaditya Motwane's black comedy thriller shares an animated opening with Coolie No. 1. Thank god, the similarities end here. Instead of throwing money on an expensively built trash, Motwane experiments with a genre and returns with uneven results, which is far better than watching a bunch of nincompoops trying to be funny.

After a public dispute, Anurag Kashyap plans to shoot a film in real-time, tracking Anil Kapoor while he searches for her daughter Sonam Kapoor (all the actors play a fictitious version of themselves). Kashyap kidnaps Sonam, visits Anil's set, and begins to roll with cameraman Yogita Bihani. A text "13 Hours To Sunrise" and so on often appears, informing about the deadline within which the search must be completed. And so a cat-and-mouse chase ensues, finding a desperate Anil traveling from lavish hotels to a communal Christmas celebration. In the process, we see "real" accidents, blood, and sweat.

A chase sequence goes from a railway station to a local train to another station and ends with a car accident. As the camera follows its subject, we hear the exhausted breath of Yogita running to catch up to the actor. This sound of breath can be interpreted as the dedication of the handheld camera crew that sweats it out to capture the thrill demanded from an action sequence. A mad Kashyap who has really sold his soul for making an "art film" stands in for directors who get obsessed with their films and go to extreme lengths to get the perfect shot. For reference, you can start by reading what happened on the sets of The Exorcist. Anil Kapoor shows the vulnerability of an aging star who fears being shoved into oblivion. Observe his gentle request to Kashyap for making a film with him.

When Anil asks the address of a kidnapper to the crowd, they chant a performance from him. He then shakes a leg to his iconic "My Name is Lakhan." An actor dedicates his life to the entertainment of the audience, who in return make him a superstar. His job does not end there. He is continuously required to wear his persona and expected to put on a show when the people wish for it. They fail to distinguish the star from the person. So when Anil folds his hands in a request, people start requisitioning a performance as a payment for helping him in return. It is a nice subtle commentary that gets attenuated when Anil literally vomits it out while lying on the road. Beneath the hostage thriller, AK vs AK is about filmmaking, showing the arduous process through which a shoot takes place, requiring a parallel run between the camera, the director, and the actor. These three are labeled (or debated upon) as the most important aspect during the opening interview stretch. The meta-ness does not work in serious situations like when after a second kidnapping, Kashyap is confused with his brother Abhinav. Or when at a critical moment, Kashyap begins to count his failures, "Mereko sab chodd ke chale gye/Meri ek bhi film nahi chalti." It feels unnecessary when Harshvardhan Kapoor shouts, "Insaaf," giving a wink to his Bhavesh Joshi Superhero. Still, I am all in for an offbeat, unusual, risky, and imperfect attempt than watching a recycled endeavor by playing it safe.

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