Kambakkht Ishq all about crude excesses
What’s the matter with Akshay Kumar these days? Once upon a time, the man could do no wrong – remember Hera Pheri, Bhool Bhulaiyya, Namastey London, Welcome. These days he seems to have lost his sense of judgement of right films.
Is Akki looking only at the zeros added to the budget of the films? How, then, does one explain two disasters with pretty much the same lineage – top dollars, style divas, international names and weak plots? After Chandni Chowk To China embarrassed the film industry, he’s done it again with Kambakkht Ishq, a weak excuse for a film.
To be fair, it has all the hype a masala film needs – an ultra-glam leading lady in Kareena Kapoor, not less than three Hollywood biggies doing cameos, lots of skin, songs and stunts and scenes capturing the beauty of foreign locales. And yet, all of them together can’t support the weak storyline.Besides, in this day and age of gender equality, what exactly were director Sabbir Khan and producer Sajid Nadiadwala thinking when they embarked on a film that is out and out sexist? Battle of the sexes? Oh please!
The story (?) goes thus.
Viraj Shergill (Akshay Kumar) is a work-hard, party-hard stuntman in Hollywood. The man loves one-night stands, and is a misogynist to the core. His funda in life is simple – wham, bam, thank you maam.
Then there’s Simrita Rai (Kareena Kapoor), a supermodel-cum-surgeon (talk about multi-tasking!) who hates men. How she balances extremely difficult anatomical studies with pouting and preening for the cameras is a mystery. But she manages just fine.
Viraj and Simrita’s paths cross when their best pals get married. Later, the budding ‘surgeon’ loses her musical (read noisy) watch inside the stuntman’s body when operating upon him. Now, she has to figure out a way to get the watch back before he finishes her career with a medical negligence lawsuit and the only way to do so is to be his lover. Obviously, she’s never heard of follow-up or multiple surgeries. Maybe it’s time to stop modelling and start studying.
What follows is a crude ‘comedy’ involving women-bashing (and violence against them too), sex and vulgar jokes and generous use of profanities, ‘dog’ and ‘bitch’ being the most used. The blink-and-you-miss-it appearances by Sylvester Stallone, Denise Richards and Brandon Routh don’t help. Perhaps Nadiadwala couldn’t afford to keep them on longer.
One can’t imagine why someone would spend Rs 60 crore for such trash instead of hiring a good plot writer for much less. Which way the audience will swing remains to be seen but Mughal-e-Azam is sure isn't.
