Ustad, jamoora & their tamasha

[1]

Image Thumbnail: 

movr3.jpg [2]

Go back, return to those days when, on a slow afternoon, you’d hear the dug-dug of a damru and run in its direction. Inside a thick ring of people on a street corner, Ustad would be walking around Jamoora in circles, shouting questions.

Jamoora would answer, but be forever distracted — often he’d scratch his head, pretend to catch a frisky lice and nail it. Everyone would laugh and feel the urge to scratch the sudden itch on their scalp.
Writer-director Siddique is Ustad and Salman Khan his Jamoora. And this is pretty much how the Bodyguard tamasha plays out:
Ustad: Jamoore!
Jamoora: Haan Ustad!
Ustad: Aaj bachcha log ko khel dikhlayega?
Jamoora: Dikhlaunga.
Ustad: Naach ke dikhayega?
Jamoora: Dikhaunga!
Ustad: Ud ke batlayega?
Jamoora: Batlaunga!
Ustad: Shirt utarega?
Jamoora: Utarunga!
Ustad: Public ko hasayega?
Jamoora: Hasaunga!
Ustad: Ladki ko patayega?
Jamoora: Pataunga!
Ustad: Katrina ko nachwayega?
Jamoora: Nachwaunga!
Ustad: Hit dilwayega?
Jamoora: Dilwaunga!
Ustad: Story likhwayega?
Jamoora: Nahin Ustad. Uske bina hi kaam chalaunga.
Ustad: Jai Kali Kalkatte wali, tera vachan na jaye khali. Bachcha log, bajao tali.

AND SO they are clapping, as if on cue, since Bodyguard released on Id. The film’s first day box-office collections were a neat Rs 20 crore. People who count films in cash say that Bodyguard could well become the biggest hit of all time. Greater than Dabangg, greater than 3 Idiots and, maybe, even greater than Rajini Sir’s blockbusters.
I don’t know. Cash registers don’t ring for me. Films do.
I watched Bodyguard in a single-screen theater in Old Delhi on Id. The vibe was unbelievable. Happy, eager boys were swaying with excitement, like worshippers waiting for their god. I was in upper stall and could not connect what was playing on the screen with the reaction it was getting from the boys in stall seats.
Bodyguard is by far one of the most boring and annoying movies I have seen.
Bodyguard’s story, if one can call it that, is narrated by a female voice and unfolds in flashback. It’s the story of a girl’s life that she wrote down for her son in a brown rexine diary. We won’t know who she is till the very end, but that doesn’t really matter.
According to the girl, it all began one fateful day when bodyguard Balwant Singh and his pregnant wife met with an accident. Balwant and wife died, but his maalik, Sartaj Singh (Raj Babbar), saved the unborn child. The child grew up to become Lovely Singh (Salman Khan), a bodyguard forever indebted to Sartaj.
Sartaj lives in a large haveli in Jaisinghpur and is the local mai-baap. So when a mother comes crying to him, requesting him to save her daughter and other girls who are being taken in a ship to be sold in Thailand, he dials the number of Tiger Security. The man who runs Tiger Security says he’ll send just one guy because “sirf aankhon se ghoor kar voh opposition ki pant geeli kar deta hai.” Seetiyan.  
Lovely, who is in a local train going in the opposite direction, leaps out on hearing that the assignment is from Sartaj. He hops on speeding trains and lands straight in the ship. Dhishum-dhishum, kick a few, smash the others, swing about, crack a crotch joke and take position for a crate to land and break on his head, spitting out tiny, white thermocol balls that dance around him in an aesthetic, computer-generated choreography. Seetiyan.
Mission accomplished, Lovely returns to his office where his boss tells him that there’s another assignment from Sartaj. Lovely has to guard the body of Sartaj’s daughter Divya (Kareena Kapoor), a student of Symbiosis, Pune.
But before proceeding for Pune, Lovely Singh, maid Savita, servant Tsunami Singh and Divya’s friend Maya (who we are not introduced to properly and assume she is some random bechari living on Sartaj’s generosity) congregate at Sartaj’s haveli. Mistaken identities mean that Lovely’s entry into Divya’s life is with an impressive dhishum-dhishum.
Cut to Pune where all settle down nicely in a house that stands on a green landscaped mound.
Lovely, all polite and chivalrous, follows Divya and Maya (Hazel Keech) wherever they go. Divya is embarrassed to have him around in college, so she plots to get rid of him. This involves making phone calls to Lovely from an unlisted number (i.e. Divya’s phone) and pretending to be Chaya, a girl in Divya’s college in love with Lovely.
The brilliant and brave bodyguard doesn’t once recognise Divya’s voice nor does he figure her phone number. But, as instructed by Ustad, Jamoora falls in love, sings, dances, gets Katrina to shake her stuff, takes off his shirt and saves Divya repeatedly from threatening men and their sharp steel instruments. In between all this, comic relief is provided by Tsunami Singh’s large and smoking buns, T-shirts with funny one-liners and Lovely’s phone that’s always on vibrate-mode in his back-pocket.
At the end, the girl’s voice returns to usher in a mildly interesting twist involving a little boy who is Lovely’s son, but not Divya’s. But it’s too late.

IN BODYGUARD, all sets and scenes exist just so they can be smashed by Salman Khan and computer geeks to smithereens. There is no logic or continuity in the story. Nothing leads to something. Everything just arrives, mostly with a thud — undying love, killer helicopters, goondas, songs, marriage, child. We sit like zombies, apathetic to characters and proceedings.
Salman, obviously taken in by his own superstardom, doesn’t bother with acting here. He mockingly impersonates Lovely Singh. But he does focus on fight sequences, and it shows. The film’s climatic stunt where Salman is temporarily blinded is fabulous.
Kareena Kapoor is thin, pretty and her styling is super. But she looks and acts as if she drifted into Bodyguard from another, better film. Director Siddique obviously figured that no sparks would be flying between Salman and Kareena and so the two don’t have a single romantic scene together. Also, of course, that would have required some acting, and that’s not what Ustad had signed up Jamoora for.