Rating : Below average(2.9/5)
Genre : Drama
Year : 2006
Running time : 2 hrs and 41 minutes
Director : Priyadarshan
Cast : Kareena Kapoor, Neha Dhupia, Anupam Kher, Shahid Kapoor
CHUP CHUP KE : Medieval cinema makes a comeback !
Watching CCK makes me remember the old Southie-based films starring white-shoed Jeetendra and the very young and plump Sridevi. In most of these films Sridevi would be the hot-pant-donning, much-coddled daughter/sister/niece of a feudal landlord, and Jeetendra would be the modern upstart come to whisk the princess away from her medieval and cosy jail. CCK is very similar. There is no Kader Khan ofcourse, so we have Paresh Rawal, Om Puri and Rajpal Yadav doing the needful. It is indeed a pity that a fine actor like Yadav is forced to do these 2-bit, excrutiatingly stupid roles. Set in what can only be described as feudal times, where cocooned-in-the-family’s-bosom women are protected so much so that wars rage at the drop of a tear, CCK gives you a dose of uncalled for bad-film nostalgia.
Ok, so a we have a good-for-nothing, spineless young man Jeetu (Shahid Kapoor) deep in debt, after attempting to setup one unsuccesful business after another. Don’t blame my prejudices for the harsh description, the guy really is depicted as a big-time wastrel. His old father (Kher) is harassed and humiliated by the daily calls of various money-lenders but that does not stop our young man from trying to get his father to take the onus of repaying the loans. His mother is however still full of “motherly love” and waits on him to serve him hot food. And that’s not all, the SW (spineless wastrel) has a beautiful young fiancee Pooja () in love with him (what does she see in him ? Your guess is as good as mine). So what does SW do ? He committs suicide ofcourse – to let the money-lenders collect from the insurance money. However his attempt at suicide is also unsuccesful, and he ends up in a fisherman’s net.
When awakened from his near drowning, Jeetu finds himself in Kolkata, in the august presence of boat owner Gundya (Rawal) and fisherman and sidekick Bandya (Yadav). Jeetu being the limpet that he is pretends to be deaf and dumb, so that he can sponge off them. However he finds himself “mortgaged” to Prabahat Singh (Puri) in return for Gundya’s boats, and thus ends up as a servant in a palatial haveli in Kolkata. Here he meets Prabhat Singh’s beautiful daughter Meenakshi (Dhupia) and dumb (not deaf) niece Shruti (Kareena Kapoor). Shruti is having a hard time getting married because of her disability. Although she is the apple of her brother’s eye, Mangal Singh (Shetty) the brother who cannot stand to see his princess in tears, is ready to marry her off by promising enormous amounts of dowry.
When, many convolutions later, Jeetu and Shruti fall in love, Mangal is ready to get them married. However, in the Bollywood tradition of timeliness, Jeetu’s father, mother and fiancee (the fiancee’s been living as a widow since Jeetu’s death !) appear at the marriage mandap. Will spineless Jeetu be forced to choose between Shruti and Pooja ? . . . Hmm, what a quandary ! Do consider the elements that make up this mess – a weak-kneed caricature of a man, and 2 women with very, very low self-esteem who want nothing more than to become the property of a certified good-for-nothing free-loader. Ah, the opportunities life presents !
This film, in it’s story, demeanour, and dialogue might have fitted it’s locale, had the locale been a rural village in the 1800s, instead of bustling modern-day Kolkata. It transported me to a time (was there ever such a time ?) when a city/town bred, educated young woman decides to wear whites, discard all pleasures of life, in honor of a missing fiance. And the man in question is not much bothered by the fact that he has a fiancee somewhere and is content to gambol wwith other women. Still ofcourse the “good boy” image persists, and we keep the tradition of the “pativrata” nari alive in Bollywood. I am left fuming that the film carries a flag for the righteousness of living like a widow – atrocious in this day and age. Do the censors not feel the need to edit out such regressive messages ?
The direction and acting is average. The songs are not hummable. The characters are annoying and the really big flaw in this film is it’s stupidity. Priyadarshan’s losing his touch.
