Movie Review : Kites

Rating : Above average (3.2/5)
Genre : Romance
Year : 2010
Running time : 2 hours 10 minutes
Director : Anurag Basu
Cast : Hrithik Roshan, Barbara Mori, Kabir Bedi, Kangana Ranaut, Nicholas Brown
Kid rating : PG-13




KITES : THIS ONE DOESN”T FLY !

Hrithik Roshan, bearded, raffish. She, luminous, expressive. The twain shall meet. Of course; bred on a staple diet of boy-meets-girl-and-they-live-happily-after, we take that for granted. However the two are at the time engaged to different partners and a life of easy money and insouciant wealth. Filmi romance dictates that practicalities are for fools (love conquers all, does it not ?), but these two – J (Roshan) and Linda (Barbara Mori) – are not your average desi romantics.

Anurag Basu directs this ambitious venture, and going by his last film “Life in a metro” I would have expected Kites to soar. Metro was a many textured film, delicately handled and subtly nuanced. Kites is very different, in it’s genre and in it’s treatment. It purports to be a poetic, modern-day Romeo & Juliet. Romeo played by our Bollywood-ian blue-eyed boy Hrithik takes on the character of J (or Jai ? I couldn’t tell), a small-time hustler who lives by his wits, and aspires for the easy way out. Linda/Natasha played by lithe Spanish actress Mori is J’s female counterpart of sorts. They both do well in the film and match each other in screen presence and vitality.

However here’s the bad news: there’s little else besides these two. The script is flat, and very been-there-done-that. Basu apparently, is so lost in the twosome that he forgets to embellish this threadbare story with the basics. There is little plot – so little that I could sum up this film in a single (short) sentence. And what little there is, is not bolstered up by believable dialogue, drama, or character-development but by a few ephemeral sequences and a whole lot of talk about amore. J and Linda might be able to survive on love alone, but I needed more.

Touted to be a “chase” film (romantic pair pursued by angry mobster anyone ?) the chase is so sedentary and fractured by affectionate reminiscing and flash-backs that it almost put me to sleep. Plus, Kites is burdened by the hammiest supporting cast ever. There’s Kabir Bedi as a Las Vegas casino boss, and his crew of over-the-top desi drones. Kangana Ranaut, who is a fairly good actress manages to not look her raggedy-thin self here, but is given so little screen-time as to almost have no impact on the film.

The film is tri-lingual; there’s Hindi, Spanish and English. There are sub-titles and while I could not fault Barbara Mori on her expressiveness, sign language or her miming skills, I tired of having to pay attention to the bottom of the screen after a while (how is this even going to run in small-towns ?)

After all that (and I could say a whole lot more) I will say that the film is slickly made, and shows polish in it’s presentation. Care is taken to frame camera angles, and Basu infuses scenes with poetic fervor. The lead pair get an A+ for their efforts. The music is about average. The background score is sing-songy and some sort of a fusion of languages and music styles (after being assailed by it for some time, I almost imagined that I was viewing an extended version of a Lucky Ali video)

It is a pity that Hrithik who does well when guided by a strong director, cannot rise above the bad script and inane dialogues. In fact while the Roshan’s have come up with successful Hrithik starrers (Kaho na pyar hai, Krishh), his best films are those NOT directed by Daddy dearest, e.g.; Lakshya, Jodha-Akbar etc. With a director like Anurag Basu I had hope, but swept up in romantic fluff, he seems to have lost his directorial moorings.

Kites will also be released in the International market as ”Kites : The Remix”, which is a 90 minute version edited by “Rush Hour 3” director Brett Ratner. The Remix opens in the US May 28th, a week after the original hit theatres. Cutting down the time might improve this flaccid fairy-tale, but in it’s desi form, Kites is at best, a one-time watch. If that.

Kid rating : Gratuitous violence earns this a PG-13 rating.