I had the good luck of catching Bharat recently - and i say good luck, because the tickets were cheap on a weekday and the theatre was free of Bhai-crusaders. I didn’t pay a bomb for this, so it was pretty vasool for me, but I haven’t done movie reviews in forever (Kalank went off screens before I got to it and I’m not desperately sad enough to go watch SOTY 2), so needless to say I was itching to do this. Despite some excellent supporting actors like Sunil Grover and Shashank Arora and some comedy at the expense of logic, there’s stuff that cannot ever make sense to me.
Here goes - My 10 point review of why you should/shouldn’t watch this movie which is like five movies rolled into one.
1. Rohit Shetty has Masala, Akshay Kumar has National, Bhai has Mas-ational. Equal parts desh-Bhakti, equal parts Bhai ki Bhakti, peppered with Katrina’s Alphonso sucking face (even as she eats a Jalebi) and Bhai’s gym membership ad worthy body. Mas-ational is the way to go sometimes! This is like Bajrangi Bhaijaan in reverse, because here Bhai is looking for someone and still uses media to find her. Also, watch out for the bonus national anthem out of NOWHERE in one scene!
2. Jackie Shroff in a uniform, bidding his son to take care of his siblings has a unsweet Dhoom 3 ring to it. Also, I feel for this man, who never gets costume changes and always gets to appear only in flashbacks in movies nowadays! Cut Bhidu, some slack yaar. Also, Jackie Shroff + Sonali Kulkarni + Hindu/Muslim angles at times = Got me waiting for someone to scream “Beta Altaaf” and someone to sing Bhumro Bhumro a la Mission Kashmir.
3. Disha Patani’s acting is so abysmal, that if she was a dish in Gordon Ramsay’s Masterchef, he would pick up the knife and stab himself to death. She’s like the Karela which you can dress up in a dollop of cheese, roll in Panko crumbs, deep fry and serve with jalapeño dips and it’ll still be Karela at the end of it. She looks great and hey, she also makes it through a movie without being killed off, but she can be award winning only when someone makes a movie about how a mannequin learnt how to dance. Like Happy Feet for mannequins in Macy’s maybe.
4. Katrina Kaif’s Hindi is now officially better than my husband’s Kannada; and he’s been in Bangalore 9 years now. So, she’s a living example of “if you really want something and have Bhai’s blessings, the universe conspires to help you achieve it”. She however looks beautiful, sans all make up, even if she fills Government forms with a pen that she holds like MF Hussain’s paintbrush.
5. Do you remember the circus from childhood? Where you would enter to the wafting smells of elephant poop and monkey stench. Where a very old man juggled some balls, where you saw another old man cut a woman in half. The circus in Bharat is nothing like that. It’s the rich man’s circus in a poor city. It’s the Hunger Games of circuses. 50% of Bharat’s budget went in the lighting of the circus.
6. Fact-finder’s nightmare - Bharat goes somewhere in the middle-east to work in an oilfield. No, I did not forget the name of the country, they actually said “Somewhere in the middle-east” and kept calling it Arab. Which country did Bharat go to - Sequel material maybe.
7. Bharat gets to romance his boss or who he calls Madam Sir. It’s almost like hmmm, what have never done in my career which the other Khans have done. Oh, they did Yes Boss, Maya Memsaab and Raja Hindustani. I gotta romance ze boss!
8. Bharat’s punjabi mother approves of his live in relationship and approves of his girlfriend gatecrashing her daughter’s wedding, putting on an item number and saying that your son ditched me. Please woman, no self respecting Punjabi mother in law is this nice or accommodating - They would never let Kat go without a phat-phat Angrezi bolti hai or Dekho kitni moofat hai snub. And live-in? Log Kya kahenge? Come on, Sonali, Character!!!
9. Terrible makeup of old Bharat and old Madam Sir. They’re practically Snapchat filters in reverse of themselves, though I suspect Salman’s is closer to reality than anyone believed.
10. Finally, this is an ode to Salman’s real life. He has this big-ass family, some fairly useless (Read: Arbaaz), he works really hard to take care of them, refuses to marry and lives in with his girlfriend because, parivaar. This movie is just Salman Khan waving the middle-finger at every media person who says Sir aapki Shaadi kab hogi.
This could definitely be a 20 point review, but i must hold myself back, coz Izzat. Sayonara, until the next one hits the screens!
