#CalendarGirls: Once upon a time
there was a director named Madhur Bhandarkar , who showed promise , made few genuinely
good films, flattered to deceive for a while till he became a victim of “Ram Gopal Verma” syndrome.
Thus started the obsession of showing a
mirror to society, through some absolutely shoddy pieces of work. The modus-operandi remains same, pick up few headlines, garnish them with some titillating
scenes, and sprinkle it with some sermonising. Calendar Girls is an extension
of that mediocrity.
The production quality is shabby,
acting is intolerable, dialogues are so terrible; it makes you wonder if the dialogue
writer was on extended dope, casting is messy and script is non existent. Most
of the scenes are so unimaginative that they make the soaps on Indian telly
look master class in comparison. In order to show that one of the selected
Calendar girl is from Kolkata the director decides to show us yellow taxi &
durga puja . Probably to make his film look contemporary, one of the character
in the film constantly talks about twitter & takes selfies . Rest in peace
Creativity.
As far as acting is concerned the debutantes could have easily been replaced by mannequins or to suit Bhandarkar’s
purpose by Sunny Loene playing multiple roles! Suhel Seth , Kiran Kumar &
Ronit Roy’s role could have been played by any dolt, if at all those characters
were necessary to the script . Oh, but then we forgot there was no script in
the first place! Probably during the filming of “Heroine” Bhandarkar developed a
fascination for bare legs & pushed up cleavage. And that fascination still
continues , however the audience has moved on and matured Mr. Bhandarkar.
At more than 140 minutes
Calendar Girls is an excruciatingly painful watch. So let the Mallyas have fun
with the Calendar Girls, the Madhurs make pretentious films on it, you spare yourself
the torture and better stay indoor with the good old calendar.
I will go out with a very
generous 1 out of 5 for Madhur Bhandarkar’s Calendar Girls. Sometimes after
watching such movies I realise probably “BAN” after all is not such a bad word!
