Road

it's been over two weeks since i saw road and i'm still not quite sure what to make of it....or in fact how to review it....so here goes nothing....

the plot isn't much to speak off....boy likes girl, girl likes boy, girl's father hates boy, so girl and boy run away to get married but out of the goodness of their heart stop to give lift to stranger who turns out to be psycho....chills, thrills and spills follow....with the occasional naach-gaana thrown in for good measure.....

writer rajnish thakur's idea is novel however his actual script has one too many holes.... eg. the ease with which manoj bajpai's character makes a sudden re-appearance after a fairly violent fight...or how the friendly truck driver who helps vivek oberoi's arvind vanishes and then reappears a couple of reels later....one or two gaffes are fine....but as the movie nears the end they begin to pile up to such an alarming extent that they take away from the movie....

having said that...for the second time in as many weeks....it's the actors who make the movie work.....like in shakti where the actors rose above a sub-standard movie...in road too, manoj bajpai, vivek oberoi and antara mali, especially the first two, raise the grade of the movie on the strength of their performances.....

after vivek oberoi's unusual but effective debut in company...it was common knowledge that he could act....his role in road helps us figure out if he can do all the other things expected of a conventional hindi film hero....can dance with style....check....can fight with style...check...can romance with style....check....can do everything done by every other hindi film hero since cinema's inception and can still leave his own personal stamp on the screen....check....mr. oberoi...welcome to super-stardom....i look forward to seeing you on my screen more often.....

much has been made of antara mali's "exposure"...especially in the song makhmali yeh badan...i didn't have too much of an issue with it esp. since the song refers very specifically to her badan...however if she does want to be taken seriously as an actress....she needs to stop taking fashion advice from kareena kapoor, sex symbol tips from urmila matdonkar and instead go have tea or lunch or anything with madhuri dixit or tabu or kajol even preity zinta or karishma kapoor and take copious notes on how to effectively combine screen presence, acting skill and sensuality.....

unsurprisingly the acting honours go to the talented manoj bajpai....this is the manoj bajpai i know and love....the one who effortlessly portrays the many shades of psychosis....he was psychotic but odd in kaun....psychotic but mean in aks and here he is psychotic but vulnerable.....his babu takes the simplest tasks like peering at lakshmi's belly piercing and turns it into an insight into an obviously sick mind....bajpai is by turns weird, freaky, nasty, child-like and always wonderful...i'm so glad he ditched the jodhpurs and went back to some real acting......

road is also a superior-looking movie....it's stylish and cool in a very mtv-like way.....the cinematography by sudeep chatterjee is excellent....helping the pace of the movie, capturing it's "something is not quite right here" ambience and effective in taking an inanimate object - the road and turning it into a character in it's own right.....the background score is also good though it does stoop to stealing from the score of "speed" once in a while......

the music on the other hand leaves much to be desired.....other than makhmali yeh badan....i could barely make out the difference between the other songs....in an effort to come up with a funky soundtrack....sandeep chowta goes over the top and comes up with something that sounds suspiciously like it was composed entirely in his kitchen with arbit banging on different pots and pans.....

also ineffective is the choreography.....i have had just about enough of seeing "choreographer" ganesh acharya make impromptu guest appearances on my screen (shakti and road in recent memory)....i watch bollywood films to see the stars shake their booty among other things....mr. acharya should leave the dancing to the people paid to do it and concentrate on the actual choreography.......antara mali looked like she was having an epileptic fit while doing aerobics on a moving conveyor belt....the last time i checked that was not a known dance style.....

rajat mukherjee's second film shows heavy rgv influences....the off-beat storyline, the unusual music, the stylised look with the usual list of rgv favorites as it's cast...but mukherjee is obviously a director of some talent.....it is difficult to execute something like road within the confines of bollywood formula....and mukherjee does a decent job...but like a large number of newer directors seems to have absolutely no sense of what to do with the songs...they all seem to be there coz it's a bollywood film and what's a bollywood film without songs.....

the best bollywood directors not only understand plot and pacing but also know how to use songs to either push the story forward or underline plot points....in road the songs do neither....they are almost all picturised as some sort of dream sequence, are badly placed and slow down the proceedings...like the first two songs come too close together....as a viewer i had barely gotten over the headache i had after the first song when i heard more ominous banging and screeching....if only mukherjee had also imbibed rgv's gumption of leaving out songs if they do not fit within the scheme of the film.....it would have been a less painful film to watch

a special mention has to be made of the bollywood gods who obviously took some time after the climax sequence of mujhse dosti karoge to give the over-used cupid fairy a break and send the fairy of new ideas and interesting scripts to visit the dreams of bollywood script writers and directors....though the quality of the films differ....they are at least all trying to be different.....

that being said....a special note to all of bollywood copycat directors (you know who you are!!!!!!) who after watching road have begun planning "rasta", "rahi", "chauraha" and "highway".....a film like road works inspite of it's flaws coz it's been over 20 yrs. since we saw the last bollywood road film (bombay to goa) and i hope to god all of you have the good sense to know that the audience hopes it will be another 20 yrs. till we see the next one....so go back to making "tu mere dil ka tota, main tere man ki maina" or whatever other diabetes-inducing crap you were planning to spew out....that atleast i can ignore......

final rating - 6.5/10 -watch it coz you may never have seen anything like it in bollywood