It starts off promisingly. Buddhadev Gupta, (Amitabh Bachchan) the 64-year-old fiercely proud owner of the best Indian restaurant in London.
Sugar daddy he’s not
Cheeni Kum
Direction: R Balki
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Tabu, Paresh Rawal, Zohra Sehgal
Rating: ** 1/2
It starts off promisingly. Buddhadev Gupta, (Amitabh Bachchan) the 64-year-old fiercely proud owner of the best Indian restaurant in London, has a run in with a customer over a dish of Hyderabadi zafrani pulao. The customer is Neena Verma, (Tabu) 34-years-old, never been married, visiting London. When she returns the next day with an impeccably cooked plate of the same, you know things will happen between the two.
It does, with lots of lighter moments, inane ones and some gross ones too (in which the adult Gupta behaves like a blushing school boy when he has to buy condoms). By the first half when the two have decided to get married, you’re all ready to put up the balloons.
Let out the air though. Turns out the cool young lady who doesn’t balk a bit at the 30-year gap has a tetchy father (Paresh Rawal) who would rather fast till death than let his daughter marry the ‘old man’. Buddha who can’t cope with this, behaves in a rather frumpy manner himself as the proceedings get sillier and sillier.
Adding to our woes are the constant inter-cuts to Buddha’s nine-year-old neighbour in London, Sexy, who is dying of cancer. For some unexplained reason this allows her to dispel gyan like an 80-year-old, which she gleans from ‘A’ rated DVDs. While this is cute to begin with it can get on your nerves over the duration of the film. Happy to report then that Buddha’s mother, the sprightly Zohra Sehgal is uniformly funny.
Amitabh Bachchan is very good even when the scenes are going all awry like the one at the Qutub Minar in the latter part of the film. Tabu has more reactions than actions and underplays well. Paresh Rawal is not his usual self; he doesn’t grab you at all.
P C Sreeram’s intimate camerawork sets the mood for the film as does Ilaiyaraaja’s melodious tunes.
‘Cheeni Kum’ is a cleverly written script with lots of moments to keep it going. Unfortunately, this is true only of the first half after which it is like a fish floundering out of water. Rather like advertising copy (its writer- director is R Balki, an advertising man) it gets the idea across succinctly, the rest is sheer padding. At almost two and a half hours, it’s way, way too long.
indumirani@gmail.com
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