Review: Halla Bol

Rajkumar Santoshi returns, and it's a pity the surprisingly tacky execution hits you harder than the material itself. Cliché after cliché follows in what inevitably feels like a dated version of Rang De Basanti, and succeeds only in leaving us mildly amused at the end of all the immense halla
Originally published on PASSIONFORCINEMA.COM

In what is otherwise perhaps the very definition of a thankless role, Vidya Balan in Halla Bol gets the unique distinction of being perhaps the first Hindi film heroine to so blatantly refer to a man’s genitals. As nasty reporters an journalists aggresively swarm around with their super-sleazy questions, the traditional-yet-modern and empowered pativrata naari defends her spouse with equal force- “I am proud of my husband- because…he’s got balls!”

It’s only such part-startlingly crude, part-positively howlarious scenes- also like the one in which Ajay Devgan unzips and pees on the corrupt Chief Minister’s prized carpet (”From Persia!”- he proclaims with uncontrollable glee) right in front of him (as if to provide conclusive evidence that he does, in fact have…well, never mind)- that remain with you after you walk out of the theatre.

That’s just about as er, ballsy that this Halla Bore gets, as Rajkumar Santoshi dishes out this surprisingly shoddy film after giving us Ghayal, Damini and more recently Khakee, where he admirably merged traditional Bollywood storytelling with cutting edge style and narration.

Ajay Devgan plays devious and corrupt superstar Sameer Khan- he dances to item numbers at weddings, cuts his co-stars roles, and merrily beds eager starlets- you get the picture (Up yours, Shahrukh, Akshay and…Shakti Kapoor(?)!”). Santoshi’s satirical look at the superficial and sordid world of stardom (yawn) is funny only because it is so archaic. Then, a murder takes place and Khan, who has witnessed the incident first hand, is immersed in guilt and his long forgotten idealistic past, which is then shown to us through an exhausting flashback which shows us the man hidden behind the star trappings- Ashfaque, once a naive theatre artiste nursing big dreams and doing street plays with reformed bandit Sidhu (Pankaj Kapur).

Okay, back to present- now maybe we will have some real action, the technical glitches- awful background score and inconsistencies in color and camerawork among them- notwithstanding. No such hope. Devgan shouts in vain- “Aawaz uthaani hogi!” while Darshan Zariwala has a field day hamming and repeatedly rattling off “Hamare paas paisa hai, power hai, public hai!" and the like. Halla Bol moves along in such a hopeless and cliched manner that after a point you are literally screaming for Pankaj Kapur to return on screen to rescue the hapless audience.

And when Kapur does arrive again, his glaring eyes literally seem to say- “I’m back” as bullets get miraculously deflected from the truck he rides, almost as if by the sheer force of his screen presence. He is the film’s real hero- chewing up the scenery and infusing life into the audience and the film- making the most embarassingly heavy dialogue and banal scenes credible, and showing us again what true class is all about.

Devgan (in a performance that is decent, but hardly affecting) and Santoshi are both talented people evidently going through bad times in their careers, and that is the only reason you can possibly pardon Halla Bol. Here’s hoping they rise above this mess soon- after all, what can be a worse paradox than a tired film trying to rouse us?