Mere Dad ki Maruti: sigh, really?

Yash Raj Films' youthful, lower-budget off-shoot Y-Films has thus far released three films: the excruciating Luv Ka The End, the fantastically charming Mujhse Fraaaandship Karoge, and now Mere Dad Ki Maruti, starring Saqib Saleem from MFK and Ram Kapoor as his angry father.

The storyline to this one is simple: Sameer's (Saqib Saleem) sister Tanvi (played by Benazir Shaikh) and her husband-to-be are getting a car from papa dearest as a wedding gift. The car? A red Maruti. Sameer, eager to impress a girl by the name of Jasleen (Rhea Chakraborty), takes the car for a spin and loses it. Cue a movie-long hunt for a replacement car by Saleem, Jasleen and Saleem's friend Gattu (Prabal Panjabi, who viewers will recognize from MFK, where he was also in the best friend role).

I talked about the unrelenting commercialism and shallowness of Luv Ka The End in the review I wrote for it, and am sad to note that instead of cashing in on MFK's youthful charm, this Y-Film decides to go out of its way to glorify material possession. I honestly wouldn't mind the whole film being a blatant commercial for a car (I didn't mention the model of the Maruti as to not participate in this marketing campaign, though I suppose just typing Maruti this many times will have progressed their evil scheme). but could they have made it a bit funnier?

The problem this time lies chiefly with the absolutely appalling portrayal of women in this film. Jasleen, who insists on her name being pronounced Jazzlin, is constantly the butt of jokes for being, well, dumb. There is almost nothing more to her character than the fact she is dumb, yet hot, making her dumbness forgivable and more like a lovable quirk by the end of the film. There is a point in the film where she accuses Sameer of thinking of her as being shallow, but at no point does the film really give us a more fleshed out picture of her. She comes off as your standard hottest girl in the school, who is as dumb as a box of rocks, and only cares for cute clothes and flash cars. It's so mind-bogglingly unfunny.

Then there's Tanvi, Sameer's sister, who doesn't get much of a characterization other than yelling at him, but strangely enough, does get a song number. She performs a song at her sangeet, for her fiancee. She miscalculates and performs a very raunchy song about their upcoming wedding night, in front of their families, leading to much embarrassment in the audience. The entire scene is beyond weird: it's half-way between a serious, raunchy song-and-dance number, and embarrassment comedy, and it's not strictly speaking funny or sexy. It's just cringe-inducing, and again, the only person besides Tanvi dumb enough not to realize how embarrassing this is, is actually the family's mother. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I won't even get into the running joke where people mistakenly believe Gattu is poor, or from a poor family. That is the entire joke - that people think he's poor. Ha?

I won't deny that there are a couple of genuinely good laughs tucked into this messy flick: the finale absolutely made me laugh a ton, and there are a couple of side characters who made me chortle a few times as well. I absolutely love Saqib Saleem, and even if his character was an asshole here, I did enjoy his performance, and it didn't diminish my love for him any. Ram Kapoor was also very good. I won't judge the actresses harshly - like I said earlier, they had very little to work with. 

The songs are grating - the English, the rap, the verses mostly just praising the heroine's hotness don't exactly make for an edifying mix. Saleem is a very good dancer, though, and I think if anything this film proves that the man should move onto bigger and better things. Y-Films products can be excellent, and have personality beyond the glossy Hinglish exterior - we saw that with MFK. So what happened here? I'd put my money on it just being laziness. These are lazy jokes with poorly written characters. It ranks slightly above LKTE in my books, but not high enough to actually be a recommendation. Just go rewatch MFK, in all honesty - I've rewatched it recently and it's enjoyable for a second viewing.

Beginning of Y-Film but Luv Ka The End.

Last month I reviewed Mujhse Fraaaandship Karoge, a fun youth caper of purposefully mistaken identity and then some. Out of curiosity I decided to check out Y-Films' first venture, Luv Ka The End, another tale of college-age kids and their bizarre relationships. And while watching this film, a realisation suddenly hit me: Y-Films is essentially importing the American teen comedy format into an Indian, middle class/upper middle class urban setting. And why not? Teen comedies work, and even if the kids are a bit older here, they seem to act in the same way that they do in the American ones: they care about cliques and clothes and friends, and they especially care about the opposite sex. Parents, on the other hand, are barely visible, as they merely get in the way of fun.

The sad thing is that if MFK is Clueless, Luv Ka The End is American Pie. It's not just the crassness of the humour, and the vaguely offensive elements (like homophobia) that makes me conjure up this comparison -- it's also that MFK, for its flaws, has the potential to be a fun youthful little film that's rooted in a very certain time but will probably be worth watching for years to come, whereas LKTE already feels try-hard and annoying.

But let's talk plot: Luv Nanda is the boyfriend of our female lead, Rhea, and on her 18th birthday, she has promised to spend the night with him for the first time. However, soon after Rhea being forced to cancel the date due to unexpected circumstances, she finds out that Luv, who seems to care more for his car than for her, is indeed a grade-A asshole, to a ridiculous degree. Together with two of her girlfriends, she hatches a plan to revenge him for cheating on her.

It's like Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl, only on some sort of overly sweet teenage party juice, that makes the film feel hyperactive, every single character needlessly exaggerated (and I'm not just talking filmi exaggerated), superficial and hopelessly devoid of any genuinely likable characteristics. It's a shame, because this could have been Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl, just with a lesser budget, and taking place during the course of one night. Instead the film is just kind of unpleasant to sit through. As awful as Luv's character is (and trust me, he is truly a despicable character!) you don't feel much sympathy for the girls seeking revenge, either, as they're also loud, stereotypical and annoying. Where MFK breathed life into its characters, this film fails to do so.

There's a guest appearance at the end of the film that almost made the watching experience worth it for me; fans of the guest star will probably already know who I'm talking about. But even so, I wouldn't recommend this one.

Muhjse Fraaandship Karoge: triple-A rated Y-Film.

Buzz or hype are both ridiculous-sounding words for a very real phenomenon, which can often make or break a film-watching experience. If you've heard a film praised to high heavens, it can be hard to reconcile the fact that you didn't find it that good. As a rule, I tend to avoid reading that much about films before seeing them, to avoid this, but sometimes, you've really got to glad for the existence of buzz.

This is one of those times.

I'm sure not that many of us have been keeping a keen eye on Y-Films, Yash Raj Films' youthful out-shoot. Their first film, Luv Ka The End, wasn't exactly popular with the audiences. But thankfully despite this, some people did go see Mujhse Fraandship Karoge (that's three A's, just so you know!) and reported back, and that reporting back seemed to unanimous: this is a fun, little film, definitely worth seeing.

And so, with this little online buzz behind it, I checked out MFK and also found it delightful. The premise is a bit of silly spin on You've Got Mail, which was in itself a silly spin on The Little Shop Around the Corner: two people, who in real life loathe one another, and are constantly running into arguments, interact with each anonymously via other means (in this case, Facebook) and discover to have great chemistry together. You can see the premise coming a mile away, but the way the film deals with this and the complicated little web of lies the leads form, is refreshing. The film is well-directed, well-edited, and well-acted. It doesn't reach for mountains but manages to be a better film than a lot of films with bigger budgets and bigger stars.

So consider this short review another push for more eyes to see this flick. It's not without flaws (for example, I had my doubts whether the film portrays the hip youthful college culture as accurately as it wants to), but it aims for something and absolutely succeeds in that aim, in my eyes. It's a good, fluffy Hinglishy film, that doesn't fail to entertain.