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Dhoondte Reh Jaoge
Jan. 15th, 2012 03:11 pmDhoondte Reh Jaoge is the Bollywood retelling of The Producers. I watched it because I figured it would be almost impossible for it not to be amazing.
Behold! The impossible has been accomplished! Dhoondte Reh Jaoge is terrible. They’ve taken out all the singing and dancing, they’ve taken the Max Bialystock character beyond grandiosely sleazy into “actually a terrible person” territory, and they made a half-hearted attempt to make the Leo Bloom character a sympathetic and upstanding young accountant. He’s gotten fired from six accounting firms for refusing to turn to blind eye to corruption.
He is, actually, sympathetic and upstanding for the first hour. And then suddenly, faced with the possible loss of his would-be actress girlfriend, Neha, he comes up with the “Make a ton of money out of a Bollywood flop!” plan. But in this version, the Bialystock analogue doesn’t have to talk him into it; indeed, our upstanding young accountant is the one who talks the sleazy producer into cheating his way into a stack of cash.
Apparently the filmmakers realized that this made him significantly less upstanding and sympathetic, so they tried to spin it so that he’s not making this flop for the money but so that Neha can play a starring role. (Neha bears little resemblance to Ulla, but is a fully realized character in her own right: Dhoondte Reh Jaoge’s one improvement on the original.)
This would be sweet, except that he wants Neha to star in this Bollywood flop so that her acting dreams will be destroyed forever and she’ll marry him and spend the rest of her life beaming adoringly at him while feeding their screaming children. I’m not exaggerating. He has a daydream about this exact scenario.
RUN AWAY WITH THE MOVIE STAR, NEHA! HE’S BETTER FOR YOU!
If Neha actually ran away with the movie star, the film might be salvaged. But she ends up with the accountant, so the whole thing’s a dead loss.
Behold! The impossible has been accomplished! Dhoondte Reh Jaoge is terrible. They’ve taken out all the singing and dancing, they’ve taken the Max Bialystock character beyond grandiosely sleazy into “actually a terrible person” territory, and they made a half-hearted attempt to make the Leo Bloom character a sympathetic and upstanding young accountant. He’s gotten fired from six accounting firms for refusing to turn to blind eye to corruption.
He is, actually, sympathetic and upstanding for the first hour. And then suddenly, faced with the possible loss of his would-be actress girlfriend, Neha, he comes up with the “Make a ton of money out of a Bollywood flop!” plan. But in this version, the Bialystock analogue doesn’t have to talk him into it; indeed, our upstanding young accountant is the one who talks the sleazy producer into cheating his way into a stack of cash.
Apparently the filmmakers realized that this made him significantly less upstanding and sympathetic, so they tried to spin it so that he’s not making this flop for the money but so that Neha can play a starring role. (Neha bears little resemblance to Ulla, but is a fully realized character in her own right: Dhoondte Reh Jaoge’s one improvement on the original.)
This would be sweet, except that he wants Neha to star in this Bollywood flop so that her acting dreams will be destroyed forever and she’ll marry him and spend the rest of her life beaming adoringly at him while feeding their screaming children. I’m not exaggerating. He has a daydream about this exact scenario.
RUN AWAY WITH THE MOVIE STAR, NEHA! HE’S BETTER FOR YOU!
If Neha actually ran away with the movie star, the film might be salvaged. But she ends up with the accountant, so the whole thing’s a dead loss.
