Are you ready to endure two dozen noisy characters for one underplayed Salman Khan? If the answer is yes, Ready is the film for you.
Salman Khan almost gets into real-life role-play as Prem Kapoor, the most eligible bachelor in a Hum Saath Saath Hain kinda extended joint family. Enter Sanjana (Asin), a runaway bride who poses as a prospective bahu in the Kapoor clan. Anees Bazmee's fascination for keeping the audiences hanging on and his actors suspended from hilltops ( No Entry, Welcome ) continues as Sanjana and Prem 'fall' in love.
But Sanjana is sandwiched between two ham-burger mamajis (Akhilendra Mishra, Sharat Saxena) who are behind her ancestral assets. Prem befriends the chartered accountant (Paresh Rawal) common to both mamajis , to get close to their families. Bazmee almost revisits his earlier film Welcome , as Prem goes on a family furbishing mode by taming the rowdy ruffians and reuniting the separated siblings in their sixties.
Remade from the 2008 Telugu film Ready (Genelia D'Souza, Ram), the screenplay is adapted in fast-food format with clichéd conflicts and so many characters that you lose count after a point of time. Understanding the character correlations is a task that could even baffle the Barjatyas. The director keeps his task simple by sticking to his brand of loud comedy, over-the-top acts, caricatured characters and silly slapstick.
The first half involves running around the trees (read beating around the bush) while the actual story starts only in the second half. The graph of the narrative does pick up somewhere in the second half but the tempo falls intermittently thanks to the convoluted writing and the protracted proceedings. By the time the film reaches its melodramatic high-voltage climax giving Salman simulated scope to go topless, it leaves you exasperated.
The entire villain tribe is unusually unkempt and intentionally irritating. The sidetrack of the pampered spoilt grandson (Mohit Baghel) being subjugated by Salman's buffoonery is annoying. Sajid-Farhad's dialogues don't elevate the humour much and when Salman expresses romance with lines like ' main kutta hoon, yeh kutiya hain ', you know the film is going to the dogs. The music is inspired and the action has impact though thankfully not overdone.
Salman Khan looks suave, has smashing screen presence and seems in his comfort zone employing his standard set of dancing, acting and action skills. Quite unusual of him, he underplays his role in the second half and does a decent job at it. Asin looks good and shares comfortable chemistry with Salman. Mahesh Manjrekar, as a person who is at loss of words, reprises almost the same kinda character that Suniel Shetty played a decade back in Awara Pagal Deewana . Paresh Rawal is regular. Standup comedian Sudesh Lahiri gets the funniest scenes. Akhilendra Mishra hams outrageously as if he still is in the hangover of his Chandrakanta days. Arya Babbar is reduced to a junior artist. Nikitin Dheer is unrecognizable, not that he is a popular face. Child standup comedian Mohit Baghel is annoying. Amidst cameos, one wonders what Chunky Pandey was doing in the film?
If you are still ready to not see beyond Salman Khan in the film, Ready is the film for you!
Raja Sen reviews Ready
Raja feels Ready doesn't even try to make sense and therefore falls flat. Post YOUR reviews here!
One of the most frequently repeated terms to describe and legitimise Bollywood's silliest products is "paisa vasool." This patronising yet appreciative phrase denotes giving up, the person using the term confessing that while the film in question is harebrained and stupid, it may still end up a sequel-spawning behemoth at the box office.
Salman Khan's recent films frequently fall into this category, lovers of the "paisa vasool" phrase gorging on the predictable mindlessness: a few rude gags, a few politically incorrect ones, each tragically unfunny, a sketchy plot that nevertheless must be spelt out in full, some sexist dialogue to the heroine, some random Sallu Bhai in-jokes, one climactically hyped moment of shirtlessness. Yet the phrase is used just like it would be at a shaadi buffet with mediocre catering -- we call it "paisa vasool" because we don't actually spend a single coin to watch it.
If, however, I had to pay to watch Ready, Anees Bazmee's latest film, I would feel sorely insulted. One doesn't and can't really take offense at a bad film, but a film that doesn't even try… Now that's a whole different league of idiocy. It's all very well to turn Priyadarshanese into a bloody genre, but films like Ready often don't even feel like actual films: just a showcase of Sallu Bhai and his intentionally-limited skills. The plot is puerile, the characters are stock, and the heroine is a prop, all so that Salman can strut around like a megastar and some of us can applaud indulgently as if watching a twelve-year-old paint the roof of a chapel. With a chappal. (Yeah, that pun would have made it into Bazmee's script easy.)
To make things clear, this is not Dabanng. Looking at that historically huge hit, one can see what works: Salman swaggers around the place in a moustache, sure, but there is also a fundamental reliance on plot, however inanely formulaic. In this latest film, Khan seems to be pushing his own rather frightening envelope — "How little can I get away with?" "Will they pay to just watch me smirk?" "Can I do this scene campy and that scene straight?" "Will the audience eat up random groin thrusts if only I use the hilarious word 'peoples' over and over again?" — and Ready, as a result, falls flat for lack of trying. It is a film trying to coast on Salman while Salman tries to coast on his own star-wattage, and so we have a film with a first half that takes ages to get going and a second half that just doesn't end.
The plot, seemingly filched from Bazmee's own, far funnier Welcome, with a pinch of Priyadarshan's Hulchul, revolves around two warring mafia families trying to nab a young girl's inheritance. It unfolds simply, conveniently, and very predictably indeed. After all it is just backdrop. There are a few gags, of course, and Khan occasionally does as only stars very aware of their own deification can: sell an impossible scene, and despite all the bad writing, make it work simply by dint of his screen presence. But even that seems mostly muted in this nothing film.
I have previously remarked that Asin's last name must secretly be Ine, and here the actress is even more insufferable than before, and doesn't even look nice while she annoys. Mahesh Manjrekar, Manoj Joshi, Sharat Saxena do what they can, but this film -- where the comedic highpoint is the fact that two morons are named after Salman flops, Veer and Yuuvraaj — doesn't give anyone, especially the talented and creatively abused Paresh Rawal, any wiggle room.
Those who are clapping for this film almost got the phrase right, only it's more extortionate than value for money: the accurate term is "paisa vasooli." Pay up.
Rediff Rating:
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