Director : Saurabh Kabra
Cast : Daya Shankar Pandey, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Urmila Matondkar, Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, Malaika Arora, Aashish Chaudhary, Neha Uberoi, Natasha Suri, Manoj Joshi, Pushkar Jog
Whenever you decide to go to watch a movie in a theatre then there are always one or more reasons behind it. For this movie I was rather interested to go to see it and the reason was its subject. Though there is no definitive formula for a successful movie, but I think to go for a topic or to express a subject which strikes the masses is always a good idea. In this way, you can involve the audience in the movie and thus create something memorable. This movie also revolves around very same idea that is the loan culture, something which is common to the masses now.
Debutant director Saurabh Kabra took inspiration from a real life incident where a recovery agent makes life miserable for the defaulters. The loan culture is now deep rooted in society; there is loan available these days for almost everything. But what happens when one is not able to pay? On very same topic the movie moves but with twist of Bollywood masala, and a bhai who is still in a hangover of Munnabhai.
The movie talks about four parallel stories which are somehow stuck in dilemma of EMI - Liya hai toh chukana padega. I will not write about it’s story because this is a review and not a synopsis! Nonetheless, it’s general idea goes like this. There is a woman Prerna (Urmilla Mantodkar), a widow who is stuck into the EMIs. There is a DJ Ryan(Arjun Rampal) who loves to be defaulter of credit cards and he never thinks twice before swiping a card to buy even most expensive stuff for his live-in partner Nancy (Malaika Arora Khan). Ryan is perfect conman and lies to everybody; even he lied to Sattar Bhai (Sanjay Dutt) and convinces Prerna to help him out.
Then there is the miserable father (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) who wants the life of his ever confused son to flourish and so comes up with new plan for his future every other day. To pay for his son's study abroad he takes a loan. His son who later changes his idea once more, leaves his father in debt and in EMI. Another story is about a Ashish, who borrowed heavily for his marriage and honeymoon. But his marriage goes on stake as things did not happen as he had planned and so he fails to repay the EMIs.
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Lastly we have Sattar bhai (Sanjay Dutt) who runs a very successful good luck recovery agency which works for various companies etc., to recover the money from defaulters. While Sattar Bhai runs good business, he also wants to go into politics. For this he needs to have a good image in public. He is that kind of a guy, who recovers money as well as solves the problems of the people. So you can see the Munnabhai hangover here, which is boring.
While movie starts and works on a good subject, but the Bollywood masala ruins it. The movie starts with a definitive idea of EMI but during movie you will find that it is getting diverted or it is getting too filmy. First half of the movie is dedicated to characters and later on movie gets into Bollywood style and its story lets us down.
Now performance wise, Sanjay Dutt stands apart! He has used his own style of Bhai which looks good but repetitive. Urmilla Mantodkar does not look good as she used to, but her performance is strictly OK. She looked imitative to me or simply her ways have not varied much.
Arjun Rampal is OK or rather good in his performance but he does not have had much share of the screen footage. Music is OK but feels like that it is unnecessary. The movie could have done better without most of the songs. And yes, Kulbhushan Kharbanda is interesting to watch, with a good performance once again. A few people like Ashish were not good in their act due to poor performance.
Seriously, EMI could have been a classic piece of work, but is totally ruined. In any case, it does have its share of laughs and well executed scenes. Overall it is an OK movie, to watch, if you have nothing else to watch.
My rating goes 2.25!
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