Karzzz
Anupama Chopra, Consulting Editor, Films
A cartoon in a recent New Yorker magazine showed a director pitching a movie to a studio head. The director suggests: Let’s remake an old classic with worse everything. The pitch meeting for the new Karz must have been similar. Director Satish Kaushik’s Karzzz is Subhash Ghai’s 1980 cult film with worse everything. Let’s begin with the hero, Himmesh Reshmmiya. In the publicity interviews for the film, Himmesh has repeatedly declared that he should not be compared to Rishi Kapoor, the original film’s hero because while Rishi was a handsome star, he, Himmesh is not at all good looking. The humility is appreciated but stating the truth doesn’t change it.
Himmesh, despite intensive styling and waves of hair on his head, remains, an acquired taste. He continues to sing with his trademark nasal twang but the unkindest cut is that here he tries hard to act. The scenes in which he attempts to emote by narrowing his eyes and furiously moving his lips are pure comedy. His new heroine, Shweta Kumar redefines vapid. So Urmila Matondkar, who plays the murderous wife Kamini, must carry the burden of acting for all three of them. She delivers admirably, pursing her lips, widening her eyes and giving us five expressions when only one would have sufficed.
This Olympics of bad acting is constantly interrupted by brain dead Himmesh songs. A sample of the lyrics: If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right, Tandoori Nights, Tandoori Nights. Giving the songs stiff competition are the dialogues. At one point, Himmesh playing the rock star Monty is trying to convince Kamini that he is the reincarnation of her long dead husband. He says he will give her intimate details that only a husband can know and proceeds to say:Jab tum kiss karti ho tumhari aank hen band ho jaati hain.Monty presumably knows many people who kiss with their eyes open.
The original Karz was a superbly orchestrated melodrama. Ghai created moments that still have the power to make your hair stand on end. Watch the climax when Kamini, played by a wonderfully elegant and icy Simi Garewal, becomes unhinged and admits that she killed her husband.
The new Karzzz is a clossal joke. At six or eight reels, it would have been a wonderful unintentional comedy – a so bad that it’s good film to add to classics like Manoj Kumar’s Clerk and Sheetal’s Honey. But at 18 reels, Karzzz is prolonged torture, steer clear.
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