Kites

I watched 'Kites' after work on Friday. 8pm show. First day of release. And the theater was half-empty!

I may have nothing new to add to what’s already been said about the movie all over the papers & the internet, but I didn’t pay 310 bucs for nothing! So I’m going to trash the movie even more.

Here’s a quick no-brainer - What does it mean when you let off a man who's obsessed with killing you and has been chasing you tirelessly throughout the country, a country as big as the United States at that, and when you finally have him in your trap, you let him off by saying “Main tumhe maarne nahin, samjhaane aaya hoon. Mera peechha chhod do”? And then you let him off, just like that!

It means you will die and so will the others with you. And that’s exactly what happens in 'Kites'. Our hero is obviously stupid, and thanks to his stupidity he dies and so do his wife and his best friend.

There are many other loopholes in the story. How can a man have 11 legal marriages? How come the entire Las Vegas police department is running around the country along with the villian who's chasing the hero & heroine? Do they have nothing better to do? How can the unarmed hero single-handedly cause multiple police car crashes, roll cars off trailers onto police cars, jump from one moving vehicle to another, jump from a car he's driving onto a hot air balloon that's already in the air etc. while the cops are dying away like flies?

Then there are hilarious dialogue such as “Mujhe desert mein akela marne ke liye chhod gayi?”

And then there’s Hritik Roshan’s hideous attempt at doing an American accent. I say ‘hideous’ and not miserable, because I don’t think he tried hard enough in the first place. And that’s what gets me up the wall - Indian actors boast so much about being talented and dedicated and committed to their craft & their profession, but when the time comes to put in an effort to portray a character convicingly, most of them don’t go that extra mile. If you’re showing an Indian as an American citizen, implying that he was either born in America or moved there at a very young age, he should speak with an American accent. Not some strange put-on accent.

So what was the undoing of 'Kites', according to me?

An intelligent filmmaker (Anurag Basu) directing a massy, nonsensical movie written by Rakesh Roshan, to show off his son's green eyes & six pack abs. The plot hangs by the thread, and that’s a real shame given that 'Kites' is based on a beautiful and very original premise – that kites always soar in pairs and one always ends up bringing the other down.

They could have had a gripping story about love and betrayal had they tweaked it a little bit and executed it better. The story was right up Anurag Basu's alley. In fact, he could’ve made the same movie in his own style - gritty, low budget and made with the aim of telling a story and not paying homage to Hritik Roshan's good looks & rippled abs - and done a very good job of it!

The best thing about 'Kites' is Barbara Mori. She's really pleasant on the eyes, emotes well despite the language barrier and puts in a restrained performance even in the most emotional & dramatic scenes. Not shrieking, yelling over the top like our Indian actresses, Kajol included.

PS: On an aside, multiplex tickets have become ridiculously high. 310 bucs for the fifth row from the screen!! To sit amidst popcorn & soft drink glasses littered all over the place!! They don't even bother to clean the theater before the next show. And I’m talking about Fame Adlabs, not some small time local multiplex. So Fame Adlabs, you guys suck. I think I am going to revolt - given the care-a-damn attitude of the staff at Indian multiplexes, I'm going to refuse to pay anything above 200 bucs for a movie. They don't deserve a penny more.