I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. -Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, 1903
I couldn’t have agreed more with this Samuel Butler quote than ever before as my New Year got off to a rousing start with me falling sick. Thankfully our official holidays are still going on so I can take some time out to rest and therefore am completely in the same state that Samuel Butler wanted me to be. But the kickoff of the next semester is not very far off so currently I am sort of getting into that mode with few trips to the college. I had a real tough time though yesterday in the snow storm and the fact that I am still quite well and no sign of fever means that my body is perhaps back in shape again to face the next week’s wrath!! But aside from that I am also pretty glad that this break is coming to an end as it was pretty much boring and all I did was sleep and watch several movies. If the boredom was not enough, the New Year was not too good for movie watching experience also. I started the New Year by watching two movies with high expectations and was pretty disappointed when both of them turned out to be terrible let downs.
My first watch was Ghajini, a remake of a Tamil Memento inspired flick. I have been a big fan of Aamir Khan,the actor but post-Lagaan,have never been a big fan of his movies(barring Rang De Basanti of course!!).Although I have found not a single person who agreed with me but I still state that Dil Chahta Hai had a too trashy a second half to be considered a good movie. Mangal Pandey and Fanaa are well not even worth mentioning. Taare Zameen Par was a movie made with a good heart but was surely not a great filmmaking. But still with so much buzz about the movie and everyone saying that it has great action and total commercial Bollywood movie, I was all excited about it. 30 minutes into the movie and I knew how terribly wrong I was. Except for Aamir, almost the entire cast seemed to be filled with a bunch of amateurs. The action was like watching a B-grade Sunny Deol movie and the direction was something that would have left Christopher Nolan in tears. The two things that made this movie watchable was some splendid chemistry between Aamir-Asin and some funky tunes from Rehman. All in all,it was 3 hours down the drain for me.
Transporter 3 was a movie that I never expected to go wrong. A brainless action flick with Jason Statham should rarely be given a miss. Just few weeks back I had watched Death Race, there was absolutely nothing in the movie except some senseless car bashing and explosions but you nevertheless love it because that’s just what you want!! And that’s the reason Transporter 3 was such a big disappointment. Not only were the explosions and the crazy action just few and far between but the romantic angle with the ugliest actress possible just dampened the New Year fun for me. After Crank, it was the only Jason Statham movie that managed to disappoint me and it’s timing could not have been worse.
Drawing comparisons between Ghajini and Transporter 3 is really interesting. While Aamir is taking revenge for his girlfriend's death, Jason Statham’s character is out to save his girlfriend from death. They both are helped by fellow confidantes who actually become real help only in the second half of both the movies. Both the characters are restricted in their actions by some handicaps. While it’s anti-reterograde amnesia in Aamir’s case, it’s a wrist bound device in Jason’s case which prevents him from going any farther than 75 feet from the car that he is driving without him being blown into smithereens. In fact, in the climax of both the movies, their handicaps prevent them from killing the main baddie inspite of him standing in front of them. They both fight dozens of henchmen before reaching the end. But while Aamir needs to explode into rage with all his eyes and ears puffing anger, Statham goes about to do the same thing in a cool calculated killing machine manner (watch him down an 8 feet giant with a flurry of 13 punches in 8 seconds and you will know what I mean!!). And the biggest similarity between them is that they are both terribly boring and waste of time. So In case any of you have still not watched it then just give it a miss without an apology!!
With just 3 more days left for the holidays to end I have few more movies to catch up on but with my experience of bad movies continuing even after the two movies (though I must say that Bridge to Terabethia and Revolutionary Road were both pretty good but too gloomy to be enjoyed in this holiday spirit),I am very much tempted not to and instead give that time to play some games, learn some software or write my much delayed manuscript!! As Sam Ewing once said “There's no thief like a bad movie.” But in my bankrupt state there is nothing more to lose than just “precious” time so maybe I would give the talkies another chance to redeem themselves!!
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