Miss Tanakpur Haazir Ho

why we make movies like this one is beyond my understanding! Only in India we would make fun of ourselves so badly!! the makers of this movie, i feel are ashamed to be associated with such a grand country. the actors in this movie must be desperate for money to have to agree to do such a movie. I am sure there are better ways to earn money than to sell your soul! I am sorry to say this but how are the actors of this movie better than people who sell their bodies for money!? Sheer waste of talent like Mr. Anu Kapoor. Ravi Kishan is a loser and will always stay this way only. That new guy rahul bagga and the actors who played his friends, arjun fauzdar and some other guy were extremely bad! Jobless people doing random work hired by idiots(makers of this movie)! Burn the prints of this movie. Destroy all proof that this movie even existed! I wish I had donated rather than wasted money on this.

Loosely based on a newspaper story coming out of Rajasthan where a young boy was supposedly sentenced to jail for having allegedly raped a buffalo, this film by debut making director Vinod Kapri, is a little too laboriously set-up to provide any laughs. It plays out like a wildly preposterous ' true' story and the satirical elements are missing.

Granted Vinod Kapri would certainly know the veracity of this story considering that he is an award winning scribe from India TV who admittedly has taken his first few steps towards a fledgling career in filmmaking. In a country where anything goes, it's possible that even this must be happening.

Unfortunately the tone adopted to present this unbelievable tale is just not beneficial.

The story has been reset in Haryana and Kapri gets all his lead actors speaking in forked Haryanvi-Hindi-English combo that may not sit well with a lay audience. The Pradhan of Tanakpur, Sualal Gandhas(Annu Kapoor) is especially fond of carving English words out from his traditional Haryanvi tongue. He has a young wife Maya(Hrishita Bhatt) who is quite careless about being found out while flirting about with a local youngster Arjun( Rahul Bagga) who aspires to be a police hawaldar.

The Pradhan who has erectile dysfunction seeks the help of a hakim and a local tantric helps him out with his suspicions regarding his wife's faithlessness. It doesn't take long for the Pradhan to catch Maya and Arjun in a compromising position and he and his co- conspirators(Sanjay Mishra and Ravi Kishen) are quick to mete out tribal justice.

After beating the man up and running a bike over his legs, they tie him to a bullock cart and leave him there for the entire village to see. They also fabricate a charge of rape- claiming Arjun raped the pradhan's prize-winning bullock, Miss Tanakpur and even have the Tantric(Sanjay Mishra) vouching for it as the sole eye-witness.

The farce gets weirder when an FIR is lodged with the conveniently corrupt local thanedaar(Om Puri) and goes all the way to court - wherein the ridiculousness of the entire enterprise is shown up as such.

Director Vinod Kapri plays it straight and without any nuance or underlying heft. So the satire falls flat on it's nose and the socio-political implications are lost in all the noise and confusion arising out of trying to keep the main thread intact. No doubt, having a bullock play rape victim , is intriguing on paper but on film it's quite off-putting.

Kapri neither has the guile or smarts to convey the deep schisms within society that led to such a preposterous incident taking place in the real world. A little inventiveness and craft combined with some smart writing would have been enough to make this a sharper more gratifying experience. But alas, Kapri is just not up to the task. His idea of satire is entirely situation based and loses efficacy because of it.

Good solid performances by Annu Kapoor, Rahul Bagga, Ravi Kishen, Sanjay Mishra and Om Puri go a little way in ameliorating the incredulity experienced here!

Prominently publicized as a comic satire with an interesting cast featuring Om Puri, Annu Kapoor and Sanjay Mishra leading the show, the biggest drawback of MISS TANAKPUR HAAZIR HO is that whatever one expects to see or has seen in the promos, it all starts post intermission in the film quite surprisingly. In other words, the basic satire attempted in the script pointing towards the backward mindset, corrupt system, police, law, courts and village panchayats actually begins in its second half when the viewer is already feeling hugely misled and disappointed watching its initial hour.

Reportedly based on 'real life events', the film is set in Tanakpur, a fictional village of rural India (Haryana), where an innocent young boy is falsely charged of raping a buffalo, to hide his ongoing affair with the village pradhan's young wife. But since it's complete first half gets horribly wasted in all uninteresting sequences, long conversational scenes and not so impressive comedy, the film simply ruins all its chances to make an impact before it even commences talking about its main publicized theme of the strange inhuman rape-case.

Mentioning its few merits, though the intentions are all fine and the director does manage to capture the rustic look and feel of the subject along with his noticeable DOP in a couple of effective sequences (like the one when the boy's father is in a well). Yet it's the script and an all forced comedy that mostly falls flat hampering its overall impact, despite the presence of some engaging moments towards the end, closing on an introspective note. Moreover the tragedy of the boy's family that happens to be the most hard hitting aspect of the film, sadly gets no major emphasis as it should, probably to avoid any heavy and over-dramatic emotional scenes as it seems. Plus the over-length of the film stressing unnecessarily at various points doesn't let you feel for its characters right from the beginning. As a result MTHH neither becomes a powerful satire nor an enjoyable comedy as portrayed in its cleverly edited promos projecting it as an important eye-opener.

With a strictly routine soundtrack, the film's background music tries to enhance the progression on screen sincerely and the performances have Annu Kapoor stealing the show as the pradhan, followed by Sanjay Mishra as the fake village 'Godman' fooling everyone around. Ravi Kissen is just fine in some of his key scenes and Om Puri plays the corrupt police officer with an effortless ease as always. However Hrishta Bhatt scores in her climax sequence with the buffalo, in an otherwise okay performance playing the pardhan's unsatisfied young wife.

In all, it's the unimpressive direction, sluggish editing and all forced humour that doesn't let MISS TANAKPUR HAAZIR HO rise above the level of a below average attempt. Nevertheless, the film does make you think about the state of life lived in our rural India where still such hard to believe real life events become possible due to the rotten and corrupt system without a spine of its own.

There's enough realism in the script or at least in its loud inspiration to watch this comedy drama that speaks volumes about the backward mindset in rural India.

Arjun (Rahul Bagga) is a loafer who is falling in love with Maya (Hrishitaa Bhatt), a young and beautiful woman married to the foul- mouthed, sexagenarian village chief, Sualaal (Annu Kapoor). Maya seeks shelter from Arjun and silently finds happiness in him, owing to Sualaal's inability to be a proper husband, with poor performance in bed and verbal as well as physical abuse. Naturally, when one day, Sualaal finds out about Arjun's illicit relation with his wife, he beats him up and publicly accuses him of raping his award-winning buffalo, named, for FIR purposes, Miss Tanakpur.

The story is as wicked as it sounds, which the writers have credited to real-life happenings in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. How a backward system with enough corruption mixed into it treats its men based on ruthless bias is the central topic of the film. In rural areas like the one shown in the film, the powerful continuously oppress the powerless, even leading to countless fatalities, in some cases. Arjun's family has to go through a harrowing time once he is arrested: his sister's marriage is disavowed, his father tries to kill himself, and his mother slowly moves to the path of atheism. It is startling to watch the story, told in a rather clumsy way, unfold in front of your eyes when you know that something like this has happened, or at least, has the merit to happen in today's world.

There is enough humor for an average Indian to perceive here. But, the B-grade shade the film has in its dialogues and slapstick may turn few off. People's blind faith on idol worshiping, graft among policemen, the judicial system - there's everything in here. Some very interesting sequences are gelled together to ignite emotions, driven by powerful performance by Kapoor. Sanjai Mishra and Om Puri are mostly seen fooling around. Bagga should brush up his blunt areas, and it was good to see Bhatt after a long time. Ravi Kishan as Sualaal's slavish helper is typecast.

I had been stalling this watch for quite a long time, but it eventually proved worthwhile. A good afternoon watch.

BOTTOM LINE: Vinod Kapri's "Miss Tanakpur Hazir Ho" is not a laugh riot, but it proves a point and chafes on the harsher realities of rural India through a comic container. Rent a DVD.

Can be watched with a typical Indian family? YES

I am sure that director does not know the craft. He is writer himself so there is no question about difference in point of view of scenes with writer. He made the scenes dull, which could have been undoubted better. All possible issues have been stuffed in desperate way with out establishing few ones or justifying them. Director has some weird sense of showing metaphor which always went wrong ,like showing pigeon in cage on roof for showing the helplessness of protagonist but that was kept in the middle of frame so it was looking irritating. He was throughout confused that either he should approach a particular scene in humorous way or emotional way. In a scene, where Pradhan tries to collect the excreta of protagonist, it seemed that protagonist is doing his job in front of three person. Camera was put in between three persons so it was looking that they can see each other, yeah that 15 foot height was ridiculously insufficient to hide them and how they were sure that he will come here only? Pradhan always uses his SUV, Bolero for his movement but Director shown him going to Thana on a two wheeler just to show that two wheeler is also fitted with red beacon. It could have been humorous but without establishment it falls flat. Such type of attempt will make small budget film's path more difficult. Huge house like Fox Star will loose interest in future small projects. Performance wise Annu Kapoor and Om Puri are fine. Sanjay Mishra is very good. Ravi Kishan is good. Rahul Bagga as Arjun, is OK. Hrishita Bhatt as Maya, is unbalanced. An actress, who has played sister of Rahul Bagga is impressive. She reflects perfect emotions in every scene.