Boom

Gustad is a lucky director in that he got to do a big film after the mediocre Bombay Boys. For Boom he got the likes of Bachan, Shroff, Zeenat Amaan et al and had the deep pockets to shoot at Burj Al Arab and pretty much wherever he wanted in India and Dubai. He also had the names of Bo Derek and Padma Lakshmi (Salman Rushdie's model girlfriend) to play up in the marketing campaign... and what did he do with all this! He sank it all.

He has three cuties in the cast who are raring to bare it all, and did quite often; he got tremendous performances from the lower league actors, Gulshan Grover and specially Javed Jaffrey; there's the ever sellable cocktail of sex, drugs and money; and despite everything there ARE quite a few laughs in the film. So what went wrong?

The story. Or rather the lack of it. It seems Gustad was shooting on random notes rather than a script. The result is a series of shots - some beautiful, sexy and very funny, others irrelevant or incomprehensible, or both - put together in a jumpy fashion, and served up with a lot of glitter to make it look like a feature film. Sound levels are particularly bad, and some of the dialogue is lost either in strange accents the actors are putting on, or in the sound quality. Seems like the flick was only intended to be watched, not heard.

I watched the movie against many an advice, but I'd like to recommend it to all those who are interested in movies. Just to guage how so much can be squandered to produce so little, if for no other reason.

This movie was absolutely repulsive. I don't know why stalwarts Amitabh and Zeenat chose to act in such a movie. The direction is completely pathetic. All the actors are just rambling on whatever is in the "script" and are making no sense whatsoever. They are mumbling jibber-jabbish, for a lack of anything better to do, that contain random multi-syllable English words in an effort to sound Western. Random scenes of sex and violence are dropped in, and continuous use of vulgar language (like every sentence has f... in it) is used hoping to attract people to the theaters. Money has been wasted on the most ridiculous things, such as using 400 carats of real diamonds, paying for accommodations in the world's most expensive hotel, and a special appearance by Bo Derek. What is she doing in this movie? She is in it for not more than five seconds. Oh, I think someone forgot the story. The "plot" has so many loopholes that it isn't supposed to make sense. You're just supposed to watch the sex and enjoy listening to the f-word. Whoever made this movie is a perverted psychopath. He is trying his movie to look Hollywood, and as a result, looks like a complete idiot.

Going to the movies is a wholesome experience for me. I look forward to the movie as soon I have my tickets booked. I have certain expectations from the movie and I switch off the outside world along with my cellphone as I settle in to watch the movie. This is how I settled down yesterday evening to watch this movie called Boom. The movie promised to have the elusive right mix of oomph and a real story coupled with good actors and behind it all a director who has been threatening to deliver for a long time. The spin-doctors had given good publicity to the movie by making sure that its every round to the censors was well publicised along with the usual comments on whatever happened to freedom of expression and self-censorship.

The two hours of the movie passed in a whirl and it was difficult for me to conclude on what was worse- the movie or the audience. I for once pitied the censor board who has to see such junk like this in its raw form and then be criticised for censoring parts of the movie. I also came out of the movie with significant additions to my knowledge bank- I got to know, for example, that a bag of cement costs around 100 rupees or so and can be delivered the next day morning if it ordered around 7pm. How I know is because the person next to me was a cement dealer and obviously likes to conduct his business on the phone in a cinema hall when he is not whistling or nudging his partner everytime he saw a bikini on the screen. In addition, if I missed a double meaning dialogue in the movie then I only had to concentrate on the animated conversation behind me to hear it again amid a thousand giggles. With such wholesome entertainment all around me who wants to see the movie.

Not that there was anything in the movie to watch. It's amazing how easily you can go wrong even if you put a bunch of talented actors on screen and some models who can also talk and a woman named Bo Derek thrown in for some more oomph. So much of oomph in that movie that I almost oomphed my way out of the hall! They were traces in the movie that reminded me of Pulp Fiction or even Sex and the City, which are both amazing productions in their own right and if only he had copied them we would have got everything we wanted. But no sir, we are too much into the East meets West syndrome these days. East meets West and takes a dive into the Pacific Ocean never to show itself again. Atleast not in the form of Boom! If this is what fusion of cultures is about I am all for pure breeds. I cannot imagine that I paid money to see a movie like this. I won't see it even if someone offered me money for this. The movie is like an orchestra in action and everything is being played out of tune and what is worse is that you can recognise what they are trying to play and that is driving you even more crazy.

As for the crowd, what can I say, it deserved the movie as much as the movie deserved the crowd. Every show of skin and every raunchy dialogue were greeted with such cheers that you would assume that these women had landed in their laps! All this while cellphones were buzzing in the hall and everybody was talking to everybody else telling them they were sitting in a hall watching a movie- and what's up?

Please go and see this movie and maybe it will help you appreciate how bad movie making can get. Its always nice to see the worst so we can better appreciate the good.

As for the director and producer - BOOM BOOM!!

Make no mistakes, its a honest attempt to make avoid run-of-the-mill movie. But somewhere the chord fails to strike in the failed attempt of fashion-meets-underworld.

Kaizad manages to create layers in the movie, however there end up like jigsaw puzzle. And it seems Kaizad was a strict teacher when it comes to following-the-book owing to which its apparent that the actors are mouthing the script akin to animated characters which immediately springs up being artificial.

Big B: I felt his white-hair was a complete bad fashion statement.

Jaggu Dada:: The stoned dialogue delivery was a bad idea.

Gulshan Grover:: Leaves no impact, other than his fantasising of being Bade Miyan.

Javed Jaffery:: His dialogues seemed OTT at a few places otherwise very competent.

Seema Biswas & Zeenat Aman:: No complaints.

The three lasses - well, you are excused.

The grand finale.... well, it was kind of coming, so no suspense there.

Good God. My eyes.. they still hurt..after being exposed to this movie. But the pain is mitigated, for my ears hurt even more, after having to listen to some of the most atrocious dialogue ever uttered.

I'd like to consider myself to be fairly tolerant. I managed to sit through Kaante. Mind you, i did not enjoy the debacle in the least, but I could sit through it. Boom is downright repulsive and ridiculous. I walked into the theater with no expectation and still came out traumatized.

I smelt trouble the moment one of the actors appeared on screen and for no rhyme or reason proceeded to say "Tick tock,tick f**king, tock f**king tick" in the most horrendous accent. After that it was all downhill.

Acting - Unbelievable. The three models should be banned from acting. For some reason the director decided that it was best that they all put on weird accents. Almost all the dialogue is spoken in english. Apart from amitabh bachan , i can quite safely state that none of the other actors speak english. All the rest of the actors looked confused most of the time. I honestly can't blame them for being at the mercy of a screwball director.

Dialogue -Downright annoying. Characters say random things, act like imbeciles on crack. The writer seems to be desperately trying to copy Tarantino's writing style. He comes closer to imitating a drunk moron who's vocabulary doesn't exceed the F word. They use F**K generously and randomly. It never even sounds normal at any point, for all of them have such horrendous accents.

Plot - Mind Numbingly bad. It doesnt even pretend to have one. Characters do random things for absolutely no rhyme or reason. Amitabh Bachan throws a female out of a moving car just for the heck of it. Zeenat's role in the movie is even more worse. There are no character arcs. The story is too absurd to be bothered about. To top it off there are plot holes the size of russia.

Overview - The movie is annoying, disgusting, repulsive, childish, inane, moronic, absurd, incoherent, retarded,pointless, boring, embarassing.

Those are its good qualities.

Rating 2/10. What prevents me from giving it a one is the fact that it did have some decent cinematography and production values.