New releases directed by respected veterans of Hindi film industry always put me in a serious dilemma of choosing the right words. Since at one end I got to see their latest projects (despite a limited release) expecting something extra-ordinary justifying their cult image but on the other, have to review them impartially too pointing towards their major shortcomings without getting influenced by the nostalgic factor associated with their reputed names.
However the situation becomes worse when you get to see a downright trashy film from the man behind much appreciated projects such as JAANE BHI DO YAARON, KABHI HAAN KABHI NA, KYA KEHNA and the life teaching serial NUKKAD, forcibly making you think about skipping the review to avoid the severe harsh assessment deserved by the awful project. Honestly I wasn't expecting Kundan Shah's latest film P SE PM TAK to be that bad and this eventually puts me in the same tough situation as previously experienced while reviewing the last films of Dev Anand and Subhash Ghai.
Interestingly when it comes to the old-timer experts of our Hindi film industry still working in the present scenario, we are unable to find personalities like Clint Eastwood who amazingly manages to deliver great films even in his eighth decade of life celebrating the spirit of cinema. May be it's our different working patterns, questionable system or other social (personal) factors that might be the cause behind such repeated failures. Yet the truth remains that here we have seldom seen a director playing a long consistent innings till the last phase of his life churning out cinematic gems.
Returning to Kundan Shan and his P SE PM TAK, where P stands for 'prostitute' as per the film's impractical storyline, it can easily be rated as one of the most tacky and annoying black satires that fails to grab your attention right from its first scene. Revolving around a bold girl's journey from a brothel to the major political stage becoming the Chief Minister (the post of PM is only used as a reference in the end), the film refuses to talk logic and remains mediocre in execution with all uninteresting sequences coming one after another with many terribly written dialogues muted more than 15 times by the censors with a beep. A badly conceived film based on a weird subject, its neither a comedy nor any satire with the most irritating factor remaining its background score that keeps screaming loudly in almost every scene unnecessarily.
Having a quite poor script progression and a distasteful style of narration, the film features an otherwise beautiful girl Meenakshi Dixit in the lead, trying hard to deliver a noteworthy performance in vain, looking unconvincing throughout in the given role. Plus its really painful to see the entire known supporting cast acting as amateurs including Bharat Jadhav, Aanjjan Srivastav, Deepak Shirke, Mushtaq Khan, Yashpal Sharma and the lesser known face Indrajeet Soni. Interestingly the ugly get-up of the minister also reminded me of a similar one tried by Kamal Hassan in his film MAYOR SAAB.
The below average songs inserted at regular intervals just for the sake of it keep irritating you constantly and then the post interval inclusion of an absurd idea of a corpse made active again (speaking, walking and even dancing) through a remote control and some electronic gadgets fitted in the body by an eccentric scientist, makes you look at the screen with an unbelievably shocking amazement and jaws dropped. Perhaps director Kundan Shah is still somewhere stuck in the fascination of using a corpse as an entertaining prop in the storyline since JAANE BHI DO YAARON released three decades back. But here the particular senseless sequences with all forced humour turn out be a big disappointing let-down from the experienced director unarguably.
Summing up, frankly this is not what we expected from the 'once creative genius' Kundan Shah. And it's actually quite disturbing to admit that a film like P SE PM TAK will now get included in the filmography of the same person who will also be remembered as the vision behind JAANE BHI DO YAARON, one of the first five cult black comedies of our Hindi Cinema. Unfortunately a fact that is sure going to confuse many students in the future studying the hugely contradicting body of work of the well-known director.
