Joker

Its indeed great and also an appreciable act to go for something different and fresh in the present routine structure of our Hindi Films. But on the other hand, it's equally or even more important to ensure that the plot which looks like a winner on the paper, also gets transformed and executed on the screen in the best possible manner, providing a good return to the viewer for both his money and time spent.

Unfortunately, Shirish Kunder's JOKER fulfils the first requirement reasonably but makes a complete mess in its second, involving the execution, presentation and overall impact of the movie which was rightly predicted by majority of people after watching its uninteresting & patchy promos. In fact JOKER is one of those big movies which clearly reveal their weak points in the first few reels itself and then you exactly know that its not going to work in its subsequent reels too.

The film starts from abroad in the SWADES mode, wherein Akshay is forced to make a decision to visit India along with his live-in girlfriend Sonakshi. Now the moment they enter the zone of Pagalpur, you get served with some hard humor which starts falling flat with its each new gag delivered boringly. There are people falling from the trees, a man who thinks he is a lamp (reminding you of a teeth whitener advert), a teacher with a pretty bad English who believes that the IInd World War is still going on, a person who speaks gibberish (like Tushar in the GOLMAAl series) which eventually becomes the language of real aliens too and 3 clown like politicians who daringly ask for their cut sitting in their government offices only.

In straight words, after just 30 minutes into the film and an item song served in that duration only, one starts thinking about all the resources, efforts and hard work gone into its making just for nothing. Further it is also quite shocking to see that the film which had its whole promotion planned around the so called Aliens, does not have even a single scene or mention of them before the intermission and they actually reveal themselves in its second hour. Frankly that tells you a lot about the illogical and errant planning behind the making of this serious mistake aptly called JOKER.

Post intermission, the disaster continues in a much bigger magnitude when the fake aliens are made with some vegetables, fruits and LEDs considering that there are fools sitting in the theater ready to accept anything. The whole screenplay post interval is simply pathetic making a mockery of almost everything around ranging from news channels, their reporters, government and military forces to the foreign officials investigating the aliens and the crop circles inspired from Manoj Shyamalan's SIGNS (2002). Moreover various scenes in the movie make you recall so many films together like SWADES, KOI MIL GAYA, LAGAAN, PEEPLI LIVE and even Spielberg's ET. Plus, the whole setting around some innocent (yet eccentric) villagers also reminds you of Akshay Kumar's earlier flop, TEES MAAR KHAN directed by Shirin's better half Farah Khan.

In the performance department only one person is able to make you laugh at times and he is Shreyas Talpade as Babban. But otherwise JOKER has its entire cast (with many known names in stupid minuscule roles), performing half-heartedly including the lead couple Akshay & Sonakshi, as if they all perfectly knew that its not going to work in any case. And probably that was the reason Akshay was literally absent from its entire promotional campaign before its release.

Musically it gives you nothing to write about as the soundtrack neither has any melody nor any good lyrics to win over the audience. Personally I even didn't like the heavily promoted item song 'Kafirana' since it didn't fit on Chitrangda's persona at all. The songs honestly work as several loo-breaks which had to be included in the film because without them, it would be a 100 minutes venture only in totality. Background score fails to register in all those weird comic sequences and Cinematography remains helpless with such lackluster characters emoting on the screen. Also it was a pity to see that in such a big banner film, talking about aliens (the real ones too), the Computer Graphics were really below the mark like a low budget venture in its last sequence which even had the alien dancing along with Shreyas. Now did the makers really expect the viewers to laugh out loud on that silly alien dance without any sense?

Anyway, in all JOKER can easily be termed as a poor or bizarre film made on an interestingly fresh plot which had enough space for a good comedy and many innovative enjoyable sequences in its storyline. The film majorly is a disappointment due to its mediocre and awful treatment (including the script, execution or direction) which takes the plot too lightly in an over-confident manner and fails to deliver in the end. As a matter of fact, JOKER can be perfectly used to prove these Cinematic Truths that 'The Director is always the real captain of the ship undeniably' and 'What seems to be good on the paper might not be equally good or entertaining on the screen'.

Just watched 'Joker' (2012)

Agastya is a US based scientist working on extra terrestrial communication, who is called back home to fictitious village called 'Paglapur', a region in India that has been comically denied a place on the map. It has been ignored by the neighboring territories and has consequently fallen into hard times - no electricity, water supply, buildings in shambles. As Agastya tries to seek help from the Government, each of the three neighboring states wash their hands off the area.

One of the ministers call Paglapur as the joker of the pack - technically part of the country, but without actually belonging to one group/ place.

Agastya decides that the only way to get people to take Paglapur seriously would be to bring global attention to the town. He devices an elaborate scam involving crop circles and aliens. He uses the villagers to create crop circles and spread rumors about alien visitors. The resulting worldwide interest in Paglapur makes the ministers come clamoring for Paglapur to be included in their territory, which allows the hero to turn back the joker comment by saying that the Joker is the most powerful in the pack, as it can assume the power/ identity of any of the other cards.

When I said that I want to watch this movie, all my friends responded with a resounding chorus of "Eh??". They felt that it was just an immature, poorly hashed up, shallow film, not worth a second look beyond the trailer. But I said no, this can work.

In the real world, crop circles are hoaxes that survive in pop culture because people don't read enough. I can accept movies using crop circles as a central plot premise, cos hey - it's fiction. If I can enjoy a movie about talking fish, I can enjoy a movie about visiting aliens. But this plot had a promise of something better. It was using crop circles as a scam committed by people to gain attention - something that mirrored the real world of crop circles.

So after seeing the movie, I can now call my friends - the naysayers and paltry critics - and look them straight in the eye while sobbing the words "I should have listened to you". It's a stupid, ridiculous plot. Nonsensical and poorly thought out. There are a few laughs, but it's far and wide - not worth suffering the whole movie for the few laughs strewn here and there. I'm disappointed, and this time, it seems like I'm the only one disappointed here. Everyone else expected crap and got crap. I expected a mildly amusing lowbrow comedy and got crap.

The producers, himself included, would love for you to believe otherwise. The signs are there reflecting a troubled production, with the making of the film stretching as far back as 2011, and deciding to abandon its plan of post-converting this to 3D, after the none too stellar outcomes of both RA.One and Don 2. But what's more criminal here, is how Shirish Kunder, in his second film outing as director, failed to capitalize on the fun premise that could have made it a more memorable film, rather than to now market this as for the kids market segment, hoping that the younger demographics would be more forgiving in what it had tried to achieve. Having started on a journey, but making no headway, then pinning it on a misunderstanding from the start, doesn't provide any confidence.

This marks the second time that Akshay Kumar and Sonakshi Sinha are paired together in leading roles in as many times, immediately after Rowdy Rathore. While the latter film was a lot of Masala fun, their outing here proved to be somewhat lacklustre. Akshay plays Agastya, a Non Resident Indian living with his stay at home girlfriend in the USA, working on a technology single-handedly that can communicate with the truth out there, but finds himself making no progress. I mean, it's an expensive project, and the dweeb of a trillion dollar company decided to put all its eggs in one basket, and one employee. Sure, he may be a genius, but even geniuses need help. So he's given one month notice to show results, or be shut down.

Some moping later, Sonakshi's Diva picks up a random call from someone from India telling her that Agastya's father is breathing his last breath. It's only 10 minutes into the story, but already the convenience with how things progressed, is showing signs of narrative trouble. Agastya had told Diva he's an orphan, and now some random call from a stranger comes in, claiming to be Agastya's brother (whom we find out only talks gibberish), citing some medical emergency back home, sees her packing up for the both of them, ready for the next flight out to India. Right. I guess Diva's only demonstrating that she's a real Joker alright, only that she's really serious about Agastya making that trip despite his work deadline, to attend to what could have, in any day, been a prank call.

But this is a film, so they do make their way to his village, in fairly comical fashion, and we see that things are still backward. The prologue had shown that lunatics have taken over the village just before Partition, and the maps having drawn such that this village was dropped out from paper existence, but it's still there, and amongst the madness comes Agastya's genius, who had decided to move out and overseas to make a name for himself. He returns, is moved by everyone's sincerity in seeing him back, and some Tarzan swinging antics later, is convinced to stay put, and make his village visible to the outside world again. The plan? To kill multiple birds with one stone, by crying wolf - that aliens have come, his device works, and having the world's attention focused on the village.

It all goes down from there however, as the ludicrous is piled upon by more ludicrous, and the jokes are just plain unfunny. Perhaps the item number Kafirana is just abut the best thing in the film with its energy, and provided for more livelier moments in the movie, but otherwise everything, moving like the expected clockwork of trouble finding its way to Agastya's plan like a spanner in the works, spelt boredom. It was fun to have the loonies dress up as would be aliens using very common household items and crops, but those cute moments dragged out for far too long. And as mentioned earlier that Agastya's brother speaks rubbish, well, actor Shreyas Talpade who plays him, speaks gibberish all through the film, that sounds rather familiar, like the chants heard over UTV's logo introduction, repeated ad nauseam.

Sure it's a kids movie, and one can point out that it shouldn't be taken too seriously, but I reckon kids should probably enrich their time by watching another alien film with more entertainment value, that of Steven Spielberg's ET. That's not to say there aren't some positives from the film though, but they belonged to the more technical aspects. The production sets here are incredibly beautiful and wonderfully designed, which is a pity given that it's adorning a story that finds itself losing steam from the get go, and not exploiting its art direction fully. The CG work used to recreate the aliens and their wares is adequate, not fantastic, but would still barely work to engage children who couldn't care more about the design, but only the presence of something out of this world.

There was bewilderment when the title of the film was announced, until Sonakshi Sinha tweeted that the Joker is found in a deck of cards not belonging to any suite. I guess that's true, that this film, in its current incarnation, doesn't find itself belonging anywhere nor fitting in, trying to be a lot that it isn't, and falling flat. The joke's clearly on us all, the audience, and you'd do yourself a favour by not falling for this joker. I hate to say this, but this goes into the shortlist as the duds the year has experienced so far. It's a real pity that Akshay Kumar had this to show for as his centurion body of work.

Joker was a big joke by Shirish Kunder who thought of fooling the audience with his stupidity but made a fool of himself

In order to put back a village called Paglapur back on the map of India , Agastya creates a pretentious story of alien landing in his village creating an awareness to the politician and media.

Shirish Kunder ( Janemaan) had tweeted once about Sharukh Khan's RA.ONE -" 150cr firework fizzled out" . His tweet backfired at himself and result is such a terrible movie like "JOKER" . It was clearly evident why Akshaye Kumar chose to stay away from the promotion of this senseless movie. Direction is so lame that even a 4 year old kid can make a better film... Its high time that Kunder should go back to his editing days...there is nothing called screenplay in the film .. Art direction is decent re-creating the village though sometimes it looked funny. Cinematography is OK. Performances wise it is Shreyas Talpade who irritates you from the beginning till the end with his alien vocabulary. His character is shown as the person who can speak but still he is able to understand Alien's language in the climax... Gosh ..can it be worse than this ... It is Akshaye Kumar who is the only hope in the film .. but he should consider a script before signing any film. Sonakshi Sinha is wasted along with Darshan jariwala and Asrani.

Overall , senseless ..nonsense .. stupid .. illogical movie in every sense ... Never recommended 0.5 /5

Joker is a pathetic movie! Yeah believe me guys,I'm saying it myself!!

Wondering 'WHY' Akshay Kumar is doing these type of movies?? You are a lotus in a dirt pond, Akki!

Sonakshi Sinha, Shreyas Talpade, Minissha Lamba I mean rest of all are wasted!

Thank god Akshay Kumar backed out from the promotion of Joker as he was cheated by the director Shirish Kunder.

I just hate Shirish Kunder after watching Joker. How can a man just make this type of a ridiculous movie! It was because of his wife that he got two biggest stars of Bollywood in his two films, but he doesn't deserve biggies anymore!!

I'll rate it 3/10, no need to tell but if you're still thinking to watch then go ahead Joker is your flick! :P