One becomes even more assured of that conclusion, when, in another moment Manoj Bajpai’s lady love and kidnap victim, Sonakshi Sinha, runs away and Bajpai takes off his pants and proclaims, "Pant upar tab hi chadhegi jab Baby waapas mil jayegi."
Starting off the new year with the bang of a stink bomb, Tevar offers reassurance that no matter how much budgets, technology and the human race advance in time, Bollywood will keep reverting to the '80s.
The 2003 Telugu action drama Okkadu opened with a nifty sequence inspired by West Side Story that quickly established its theme: its hero rules his neighbourhood but can be vulnerable outside it. Okkadu is all about territory, which is why its hero plays kabbadi and not cricket or hockey. He fights to prevent a young woman from forcibly becoming another man’s property while in enemy terrain, but wins the battle by forcing his adversary into his backyard.
Directed by Amit Sharma, a well respected ad filmmaker, Tevar seems like it was made by the central character from The Human Centipede. Yet again, we have a remake of an already terrible South film. Yet again, we have a heroine who is not only proud to play a mere object, but also an embarrassment to women's empowerment in cinema. Yet again, we have a gunda mawali hero clashing with the local gunda mawali villain to whisk away the moronic woman that he even more moronically loves. Yet again, we have a barrage of eardrum-piercing, massy songs; migraine-inducing dialogue baazi; rage-rendering lapses in logic; eyeball squeezing violence and head-pummeling instances of contrived melodrama.
Another kind of territorial conquest is at work in Okkadu's official remake Tevar, a showcase for leading man Arjun Kapoor that has been produced by his family banner. Okkadu is one of several films that sealed lead actor Mahesh Babu’s screen image as a man with a software engineer’s face and a boxer’s body. Kapoor is built like a truck, and his biceps seem to start all the way from the back of his throat, which might explain his half-grimace and half-smile and his often-confused expressions. But he displays the necessary energy and intent needed for a character who performs remarkable feats of bravery with only a few nicks and bruises to show for it.
“If you put Rambo, Terminator and Salman Khan in a mixie, I am the resulting milkshake.” Any lingering doubts about the supermensch stature of Kapoor’s Pintoo even after having witnessed his parkour moves on the rooftops of Agra’s low-rises and his solo demolition of a gang of toughs will be dispelled by his grand mission statement. One man dares stir this milkshake. Manoj Bajpayee’s Gajendra is a gangster politician who is forcibly attempting to marry Sonakshi Sinha’s Radhika. Pintoo accidentally rescues Radhika while she is attempting to escape Gajendra, setting into motion a contest with a private army of sword-wielding and gun-waving thugs who are protected by the fact that Gajendra’s brother, Rajendra (Rajesh Sharma), is the state’s home minister.
Done right, all these things can be a lot of fun. If not, they induce headaches. Tevar furiously lunges towards the latter.
Arjun Kapoor made an interesting impression in his first movie, but since then, he’s played just variations of the same character in Gunday and now Tevar. He wears sidey clothes. He is a kabaddi champ. He is the quintessential roadside Romeo who also happens to save women. After being hit by bullets and knives, he first falls down to make us believe he’s dead and then, like a WWF wrestler, he screams and shouts and gives the goons a proper whopping. Clearly, he’s been cast in this movie as a vanity vehicle to create the new Salman Khan. How well do you think that idea would work?
Sonakshi Sinha, after playing a character who wants to see the hero’s nether regions for good luck in her previous movie, shockingly outdoes herself. Her character is the sister of a respected news channel head, who is off to America for post graduation studies and also a dancer; and someone who would rather hide in the house of a goon than go to the police. Who, after days of running away from a murderous and rapey rowdy, finally reaches the airport, checks in, gets her ticket to the US, and comes back out to run into the arms of another rowdy she met two days ago.
Why is the concept of love degraded to something so asinine in order to make it palatable to audiences that are presumed to be both vacuous and regressive? Why are these elements present in a film of this day and age, when Bollywood is supposed to make an impression in world cinema? Why are desi filmmakers assuming that even the lowest common denominator of audiences deserve to be subjected to tortuous stupidity? Why, even with gigantic budgets, do films like Tevar look like crap?
Advertising filmmaker Amit Sharma’s 157-minute debut feature is on a larger and glossier scale than its source. Tevar has warm colours (red and orange dominate), elaborately choreographed sequences shot mostly on location, coarse macho patter and a heroine with a slightly more upright spine and a less runny nose than in the original. Radhika is still the distressed damsel, but she is not as simpering as Okkadu’s constantly snivelling Bhumika. Sonakshi Sinha has been content to play a variation of the dumb and distressed blonde in a series of movies. In Tevar, at least, some of the attitude on display rubs off on her.
At two hours and 36 minutes, Tevar seems nearly even longer than the 170-minute Okkadu. The whackiness of the original is sorely missing. Okkadu's villain, played with intense hamminess by Prakash Raj, had a family as far gone as him, including a delightfully kooky mother who always took along her own chair while travelling with her posse. Prakash Raj’s character resolves to not bathe until he marries the object of his desire; Gajendra takes a oath to wander around in his Jockeys until he can get into Radhika's innerwear.
Bajpayee is as slim as a ramp model, and unlike Kapoor, his menace is concentrated not in his pecs but on his face. Bajpayee is among a fine set of characters who give Tevar a degree of emotional heft. Raj Babbar plays Pintoo’s long-suffering police officer father, while Prashant Narayanan is perfectly cast as Gajendra’s loyal enforcer. Tevar might be Arjun Kapoor’s bid for his own Dabangg moment (there’s even a song describing him as a Salman Khan fan), but he is some way from claiming the spotlight all for himself.
Even under the garb of ‘commercial masala’, the fight scenes are dull, the stunts look clumsy and the comedy is so awful that it makes you want to suddenly get off your seat, run towards the cinema screen and smash your face against it.
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