when my friend told me that the movie "page-3" shocked him, i could understand what he meant. from what i heard,the film explores the "behind the scenes/parties" of the social circles of mumbai on rivetting & realistic lines.the news papers proclaimed that it is one of the hardhitting films on the subject no one dared to touch before.and when i watched the film yesterday, i found it anything but hardhitting.
here comes another director,Madhur Bhandarkar, with oodles of hype around him.when he made "chandni bar", it won tabu a national award and then, bhandarkar was touted as the post-cursor to ramgopal varma.though i didnt watch chandni bar, i felt the comparision a little too much. how can our media or our people put him in the same space which is given to varma. Varma today is a film-maker with experience,while this man is just 1 film old. this is the problem with our page-3s of newspapers. instead of 15mins of fame some people deserve, they give him 15 years of fame. or say, such directors buy that fame, as depicted in his own film.

the film page-3 lacks coherent storyline.the characters are defined superficially but not instrinsically.and there is no direction in the story. he just shows what-happens in the social-parties attended by the rich and the famous. the gossiping of women,smoke,drinks, promiscuity,masks,casting couch,gay couples,drugs.. blah blah blah...c'mon, just by picturising such things doesnt make a film. they can as well be shown in some documentary.if bhandarkar wanted to call his film "hard-hitting" just by juxtaposing the antics of celebrities at a funeral, along with a party attended by them on the same night or instances showing a couple making out in a car on a party-nite and child-molestation by business tycoons, then i must say, u and i can make better films and brand them "hard-hitting".

looks like bhandarkar enlisted few things he wanted to cover in the film and put a female-journo in the role of the protagonist watching all these things. so we have her roomie who aspires to be rich, smokes and even marries an oldie for dollars. then, we have the journo's gay-friend who plays around with her boyfriend.and her actor friend who, gives sermons about safe-sex during the day and gets an aspiring actress pregnant and asks her to swallow the chill-pill.agreed, that an attempt was made to be realistic and i must say that it looks real too.but where does the director fail? its about the thread along which the story moves. the director is fascinated only by the instances. he shows all instances in random fashion, the incidents which make you go "oh! no...so it is like this! shit".infact there are many elements which the director fails to touch.but come on,for someone who reads newspapers daily, this film is no revelation.following every frame of this film, i was able to predict what the next scene would be and i was wrong not many times.

the film was supposed to comment on the issues.it doesnt.it oscillates between satire and seriousness and doesnt succeed in either of them.and finally, the ending is something which every damn soul with little brain in his head can predict. putting things back to square one and call it "a comment on the system". so we have the same cop, who continues to be a party animal and same women bitching around with business tycoons and the same aspriring actress pufffing away with the same producer who once terrifies her with casting couch,.excuse me, was bhandarkar referring to the recent scandal he got himself into(upcoming model preet jain recently accused him of cheating her, by not giving her a role inspite of sleeping with him).whatever! he must understand that showing few instances, howmuchever raw & realistic they seem, doesnt make a film.it needs a coherent storyline which can convincingly and consistently rivet such instances into the plot.but yet, bhandarkar succeeds to have his space in page-3, through his page-3, much like the very same characters he has shown in this film.
performances are uninspiring.very shoddy screenplay.about music, the less said, the better.
and finally, i dont find it shocking at all.

during 80s, govind nihlani made a film named "party".watch it if you can. it talks more sense, though on political overtones.

Current Mood: Dismissive
Current Music: we can make it you & i...