Heroine

Rating : 2/10
Release Date : 21st September, 2012
Time : 148 minutes
Director, Co-Writer : Madhur Bhandarkar; Co-writers : Anuradha Tiwari, Manoj Tyagi; Music : Salim-Sulaiman
Starring : Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Randeep Hooda, Divya Dutta, Gobind Namdeo, Sanjay Suri, Lillete Dubey, Ranvir Shorey, Shahana Goswami

“What a stupid movie”, my wife exploded, as we left the theatre, “in the first half, we were at least watching her dresses, her jewellery, her looks. Second half didn’t even have that”, she fumed.

Allow me to elaborate further. This is one bad-ass, regressive, depressive, narcissistic, over-indulgent, formulaic and overall, pathetic film. There are at least three occasions when you feel its ended, your spirits soar, only to have them cruelly dashed as it finds another useless story thread to explore. You feel absolutely nothing for any character, least of all the central character, who is shown to be rude, ill-mannered, insecure, manipulative, vacillating constantly between career and love, needy, dependent, unprofessional and about emotionally as stable as a suicide bomber at a security checkpost.

Am not quite sure what the film was about. Kareena, obviously, plays the title role, constantly seeks what she doesn’t have and disregards what she does. Her central motive or motives remain unknown through the film as she runs through commercial films, edgier topics and off-beat films as part of her career. She runs through different men, Arjun Rampal and Randeep Hooda, being the primary. She changes staff and endorsement deals with rapid regularity. Her known temperamentalness obviously causes producers and even her heroes to shy away from her. Her end-goal, right till the end, remains as mysterious as her rise to stardom.

If we are supposed to feel sad at all this, any sympathy for her, then the loud music, constant shrieking, rivers of tears and some extremely hammy acting by some of the character actors (especially the gay designer, journalist) help nip that in the bud admirably.

Normally, the central character performance is what usually redeems such a film, but despite being a huge fan of Kareena’s acting abilities and looks, she is saddled with such a hopeless, flawed character that nothing can be salvaged from it. The only saving grace, if at all, is her constantly careening cleavage, which provided a few moments of solace.

There are so many beautiful things in the industry to explore. I’ve known artistes to work amazing hours, to be ready on time for shots, work round the clock on triple shifts, to be patient, firm, never lose their cool. Like Kareena in real life, they explore different roles, experiment with different looks. But unfortunately, in the eyes of the writer-director, this wouldn’t have made an interesting enough film and so he gives us a caricature of a human being instead, who is deeply troubled psychologically and inflicts mental agony upon the hapless audience as well.