Starcast – Dharmendra, Sunny Deol , Bobby Deol, Katrina Kaif, Shilpa Shetty, Kirron Kher, and Victor Banerjee
Director – Anil ‘Gadar’ Sharma
Genre – Drama, Family
Subtitles – English
Year – 2007
Availability – All over the world except India
DVD Price – $15.99
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The only thing worse than Apne is a folcider. And folcider isn’t even a real word.
Apne stinks. That’s just a fact. Recognizing self-stink (that should really be a word) is difficult, so the Deols are excused. But everybody else? Clearly a case of massive, large-scale nose-block. Or perhaps Dharmendra-euphoria, but even then, why doesn’t Hindustani and Timely Khaild take a sniff, just a sniff; that’s really all that’s required.
I don’t usually speak of stink in vain. It’s one of the worst things you can do. So my assertion doesn’t come without reason. Or three, for that matter.
1. The film, purely by nature of its characters and how they choose to behave (or misbehave), is the kind the Fantastic Farah (Khan, I mean) can, should and probably will, spoof. It’s a film – (there are two schools of thought on just that) – of Fred’s time (Flintstone, I mean). People, in films, just don’t talk like that anymore, react like that anymore, or, most importantly, stink like that anymore.
Closely associated with the essential graph of this three-hour ‘film’, is the execution of the graph. Here is where one wishes one hadn’t taken the anti-flu vaccine. Why?
Smell this: Every emotion that has been depicted has been stretched obscenely. If something is sad, it is incredibly sad. If it’s happy, it’s incredibly happy. And so, if it’s stinky, it’s incredibly stinky. And this excessive treatment, in itself, is fine – there is inherently nothing wrong in an effective emotional roller-coster – but that has to be backed by strong writing. The only thing strong in Apne, of course, is the paanch kilo ka haath and the stench emanating from it.
Smell this: The direction is cliched, campy, hackneyed, unintentionally hilarious and stinky, to say the absolute least. Misplaced slow-motion moments, catastrophically cheesy crescendos and Dharmendra’s ‘I have to be sarcastic to Sunny Bwuoay’ face are comic relief. Well, comic.
2. It’s all about hating your parents, children, children’s wives and grandchildren. A film that professes to stand for placing your ‘Apne’ above all, smacks every Apne in its sight, and hard. It’s a sorry story of a psychotic, self-centered man, whose warped sense of the rightness of things is backed by sickening Punjabi male chauvinism fueled whole-heartedly by women who bathe and get dressed and stop. A man who couldn’t care less about his Apne and wants each to get smacked as hard and as quickly as possible. One down, one to go. And when all are down, the loon croons: ‘Apne – arr – arr – hrff – arr’ – sorry, not a fan of the whole macho, hoarse voice. “But it’s from the sons’ ponts of view, na!” : Quiet! Then the message becomes: ‘No matter how crazy your father is, do exactly what he wants even if it’s bad for the whole family AND him, in the long run’. Aww.
Still wondering what to do with the paanch kilo ka haath?
3. Not funny. The two feeble attempts at humour – the ‘Ek Joke suna – arrr- hrrff’ and the sikh who forgets are not funny. Just stinky. Not funny. Only stinky.
So, all I can say is this: Go, watch Apne. But when you return, take a bath. Coz this baby stinks.