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’.
Rating : 1 / 5 (Including 0.5 only for at least trying something new)
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