The movie Heroine is so bad that the only (il)logical similarity I could come up with was the present government - United Progressive Alliance. The two have been making headlines this weekend, both are highly depressing and intolerable, both could have done so much better, and so, read on before you waste your time on either!
*When you enter the theater, you look forward to some spicy gossip, bedrooms stories and an insight into an actor’s life. This is something refreshing and has never been done before in Bollywood. You are excited and confident of a repeat performance by Madhur Bhandarkar.
*The UPA looked reassuring as well in its second term. India was glistening before 2009, just like Fashion and Page 3. We looked forward to Dr. Manmohan Singh and his army to rock the stage.
**Mahi Arora (Kareena) is a leading actress who looks quite glamorous initially. She is in an insecure relationship with a married co-star who uses her position for his own good. Although he tries his best to form a decent relationship with the star, her madness and insecurity leads to their split. You don’t understand whom to feel sorry for.
**Now Dr. Singh is a sincere man. He has tried his best to keep his allies together. But they are like small children who wouldn’t agree to the smallest of things without saying a NO. Didi, Behenji and Amma have shown their doubt time and again. Behenji broke up long time ago and Didi took a divorce because she doesn’t like Walmart. You really don’t know who the bigger fool is.
***Mahi’s madness leads to her downfall. New actors come and take her place. She isn’t considered a good actor and so she takes up a small time film on prostitution which is performance oriented. As luck would have it, the movie gets shelved. And oh, in between she falls in love with a cricketer (read: poor Yuvraj Singh) and leaves him because he wants to commit a criminal offense by marrying her. She also spends a night with a female friend and a well-wisher. She then leaves her because she thinks she was used!
***Raja, Adarsh, Kalmadi, Inflation, Lok Pal, Sensex, Rupee, etc hit headlines in the last few years. Scams came and scams went. UPA predicted a growth story of 9% but sorry, it got shelved for its own reasons. We did better than the world on paper, but in reality, our top States went powerless for hours showing weak signs of growth.
Unfortunately, no one fell in love with the UPA. And we are yet to hear about Lesbian/Gay stories!
****No one would trust Mahi. She made a low budget film but there was no way she could attract audience. In an attempt to get rapid publicity she leaks a sex tape of her and her co-star who was in love with her for the second time. You are forced to think about the Shahid-Kareena and Riya-Ashmit MMS but can’t draw any similarity. Anyway, Mahi realises how low she had stooped and so she leaves the country to end her suffering.
In the course of the movie we also see how she refuses to sleep with an actor who subsequently cuts her scene from an important movie, her gay fashion designer (Manish Malhotra?) who gives her all the gossip, her PR Manager who asks her to do cheap tricks to gain publicity, wives(Gauri Khan/Suzzane Roshan?) controlling their director/actor husbands, superstars from yester-years losing respect in old age, and the other dirty pictures of Bollywood. Overall, Mahi is a highly insecure cry-baby popping pills at every given opportunity. All the time you wonder who really does that!? The character is so depressing that it makes her despicable.
****UPA has lost all its charm. The government is facing wrath from all sectors. We don’t hear anything about the Common Minimum Programme. You never know when the government will fall and so the cheap tricks have started. We saw the PM come live on TV for the first time in 2.5 years. He looked like a robot talking about money and trees. A whopping 100 Crores is being spent on an image makeover. What are they thinking? We’ve seen the ridiculous Monsoon session, we’ve witnessed the rise in violence all across the nation, we’re noticing the alarming rise in prices, we’re distressed with the state of roads and general infrastructure, the list is endless. All this combined makes the UPA, you guessed it right, despicable.
*****Heroine fails to impress because it has tried to cover too many things in one small movie. Moreover, the character of Mahi is so insecure and depressing that you fail to sympathise with her. All the while you feel she deserves the treatment she gets. The moment you begin to like her she does something extremely foolish and you start to curse her again. Even Halkat Jawani fails in such a scenario. You get through the film only because you keep looking for familiar characters and want to know more about them. You get through it only because you wait for something interesting to happen. Sadly, it doesn’t and really, it’s all Bhandarkar’s fault. He could have done so much better.
*****What can I say about the UPA? When you look around and you see countries developing at a fast pace, you feel sorry for India. We have so much potential but our politicians have failed us. If Madam had not taken the tax payers money to Switzerland, if Dr. Singh even had minuscule control over his team, if growth stories had made more headlines than corruption stories, if the Government stuck to the most important reforms, if…
We are a nation of hopefuls. Even if we need 7 runs to win from the last ball and Harbhajan is at the crease, a small corner of our heart believes that we will win. That’s the only reason we are tolerating this government. UPA could have done so much better.
