Khap

There was a 30 minute segment in a movie that released last year (or was it year before last). A movie that was not taken very well by the masses because most of the audience didn’t understand it at all. I had, on my blog, described Love Sex Aur Dhokha as a very brave movie. But more importantly, the treatment of the super sensitive topic of Honour Killings by ace director Dibakar Banerjee was simply brilliant. In sharp contrast, Ajai Sinha makes a mockery of such a strong topic. It doesn’t take too much time to realize why Mr. Sinha was without a movie for over 6 years. His last one was this obscure movie called Stop! Now I haven’t see Stop! yet but the direction in Khap doesn’t inspire me at all to watch it.

What Dibakar Banerjee took less than 30 minutes to communicate, Ajai Sinha could not achieve in over 2 hours. Primarily because he spends truck loads of time to show us a useless love story between 2 barely legal kids (as per the movie they have just entered college). An extremely corny and of course predictable story unfolds through part of the movie between Ria (Yuvika Chaudhry) and Kush (Sarrtaj). Ria’s parents Madhur (Mohnish Bahl) and Komal (Anuradha Patel) have moved to the city 16 years back after Madhur fights with his father Chaudhary Saheb (Om Puri) over ways that can only be described as Jungle Law. Chaudhary Saheb is the President of the Khap – a collection of 40 villages where everyone is related to the other in some convoluted manner. A boy and a girl from the same Khap cannot get married. And if they are of the same “Gotra” then it is sacrilegious and calls for the death penalty – remember what I said about Jungle Law. Needless to say, Madhur had to run away because the rest of the clan refused to change its ways. But 16 years later, he returns as the lead of a Human Rights Commission group to try and find evidence. Easier said than done right?

Pathetic acting is the hallmark of Khap. And what beats me is that the likes of Om Puri and Govind Namdeo seem to have forgotten how to give any kind of performance. Doesn’t take much to figure out that Yuvika Chaudhry cannot act no matter how hard she tries. Add the ridiculous name of Sarrtaj to the same list that Yuvika is part of. Alok Nath comes in with a cameo about how the Khap also does lots of good (which is true by the way), falls flat with his acting, makes a fool of himself even with only 2 minutes of screen time and runs away with his tail between his legs – exceptionally embarrassing performance. He should stick to being the doting daddy of a girl child (which he has been doing forever). Direction, Editing, cinematography, screenplay, music and all the other aspects of good film making were all but absent throughout the 2+ hours. Horrible way to spend a Saturday morning. Sorry for posting the review late (if you saw the movie between Saturday afternoon and today). 2 on 10 and that’s only because it isn’t as bad as Milenge Milenge.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE7T4rrBCi