From Sydney with Love

Now this was the day after the great party that happened on the 31st August 2012. Actually 2 days later. Not surprisingly, it took me a day to recover from the “great gig”. So on the Sunday – 2nd September 2012, we decided to run a triple header beginning with the movie in question.

After a debacle with Joker (2 days back), one would have exercised more caution right? Not me. The idiot in me had to go for the noon show of a movie that wasn’t well publicized. Hope Floats as they say and I asked discretion to take a back seat. I knew that The Campaign was slotted next and we were signing off with Finding Nemo. So if FSWL turned out to be a downer, we had Hollywood coming to the rescue.

And how badly did I need Hollywood!!!! From Sydney with Love didn’t turn out to be a dampner at all. It was worse. It touched the abyss that Joker had, a little over 36 hours back. Newbie director Prateek Chakravorthy (Grandson of Pramod Chakravorty of Nastik and Love in Tokyo fame) ensured beyond a shadow of doubt that his grand daddy was suffering from the proverbial “rolling in his grave” syndrome.

FSWL is the story of Meghaa (Bidita Bag) who decides to pursue her further studies in Australia so that she can return home better equipped to help people @ Shantiniketan. @ the University, she meets Raj (Prateek Chakravorty) over a bicycle collision. Raj of course falls instantly and Meghaa of course tries to put the distance between Sydney and Shantiniketan between the two.

Along the way, Megha gets close to Rohit (Sharad Malhotra) and befriends Lubaina Snyder (Evelyn Sharma) who coincidentally has the hots for Raj. Why Raj cannot see that Lubaina is miles hotter than Meghaa is beyond any reasoning – logical or otherwise. Also, why are Raj and Megha and Lubaina and Rohit in the same class although Raj has been at University for over 4 years is another conundrum that cannot be solved. But in between all of this, Megha gets knocked up by Rohit and suddenly runs away back home without any conversation with Rohit.

Random long shots, pregnant pauses, insipid and senseless music with little or no purpose, a complete absence of acting talent, horrendous screenplay, slimy dialogues, even slimier attempted item numbers with the director cum lead actor prancing around between several half naked women on an Australian (whats this new found fascination for the land down under) beach is what greets you in the first 5 minutes. I swear, I tried my level best to crawl under the seat so that Prarthana doesn’t beat me up. But the patient soul that she is, she not only survived the movie but didn’t beat me up either – something that I would have undeniably deserved. We have our 2nd 1 on 10 for the year and hopefully the last one.

Watch the trailer on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePI6go0sTxw