Monday 28 January 2013

Greater Elephant

I actually didn’t know where to start writing with this review – call it Blogger’s Block for all I care.  But I guess that’s what happens when you have decided to invest a little under 2 hours for a movie @ 2315 hours on a Saturday @ a cinema hall that’s 30 kms away from home because that is the only place that is screening it.

So, by the time I got done with the movie, it was too late to be writing a review.  Next, I had 2 more reviews to write that were of movies which were way better than Greater Elephant.  And I sure as hell didn’t want to add a 3rd movie to a list on an otherwise quite lazy Sunday afternoon.

Most importantly, the only people I would have impacted were those who were very interested in watching the movie and braving the travel to one of 3 locations in the city.  That very dim probability drove me towards my decision of not writing this review on time.  If unfortunately, anyone of you reading this saw Greater Elephant and are cursing me about the delayed review then I apologise from the bottom of my heart.

The first thing that totally pissed me off about Greater Elephant other than the show timings was that it starts off with a Kannada song.  Now I don’t hate all things diga other than that hell hole of a village but what the hell was a Kannada song doing in the beginning of a Hindi movie?

The first thought that came to mind was whether Swarathma (a highly over rated rock band from the largest village in the country – Bangalore) was doing the music – damn right they were.  Which explains the ill-placed and at best average music.  Any chance of saving the movie because of the music was lost at this stage.

Next we get onto some guy who is sleeping on the footpath in a city that I can only assume was Pune (it didn’t look like Mumbai and had some places that seemed like Pune).  This dude is woken up rudely by a MaPo (Maharashtra Police) constable (Shreyas Pandit).  He realizes that his Elephant has run away.  Elephant? Run away? In a city? What did u do? Not tie it up? But then, he has not dressed like a Mahout anyways.

He begins the search and on the way befriends someone who is dressed like Lord Shiva (Naveen Kaushik) and Paro (Saunskruti) who have run away from a Ram Leela set up.  They offer to help our sucker find his elephant.  Of course before that, the Mahout has almost been conned by some random fellow who also attempts to beat him up. 
 
Written by Omkar Sane and the director Srinivas Sunderrajan, Greater Elephant is a random Indie movie that you must give a miss.  There is really nothing in it that you can look forward to.  The music is average at best.  The performances too.  The story is warped and unless there is some deeper hidden agenda somewhere that I didn’t get, doesn’t hold you to the screen anyways.
 
My sympathies to the entire cast and crew who put in a lot of time and effort and most importantly money into the movie – But I really cannot get myself to give Greater Elephant more than 4 on 10.  The only reason would be that Srinivas Sunderrajan limited the torture to less than 90 mins.  Vastly avoidable.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment