This movie called : Rockstar

Saadda haq; what the fuck.

Kid you not, this is what a bunch of people sitting in the back rows were chanting. I couldn’t blame them either, you have to come up with different ways of entertaining yourself while you’re in a theater watching Rockstar. There is something seriously messed up with the word, Rockstar. For starters, it doesn’t make any sense – one is supposed to talk about and venerate a rock musician and not a rockstar. The latter is just a figment of style and glamour.

If one were to review the movie - rather summarise the facts presented - Rockstar (2011) is a movie that attempts at documenting the travails of a ‘rock musician’, right from his college life where he meets a girl and right upto some concert where he still is stuck with the girl. They come together, they part ways and they come again. But somehow, the rock & roll element of the movie is like a weak camphor tablet. Three hours of drab, the movie stops making a point from its early minutes onwards.  The protagonist (Ranbir Kapoor) wishes to turn into an Indian Jim Morrison ( included in the early minutes is a conversation where the ‘hero’ talks about Jim Morrison raising his middle finger to the crowd and turning into a legend). Really???!!

The casting is in shambles; one expects a certain kind of class and aura with names such as Piyush Mishra, Kumud Mishra, Shernaaz Patel – all of whom are theatre greats. The supporting cast can’t be blamed much; a movie is the director’s game, after all (in this case, writer-director). It’s disappointing to see so much of self-indulgence in the core theme (love) and the consequent neglect towards the script and the story. Aditi Rao as a TV reporter looks quite pretty but really, after having a movie like Yeh Saali Zindagi on one’s CV,  this’d look like chickenshit.

Nargis Fakri - the leading lady of the movie – her presence justifies the director Imtiaz Ali’s fetish for pale-skinned beauties in his movies. She makes you wanna go all Ricky Martin and sing, “She hams, she hams”. Damn, the woman can’t act for nuts. You’d have to call the Ghostbusters to pull out an expression from her face.  Yeah man, pretty faces, too, can be a real piss-off.

Ranbir Kapoor tries to hold the fort, but I guess with everything around him going downhill, he gives in. His whole ‘rockstar’ attitude comes off as a very convoluted piece. His facial expressions, body language, spoken dialogues – all of them have a very early saturation point. He tries to come clean with his Look-you-purists-I-actually-learnt-the-chords gig, but his abrupt change of attitude and persistent grim look (that comes out of absolutely nowhere) is a bit too over the top.

The director, Imtiaz Ali, could very well moonlight as the HOD of the Packaging Department of some business house. His attempt at repackaging romantic turdball love for the BBM generation is worse than a quicksand pit for the masses.

This movie might unfortunately, paint a very stereotypical image of a rock & roll musician in the minds of the rural folk. Maybe there’ll be hordes of youngsters in Tier-I and Tier-II cities trying to wanna know about Jim Morrison – only because they heard his name in some Bollywood movie and not for his music.

The saving grace for the debacle-of-a-film was the music; A.R. Rahman manages to belt out some breezy, standard Rahmanesque tunes as well as some decent rock & roll in Hindi language. ‘Jo Bhi Main’ is a personal favourite, ‘Kun Faaya Kun’ too stands out. But then again, at one point, you just glide past the movie from one song to the other.

You will watch it. Of course, you will watch the movie. Negativity, in this case, begets curiosity. So, for the sake of disaster management, let me part with some tips : drag your friends along for this, please. You sure don’t wanna miss out on the dissing bit. Turn your cinema hall into a Gaiety-Galaxy of the heydays!