Ma Kasam, Maza Aa Gaya!!!

After my friend and I finished watching this one there was only one phase that came to our lips almost immediately and at the same time – Ma Kasam!

I was reading and hearing everywhere that Hollywood is suddenly showing a more rapid interest in India – primarily because the recession has made the working environment a mud pit and therefore they are nowadays looking more towards this country than ever before. For starters, it was believed at one point that the great Steven Spielberg too had tied up with Anil Ambani for his production house, DreamWorks.

But now, let us get off the drab the financials. Financials, recession, marketing, sales, etc – these all somehow add up to justify all the moves that I was talking of till now. However, my inquisition here is different. As a matter of fact, it is indeed rather different. Because here I am talking about the style of writing the scenarios, the whole basic screenplay. This movie relies completely on beaten to death Bollywood clichés and terminology, not from now, but from the 70s. The only thing that they did not make Wolverine say in the movie was perhaps “Mere paas maa hain!”

It was fun to watch an English movie like that for the first time. No, I don’t mean to say that the Americans have never made a typical Bollywood pot-boiler before, but this time they surely did take the cake. Instead of having Shah Rukh Khan ham over his dialogues, this time we got to see Hugh Jackman tell them. Well, how he told them will be examined in detail later on.

No, why later on? It should be done right now. Because if this movie really has anything in it, it is really the principal actor, the hero of the film – Hugh Jackman. I know that this is not the first time that he is playing this particular character. He is the Wolverine. But however, I feel that there is a difference between playing the Wolverine in the earlier X-Men parts and now. Because at that time, though he did manage to hog most of the limelight himself, there was a certain egalitarian distribution of the screen between all the other major X-Men characters, like Storm, Cyclops, the Phoenix and so on. But here he was the movie. His name was on the movie poster. He was the name of the movie. And only he could pull it off the way in which he did it. I do remember telling Hitesh that it takes a Hugh Jackman to pull off a Wolverine get up – the crazy beard and the horn-like hair-do. And the fact of the matter is that he does is marvellously. He really pulls off a rather half-baked script with complete control and precision. He is truly the most popular X-Men ever – both as a character, and as an actor.

Also, I should mention that the SFX used in this film were a shade higher than that used in the earlier versions. It gave Jackman some company at the lonely end of the film. As mentioned, he was the forerunner in this movie, with the SFX allowing him to carry it one step further.

I have in my last article spoken of in detail about the various sociological developments in comic book characters and the part that I wrote about the Wolverine becomes all the more logical when we see this movie. It has allowed me to ratify the points that I had spoken of. Therefore, if you have read on through whatever I droned on earlier, this will suitably provide you with the audio-visual supplement and allow you to grapple the fact in a more convenient manner. Particularly the whole Vietnam thing.

This is just a simple feel-good movie, so watch it if you really have nothing else to do – and if you can, watch it for Hugh Jackman.

Just remember, “... there is no redemption where I’m going!”

Just don’t look for any...