Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Snark mode on, review in 3.. 2.. 1 - Race!


People of the Hindi film following world! You can all rest easy now. Stop holding your breath in, just exhale slowly, and breath free once again. The future is secured.

I ought to specify. The future of the long-standing tradition of bad movies made in the beautiful language of Hindi/Urdu is secured. That's right. All is once again right in the universe. Dumb dance routines, insultingly bad lyrics, awkward try-hard plots and characters you forget as soon as you leave the theater – Race has got it all.

The film works on the premise that if you have something that isn't anywhere near as good as anybody involved in the making of it hoped for, you can flip it around in hopes that the audience will find the constant plot twists exciting instead of predictable and (by the time we get into the last third of the movie) just plain boring. I've got news to the makers; whichever way you decide to flip a turd, it sadly still looks brown.

Race isn't really that bad. And that's another tragedy right there – it doesn't get the crown of being the worst film ever, nor does it gain the honor of a fun “so-bad-it's-good” trainwreck. It's just unexcitably sucky. Not that they don't try. There's enough Bipasha skin to call it Dhoom 2 and enough Saif skin to call it Fangirl Hook Collection 2008. The songs go from bad (South-African white cowgirls shaking ass along with some of the cringeworthiest moves I've witnessed in a while) to worse (Zara Zara Let's Keep a Safe Distance, Okay Katrina and that other song with Saif cleaning his face against Bipasha's chest – ugh). This is one of the few times even I denounce English lyrics in songs. And the theme song? Annoying as heck.

About individual performances, well, did it have any? Akshaye, as much as I champion him, had the most unlikable character here and Saif was not too sympathetic himself. The ladies weren't worth much. Quite frankly all of the leading four were just so forgettable, which leads me to..

I cannot believe I'd prefer a whole three hour movie about Anil Kapoor's character to rewatching Race, but hey, there you go. This was seriously the best part of the movie.

A special mention to the dialogue writer who came up with Saif's infamous “I celebrate losses” (You should, yaar, because this one? Not a winner! Also? 1993-2000..) as well as this one, which I shall leave as my parting wisdom, as voiced by Akshaye Khanna: “All a man needs in a weather like this is a cold beer and a hot chick!”

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