India Masala

We are nearing the end of 2010 and everyone’s making their year-end lists. Thankfully, I haven’t made mine yet, because how on earth could I leave out Anees Bazmee’s alleged comedy “No Problem” from my list of the year’s worst films? Thank God for small mercies.

Akshaye Khanna and Sanjay Dutt play brothers who rob a bank and are on the run from both the police and the owner of the bank. Anil Kapoor plays a police officer, whose wife (Sushmita Sen) has a multiple personality disorder and periodically chases him with a knife/axe/gun for no reason whatsoever.

Suneil Shetty plays a con man who is out to recover some diamonds that he’s been duped of. All of these characters come together to form a semblance of a film. There is no story to speak of otherwise.

Almost as a last-ditch attempt to save his film, Bazmee even goes back to his earlier hit, “Singh is Kingg”, in the climax, where everyone is dressed in turbans and singing the title song of that film. It’s ridiculous to say the least.

The two-hour “No Problem”, with gags like a farting gorilla, a seduction scene between Khanna and Kapoor and a whole host of others, is so excruciatingly painful to watch that even a dentist’s chair would seem like a more attractive proposition.

I’m not expecting Hrishikesh Mukherjee-style humour from filmmakers today, but the least they can do is keep it simple and real. This is not funny at any level.

It’s not just that this is a bad film, what’s worse is that the makers themselves seem like they couldn’t care less. Bazmee and his crew go about the job as if they were making a home video. The reason the comedy doesn’t work is because the director doesn’t take his work seriously. This is haphazard filmmaking at its worst. Avoid like the plague.