Say Hello at your own peril.

Grade: D

Hello

Indian Release Date: 10/10/08
CBFC Classification:  U/A
Running Length: 2 Hours 15 Minutes

Cast: Sharman Joshi, Sohail Khan, Amrita Arora, Eesha Koppikar, Gul Panag, Sharat Saxena, Dalip Tahil, Suresh Menon, Katrina Kaif, Salman Khan.
Director: Atul Agnihotri
Writers: Atul Agnihotri & Chetan Bhagat
Screenplay & Dialogues: Chetan Bhagat
Cinematography: Sanjay F Gupta
Music: Sajid-Wajid

Hello is Atul Agnihotri’s second effort as a director and it amply exhibits why Agnihotri probably should have had nothing to do with film making in the first place. Even though set in a call center it does not even one bit resemble the work environment. Bollywood can add a call-center to it’s list of filmy transformations which end up making a mockery of real work places. I have not read Chetan Bhagat’s book One Night @ the Call-Center hence I wouldn’t compare the movie to the book here but would take the movie as a whole for all its positives & negatives.

Salman Khan (playing himself) has a conversation with a random stranger (Katrina Kaif) while waiting for his helicopter to be repaired after a totally unnecessary Item-Song at the start of the movie. The stranger in return for telling him a story, which involves a ‘call from god’, makes him promise her something. The story revolves around six different people working in a call-center & how their lives change over the span of one night. Shyam (Sharman Joshi) is a perennial under-achiever who’s been trying to get his life back on track by writing a website manual with his best friend Vroom/Varun (Sohail Khan) who’s parents are constantly at loggerheads with each other. Shyam is also still hopelessly in love with his ex Priyanka (Gul Panag) who is soon to be married off to some N.R.I. by the name of Ganesh with a terribly fake American accent.  Also in the mix are Radhika (Amrita Arora), an anti-depression pill popping coy girl who is also at the receiving end of her bitter mother-in-law since her husband is away elsewhere for work & Esha (Eesha Koppikar) a wannabe model with self-esteem issues. The last of the group is an oldie by the name of Military Uncle (Sharat Saxena) who wants to spend time with his grandson but can’t since he’s in the U.S. They are all asked to report to duty one night in spite of it raining cats & dogs by their American ass-kissing boss Bakshi (Dalip Tahil) & thus begins their ordeal for the night which would change their lives by morning. Shyam tries to get Priyanka back by all means available, Radhika learns the truth about her husband, Esha’s modeling dreams are broken, Varun let’s Esha know his true feelings for her & Bakshi tries to pass off Shyam & Varun’s work on the website manual as his own to his superiors in America. A lot of tales of woe are woven together until the absurd point where while they hang between life & death; ‘God’ decides to give them a call & a “fart of living” crash course while he’s at it.

First things first this is NOT how a call-center functions nor is it the way most call-center employees work. Employees do NOT take breaks to go to a pub and come back, if they did that in real life they would be handed their pink slips on their return. There isn’t a coffee break every five minutes as the movie shows either nor is so much space wasted on only six normal call agents or maybe they were some highly trained crack-team of like call-agent commandos which doesn’t look like from their style of working. None of them even get the accents right. These are only a few of the things & I can probably buy the fact that all of it was done for a simplified filmy approach to things but honestly if you are setting your movie in a call-center at least get some of the stuff right. This just makes a mockery of the entire work culture.

The other major problem with the movie is the major scene involving ‘God’. This has to be the most absurd scene put in a movie for a long time. I can, even with a whole punch (rather than a pinch) of salt accept the whole ‘God’ phone call aspect but the scene is shot so shoddily with such poor writing that it sounds more like they are listening to an ‘All India Radio’ show. The entire part has tacky written all over it & to top it all they try to provide an alternate explanation at the end of the movie just so that if someone wasn’t convinced, would be at the end.
        
The acting in parts is the only saving grace of the movie. Sharman Joshi displays a good comic-timing in parts & his scenes talking to his evil conscience (also Sharman Joshi dressed as the Devil) are pretty funny. Sohail Khan is not as irritating as most of his other films which is quite a step-up for him. Gul Panag is adequate here but she’s done far better work in the past. Amrita Arora’s & Eesha Koppikar’s characters have the most sudden shifts in tone throughout the movie that they would be faced with a major problem in one scene & are absolutely fine in the next, as if the problem never existed in the first place. Dalip Tahil is irritatingly over the top & I find it hard to fathom how a person with such a high level of incompetence actually manages to run the entire call-center. Sharat Saxena is subdued, dignified & boring as Military Uncle. A colossal waste of talent is Suresh Menon in his small role as a technician. Salman Khan has to yet again show how great a star he is, hence the obligatory entry from a helicopter & that is the second time this year after the disaster that was God Tussi Great Ho which funnily had him tied to ‘God’ again, wonder if this movie would suffer the same fate. The basic problem is that all the characters are so poorly written that we never connect with them on any level much less care about their fates.

The two things that really sink the movie are the horrendous written content & the absolute lack of reality. The humor even though forced, works at a few times but not enough to really tickle your funny bone & the emotional part is so over done that it gets tiresome pretty soon. An unbelievable mess with little to offer other than a headache bigger than Salman Khan’s ego.


Final Verdict:  Say Hello & goodbye to this movie as far away from the theater as you can.
      
Grade: D

 

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