Rent at your own risk.

Grade: F

Apartment

Indian Release Date: 23/04/10
CBFC Classification:  A
Running Length: 1 Hour 37 Minutes

Cast: Tanushree Dutta, Neetu Chandra, Rohit Roy, Anupam Kher
Director: Jagmohan Mundhra
Screenplay: Jagmohan Mundhra & Syed Gulrez
Cinematography: Uday Tiwari
Music: Bappa Lahiri

Not to be confused with the 1960 Jack Lemmon-Shirley MacLaine starrer, Jagmohan Mundhra’s Apartment is infact a Xerox copy of the Bridget Fonda-Jennifer Jason Leigh thriller ‘Single White Female’ (1992).

Preeti (Tanushree Dutta) & her boyfriend, Karan (Rohit Roy) live together in a new bought flat that is until she suspects him of having an affair & throws him out. On her air-hostesses’ income she cannot manage the monthly installment on the house so on the suggestion of a friend she puts in an advertisement for a roommate. After many unappealing candidates, Preeti is impressed by the seemingly coy & polite Neha (Neetu Chandra) & promptly takes her in as her paying guest. Neha happens to be a village girl who seems more than willing to pay the rent, do all the housework & even keeps on referring to Preeti as ‘Didi’, in short the perfect roomie. But is Neha all what she looks like or is there something dark that lurks beneath this naive exterior? Slowly as things start going awry people, cats & even pet fish start to turn up dead!        

Mundhra has been quite an enigma to me over the years. His passion for cinema has led him from abandoning a reputed IIT engineering degree to directing movies. Over the years he’s done it all, soft-core porn flicks early on during his career to exploitative movies disguised as arty flicks dealing with women rights issues & even a terrorism themed flick two years back, ‘Shoot on Sight’. However he’s as subtle as a sledgehammer & as deep as a saucer. It’s a wonder that he still manages to get work & funding to keep making movies.

Technically the movie is passable, just as most movies are these days. The plot is more or less a straight lift from ‘Single White Female’ with a few alterations (dead cat instead of a pup, lyricist neighbor instead of gay actor neighbor, etc) & a few cringe-worthy songs. The narrative fails to convincingly establish the mental state of Neha & any real reason for her intense liking of Preeti (yes, Preeti does give her a trendy makeover but her obsession starts much before that). The script doesn’t even make you feel wee bit sympathetic towards any of the characters so why should I care about anything what anyone does or faces.  

The feeble attempts at humor & social commentary on the “fast” Mumbai lifestyle via the building security guard are limp & clichéd to say the least. Even the suspense which could have elevated the story is presented in such a mundane fashion that you could see it coming a gazillion miles away. One of the funniest scenes has to be the near comatose sex scene between Preeti & Karan which literally looks like two blocks of wood sliding over each other back & forth mechanically without as much as causing any chafing.

The lead actors are made to look better by surrounding them with even less competent second & third tier supporting actors. But the cake for truly horrendous acting should go to Neetu Chandra. Every move screams out overacting, be it the overtly demure bit or the wide-eyed, nostril flaring psycho act in the last bit of the flick. Probably Mundra knew of her acting (in)abilities & choose to distract the audience by amply showing off the well-waxed legs of both the lead actresses. No such luck for Rohit Roy or Anupam Kher who’s left holding the cat & doesn’t even get a waxed scalp.  

The only plus point of the movie is it’s running length that clocks in at just over an hour and a half, though on hindsight even that seems far too long.  

Final Verdict: This apartment is best left unoccupied.

Grade: F
 
 

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