Painful, very painful.

Grade: D

Tashan

Indian Release Date: 25/04/08
CBFC Classification:  U/A
Running Length: 2 Hours 30 Minutes

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor
Director: Vijay Krishna Acharya
Screenplay: Vijay Krishna Acharya
Cinematography: Ayananka Bose
Music: Vishal - Shekhar

At the beginning of 2008, Tashan was one of the most awaited films of the year. The Yash Raj camp had yet to fall from grace, it had a stellar and everybody was eager to see Saif and Kareena onscreen for the first time as a couple.

So where exactly did it all go wrong?

Perhaps it was because nobody could actually understand what one of the main characters was saying. Perhaps it was because the humour was really not that funny and because the love story was tagged on almost as an afterthought and lacked any depth of feeling. Perhaps it was just because… well… to be honest… the story was both stupid and illogical.

And so here in brief is what there is of a plot:

Jimmy (Saif Ali Khan) works in a call centre and tutors students on proper American pronunciation. One day the beautiful Pooja (Kareena Kapoor) appears, asking him to tutor Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor) in English to impress his foreign clients. Jimmy somehow fails to realise that Bhaiyyaji is a big Don, Pooja first makes him fall in love with her then uses him to run away with Bhaiyyaji’s money and then Bachchan Pandey (Akshay Kumar) is called in to bring both her and the money back.

Sounds okay on the face of it, sounds even as if it could be a decent movie, right? Right?

Wrong!

So where shall I start where Tashan went horribly wrong… hmmm…. Let’s see.

1)    Anil Kapoor: Anil Kapoor does an excellent job at getting into character… such a good job in fact that it is damn near impossible to understand a single thing he says. Kudos to him for being able to mouth those lines in the first place. But please Anilji, I never ever want to see you in a mesh shirt again, EVER. It traumatised me.
2)    Saif Ali Khan: Jimmy’s character is extremely unlikeable. The type of ultra modern useless guy who just wants to sleep with lots of girls, then decides he wants the ultra traditional type to settle down with. At no point of the movie did I feel any sympathy for what he was going through, he was simply not the type of character that you can relate to.
3)    Kareena Kapoor: Apart from making me want to vomit by how disgusting her ribs looked, her character is completely illogical. Please, someone tell the Yash Raj camp that anorexia is not attractive. Someone also tell them that if you want the audience to feel sympathy for a character or like them, one flashback is not enough to achieve this, there should be some continuity.
4)    Akshay Kumar: Well, he plays perhaps the only likeable character of the entire lot, so he is forgiven for choosing to appear in such a stupid film.
5)    The plot: What plot? The plot is only an excuse for some action scenes and Kareena Kapoor wearing far too few clothes even in traditional regional areas.
6)    The ending: Blah. Did any of us even care at this stage whether they ended up happily ever after? Was anyone even still left sitting in the theatre?

So Tashan starts as a comedy, moves to action and finally decides that it’s a romantic revenge movie. It is in short a schizophrenic film.

Final Verdict: Yash Raj’s fall from grace has been painful indeed.

Grade: D for Dumb

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