It is New Year’s Day 2014 as Caustic Kumar and Moderate Manohar make their way to one of the theaters screening Dhoom 3.
They find that they are not the only ones who are spending the first day of the year watching a film, at that very moment CK remarked
CK: Heard some news about some set ratings is slowly going to replace us.
MM: I heard them, too. Think the recession is catching up in our field too; soon robots will start writing customized articles in long form for readers.
CK: Who reads long form anyway? Imagine the horror when people get to read what exactly they want to!
CK and MM together: The Horror!!!
<Movie Begins>
<Interval>
<Movie Ends>
CK: You go first
MM: No! You go first.
CK: You were the one who complained that you were being made the ‘Watson’ in the two of us.
MM: As if that isn’t true, you are the vociferous one, take the first shot.
CK :< starts to say something…pauses…looks around to the thinning crowd> I actually liked it.
MM: Aha!
CK: What Aha? Can’t I like any film?
MM: Surprised actually, was hoping you will run this down with a bulldozer with the ‘Prestige’ point, which this film is a sort of reworking.
CK: That it is, maybe reworking is not the right word.
MM: But then this is the same reason you had problems with earlier films, I see that clearly the film will work for anyone who has not seen ‘The Prestige’ assuming all those cheering in the audience haven’t seen it.
CK: It does work for people who have seen Prestige too, at least for me. Dhoom 3 takes the big reveal from Prestige and digs with it for plot moments, almost care-able characters. I must say I was not disappointed.
MM: And you are not going to say anything about the increasingly irritating buddy cop routine brought out by Jr.Bachchan and Uday Chopra, forced excuses like world crime conference and the utter buttery premise of a plot.
CK: No. I won’t even try to remind everyone that Katrina appears only when there is a song.
MM: I thought the songs were done quite well, even if you are irritated of their occurrence you cannot look away.
CK: Exactly
<Both then speak on the choreography for a moment>
MM: So you are saying that even if this is more than an ‘inspired’ film, it is alright and you are not going to snipe this down; which is more like the philosophy that I’ve been trying to tell you all the while. That means we are not too different after all.
CK: No such thing, just that this movie didn’t irritate me as such the previous feigned ones did, and there were likeable things going on screen even if you knew what was going to happen. Something emotional I guess, and that I think is a primary requirement for any film.
MM: So you are going to be inconsistent in your views, I don’t know how chief will react to that.
CK: Inconsistent it maybe, but at least I am honest, I don’t think you can have an objective approach to these things, I’m not going to decry anything to which I was hooked to, also this Aamir Khan did lift this film; even if his tics did get quite tiresome in the end.
MM: Clearly you are reading some pseudo-spiritual meditation books, the ones which have bearded sanyasis on the cover with “happiness” quotes.
<CK frowns for a while, not unlike what Aamir Khan does in the film>
MM: Thought you would ask, but nevertheless I couldn’t buy this whole revenge against the bank is the motive for the heist thing, but otherwise yes I did find the film engaging, eye candy entertainment and technically superior; serious doubts are now in mind as to whether the film would have been engaging if not for Aamir.
CK: Speaking of Aamir, what’s with his cheeks, they seem to be playing a completely different role all through the movie, hope they too got paid.
MM: Oddness noted, but not so odd as much as your mild treatment of the film itself.
CK: I have a whole new year to be belligerent.
MM: I look forward to those times.
Happy New Year!
The Lowly Laureate 