Cabaret Review: It Is The Worst Film You’ll See This Year
Cabaret(Zee5 )
Starring Richa Chadha, Gulshan Devaiah, S Sreesanth
Directed by Kaustav Narayan Niyogi
Rating: 0 stars
Do you remember those gorgeous sizzling cabaret numbers by Helen in the films of the 1970s? Yes??? And do you remember the 1972 Liza Minnelli classic titled Cabaret for which the actress won an Oscar?
Okay. Now erase the memories of Helen and Minnelli. Chances are, after seeing Cabaret you would never want look at another cabaret number. Come to think of it, it would be hard for you to go to the next Richa Chadha film without a shudder of apprehension.
I was so shaken after watching this trashy homage to that hoary prototype known as the Holy Whore, I wanted to take a dip into the Ganga to cleanse my sullied soul. But it isn’t really my fault.It’s my job to sit through films, no matter how degrading they are to the spiritual health. And believe me, this one drags you down to the dungeons of despair.
Windowless and dingy .
Cabaret opens with brutish cop in Jharkhand gunning down a woman’s husband and then asking her bluntly for sexual favours . Vipin Sachdeva who plays the cop doesn’t keep it subtle.Why should he, when everything around him screams for attention. He simply unzips his trousers and tells the woman to get on with it. This is a man in yoni-form.
The woman Razia alias Rose played by Chadha flees to Dubai after gunning down the cop where in no time at all, we see her dancing to a ruinously subversive remix of Pankaj Udhas’ Mohe aaye na jag ki laaj.
Come again? Is this a cabaret? If it is, then Helen is suing. And what is that Richa is wearing? It looks like a corset tied to the ropes that are used to pull cows towards their sheds. Nope. Richa clearly can’t dance. But that’s okay. No one in this dolorously dreadful and doomed drama does anything that can be called remotely cinematic.
The songs that once used to be the Bhatts forte(yes, a prominent Bhatt, Pooja, is associated with this, and we forgive her) here sound like out-takes from a lengthy musical session with an Indian Idol contestant. And the songs come on the soundtrack with all the subtlety of Sreesanth creeping on to his fellow-contestants in Bigg Boss.
I bring up Sreesanth with good reason. He plays a goodhearted don , and Razia/Rosy’s benefactor who runs what looks like a club for grieving women…one acid-attack victim, one gangrape victim, and so on. By the time Richa finishes her tour of Sreesanth’s philanthropic work she’s ready to join the ‘Sree-fam’. That’s what they call Sreesanth’s fans. But honestly if he insists on….errrrr…acting in such film the ‘fam ‘ may be reduced to a famine soon.
However Sreesanth is not film’s leading man. The not-untalented Gulshan Devaiah is.He plays an alcoholic “investigative journalist” who spends most of his time investigating the heroine’s anatomy.In in sequence he runs after Richa as she leaves his house. I thought she had forgotten her phone on his table(when you are consumed by carnal passion you tend to forget worldly things).
But no , Gulshan(Devaiah, not Grover, both are in the film playing the Liplocking Lush and the Devil’s Advocate, respectively) just wants to investigate Richa’s mouth some more.Damn these crusader type of journalists.
As I watched the actors plod through the plot I wondered how they kept a straight face pretending this film was actually serious business. Make no mistake. Cabaret is a comedy masquerading as a drama of a doomed damsel’s distressful adventures.Even the love-making scenes are a howl.In one of these, Richa Chadha climbs on Gulshan Grover he groans more in a ‘oh-no’ rather than a ‘ah-yes’ sort of way .Then she grabs a bottle and smashes it on his head.
Love-making techniques are getting dangerously violent these days.
If you have a couple of hours to spare please use it for more rewarding activities than watching Cabaret.Like banging your head on the nearest wall. Or driving your car fullspeed into a fast-flowing river.At least you ensured more excitement than what is dead project offers.
