Never mind the fact that I had the same reaction when someone mentioned ‘Gajagamini‘ as well.
The female elephant theory (that I came up with in a state of total sobriety) seemed validated when Aamir Khan beefed up by drinking a truck full of milk and ate some twenty raw chicken each day in an effort to build up more muscles than Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Hritik Roshan put together. By golly, did he succeed or what?
In any case, on saturday morning, I went on a long bicycle ride with a friend of mine and he and I rode about 80km that day. I hadn’t been on my bicycle for almost 21 days, thanks to having fallen ill and not having been in town, and I was surprised at myself for having done so much distance without any problems.
It was only when I got home and sat down for about thirty minutes and then tried moving did I figure out that I’d pulled some muscle in my leg, and was finally graduating to using crepe bandage for an aching muscle for the first ever time in my life. Sweet.
Somehow, the only way to remedy this painful situation was to counter it with something that was more painful, and this was when I decided to go watch Ghajini at the Inox in Swagath Garuda Mall in Jayanagar. God bless south Bangalore!
Ghajini met all expectations so far as painful fundas were concerned. True, the production values for the movie, the sync-sound and the background score were all at par, but the film was ‘Meh‘ at best for me.
It started off with a Prof. explaining to his ‘final year medical students’ as to how ‘The brain is the most vital organ of the human body‘. It was the first cue for me to get up and go, but having paid INR 180 and being the supercheap guy that I am, I decided that I had to endure the entire movie to get my money’s worth, or die trying.
Asin was super-cute in the movie, though I am of the school of thought that subscribes to how women should wear very little / no make-up, and had Asin done so, I am sure she’d have looked a lot prettier and would’ve had more people drooling in the aisles.
Aamir Khan showed more skin in the movie than Asin did, and there was one song in the movie which had six Aamir Khans dancing around in outfits that wouldn’t have been out of place in a gay-pride parade.
Should Aloo Aravind and Murgadoss want to promote the whole concept of male objectification as propagated by Aishwarya on her blog, and also take a few reels out of Dostana and pull gay audiences to the movie, then this ploy of having Aamir Khan wear SKimpy clothes is probably apt.
The other aspect about Ghaijini (apart from it being incredibly asinine at times) that I didn’t like was the violence in the movie.
Not that I am not a fan of violence. I’ve enjoyed every minute of movies like ‘Eastern Promises’ and ‘A History of Violence’ and Edward Norton’s scene in ‘American History X’ where he makes the car-jacker put his mouth on the pavement and kicks it in is one of my favourite cinematic moments.
But the violence in Ghajini, especially against the women, sends out all the wrong signals to our society which already has enough crazed elements without movies like these having to fuel their insanity further. One can see men fight each other all the way, but the golf-like stance with which Asin’s character was done away with was just a tad too gruesome to watch, especially with the extended, sadistic build up to it happening.
True, all those who I had arguments with about this particular scene said it was after all, just a movie. I agree. But giving it a U/A certificate and watching it with children isn’t such a good idea.
In retrospect, I’d rather have watched ‘The President is Coming‘, but then again, I had to do something about my hurting leg, apart from singing Bon Jovi’s ‘Gimme something for the pain’ from their 1995 album, ‘These Days’!
I think Memento is far better. Everything nice in Ghajini is borrowed from Memento. I really don’t see anything original in the movie.