#190: Radio

Yes, I am laughing too as I am writing this.

I never thought that even in my most grotesque nightmare I would find myself watching a Himesh Reshamiyya movie but sometimes the craving to make fun of something gets the better of your senses. Radio was one such inspired choice.

You find out a few things as you go along the movie. One of those I will illustrate through an example. Imagine you're stuck on a deserted island and you have to choose Himesh the actor or Himesh the singer as your companion to bring you back to your home far away from this island that's beset with deadly beasts of the wild, foul smell and poisonous plants.The wise thing to do even in such a scenario would be to stay put on the island and struggle for means of survival.

I consider myself fairly aware about Bollywood but writer-director Ishaan Trivedi's filmography is a veritable treasure. He has previously written 7 1/2 Phere, Bachelor Party and Stop !. Bachelor Party is not yet rated on Imdb because at least five people need to vote for such a rating to appear.

The movie is a paradox of sorts. The scenes involving Sonal Sehgal and Shenaz Treasurywala crying are stuff of legends as far as comic timing is concerned. Just like Himesh's Ronan Keating impression of sitting on a bench and crooning, 'Jaaaannneeemann'.

The opening piece of that song is such a blatant rip-off of 'When you say nothing at all', that it might just spoil Keating's version for the rest of your life.

Carrying on from that point of paradox, there is a comic gag of an unsteady dish antenna atop a TV house that Himesh keeps climbing a ladder to set it such that the reception is clear inside the house. This act might just move you to tears.

I can't begin to fathom how Ishaan Trivedi in a moment of genius must've put those words in the screenplay.
"Himesh climbs the ladder irritated and shakes the antenna irritated. He shouts irritatingly and asks if the reception is clear. It irritates him even more but since it his girlfriend's house, he sees the humor in this. The family doesn't buy another dish antenna because then there would be no humor in Himesh's busy life as a radio professional." . This happens repeatedly in the movie and each time it is supposed to becomes more humorous.
I know what it becomes but I can't put those words on this blog.

Yes, there is one nice thing about the movie, a song called ' Piya jaise laadoo, motichoor laadoo' sung by Rekha Bharadwaj. Never understood the meaning but it does have a nice ring to it even though it opens with the most annoying piece of shehnai you will ever come across in this lifetime. And as irrelevant as this point might seem right now but Sonal Sehgal is pretty.

If anything, the two just about convince me to not award Radio a negative score on the rating scale.

There is another song called 'Zindagi jaise ek radio....' I don't know anything else that can sum up the movie more than the sheer intuitive ingenuity of that analogy.

Rating: 0/10