Big Brother Review {1/5} & Review Rating
Do you recall the Sunny Deol starrer GHAYAL? And GHATAK, JEET, ZIDDI, SALAAKHEN, CHAMPION and FARZ? Post GHAYAL, Sunny starred in a series of films that projected him as an angry young man who could bash the wrong-doers to pulp.
No, this isn't a write-up on Sunny's careergraph. We're running through the movie titles because if you've seen those movies, you'd get a fair idea what BIG BROTHER is all about. To state that BIG BROTHER is purani wine packed in nayee bottle would be putting it mildly.
Sample these�
* Sunny throws acid on people's faces as if he were distributing chocolates.
* Sunny throws a rapist and his advocate from a skyscraper. The rapist jumps himself, because he has committed a heinous crime. The advocate is thrown, because he's defending the rapist.
* When Sunny hits people, they fly, they glide, they even get buried in the soil.
* When he throws people in air and if the person hits a lamp post, the lamp post actually breaks off.
* That's not all, when he holds an iron rod to hit people, the rod starts melting.
He targets rapists, molesters, pedophiles, erring son and daughter-in-law, dowry-seeking in-laws, all wrong-doers... The public supports him, the ministers hate him... In the final scene, he shoots the prospective Chief Minister at point blank range and empties his gun in the Police Commissioner's chest. And all this happens in the Commissioner's official residence and is being telecast LIVE on Aajtak channel.
To sum up, BIG BROTHER takes you back to the 1980s and 1990s when maar-dhaad, bullets, swords, acid bottles, guns, pistols, bombs, knives et al were the compulsory requirements to make a masala film. Need one add more?
BIG BROTHER starts in New Delhi and travels to Mumbai. It tells the story of a middle class family comprising of Deodhar Gandhi [Sunny Deol], his mother [Farida Jalal], brother [Imran Khan] and sister [Prachi].
Leading a simple and peaceful life, an incident turns their life upside down [the Home Minister's son throws acid on his sister's face] and the family is left with no other option but to leave the city and move to Mumbai under a different guise. They start life afresh and all seems well till the ghosts of the past surface again.
Things reach a point when the protagonist is prodded by his mother to take that course of action which not only avenges their hurt, but also takes on the cause of the aggrieved in the country as a whole. The movement so created gets the support of girls, ladies and the infirm who proudly proclaim him as their 'Big Brother'.
Relying on an age-old story, BIG BROTHER offers nothing new to the viewer. The only question you want to ask Mr. Guddu Dhanoa is, Sir, what exactly prompted you to make such a violent movie? There's an overdose of violence in the film, so much so that you start feeling nauseated. There's comedy too [Raju Shrivasatav and the auto rickshaw sequences] that look like an add-on and completely forced.
While three songs flow in rapid succession at the start, you strongly feel that barring the aarti, the romantic song between Sunny and Priyanka was not required and the MTV-style number looks weird since it doesn't go with Sunny's character in the movie. Cinematography is okay.
Sunny is repeating himself. Priyanka Chopra gets three songs and a few lines to deliver. Danny has a half-baked role. Farida Jalal is passable. Sayaji Shinde plays to the gallery. Govind Namdev is loud. Imran Khan is alright. Shahbaaz Khan is perfect. Prachi is ordinary. Shernaz Patel is good.
On the whole, BIG BROTHER is a poor show. At the box-office, it has some hope at the single screens of North India, that's it.
