Watched the "Road, Movie" on saturday afternoon.
Fact:
Its a Dev Benegal Movie (No i havent watched any of his movies :P)
Its got Abhay Deol in it ( i love all his movies :D)
Its won all those phoren awards and phoren crew (er...critically aclaimed..apparently :P)
So, me n my friends (Well i was the one who insisted we watch it, to be fair on them :( ) go to watch this movie, we end up missing the first 10 mins courtesy some heavy lunch, n bad traffic :P
Spoiler alert!(If you havent watched the movie, heck, read it still, you might thank me for saving your money :P. Quite a long post, bear with me as i wanted to go into each and every detail that made this movie.... Er..."BRILLIANT!!!" :P)
Vishnu(Abhay deol) son of hair oil merchant decides to take up the job of driving an antique truck to a local museum(he has to drive across a desert to reach there, thats how local it is :P) to escape from his "tel"(hair oil) selling father. So we have a levis clad, ipod listening, sunglass wearing, antique truck driving, Vishnu start off his journey across the desert. Promising?Very....
All set for a transformative journey where he discovers the real meaning of life, love, so on so forth etc etc. In short to become "A Man" :P
On his way across the desert he picks up a bunch of colorful characters, first up "The Kid". A smart ass kid selling chai at dhabba, who has a quip ready for any situation who wants to get out of the dabba, why? becuase theres no growth opportunity in the dhabba :P. Well informed kid mind you, in one scene at the dhabba where Vishnu is drinking tea, the kid quips "did you expect this to be Starbucks?" (Yeah, a Chai selling kid, in a dhabba, in the middle of nowhere, knows about "Starbucks", Globalization :P) Maybe impressed by the level of sophistication of the kid( Hey even i didnt know bout Starbucks till i was in engineering, but then again i am not sophisticated remember? :P) Our protoganist decideds to give him a hitch. Two minutes down and the antique Lorry breaks down(What did you expect? its "1940 Antique" :P) and in enters our next character "The burly mechanic" who likes to look burlier by wearing 'n' layers of clothes (Yes, i counted at least 2 shirts and a jacket. But hey arent we like, in the middle of desert???? Hmmm..it must be real cold in there :P) and decides to help only if he gets a ride to a nearby 'Mela'. OK, 2 colorful characters added, lets start the journey!!! Not yet, not yet they are soon stopped by the police, who have their station in middle of nowehere (They were in the middle of nowhere already, remember? :P) At which point we discover that our hero,is only licensed to drive a bike and they have an antique projector and movie reels stashed in the equally antique truck he has been driving, for both of which he doesnt have any papers. So they are dragged to the station for acting suspicious :P. They are made to sit here and watch a guy tied upside down getting beaten up black and blue by the police inspector. The police guy tells them, hes in a mood to watch a movie tonight( yeah, after all that beating up theres nothing more relaxing then watching a movie:D) Now, our guys have a task at hand, show the police guy a movie, or be the next in line to get hung upside down. But not to worry, we have got the burly mechanic who knows to fix everything "Antique", come to the rescue again. He has the antique projector up and running just in time for the entire village(again wasnt it in middle of nowhere?) to gather for a movie night out :P. Which movie was played ? We are shown several cut scenes of several popular old movies and everyone gets high by smoking weed while watching "the movie". The police guy, high on weed gets turned on seeing Rekha dance on the screen and chases away the villagers and gets wasted :P. Our guys make good their escape taking advantage of the wasted police saab whose probably busy dreaming wet dreams of rekha :P
Back we Resume on the "Road", the burly mechanic now asks vishnu to take a shortcut which is on an un-marked non existent road. Apparently that will take them to the 'Mela' quicker. When Vishnu removes his map to check, our mechanic uncle quips, "Does anyone put a shortcut on a map?". "Better sense" of the mechanic uncle prevails on Vishnu and they decide to take the "shortcut" (Hell yeah, its totally safe when you are driving in middle of desert, middle of nowhere to take any unmarked non existent path :P). In time, they realize that it was a short cut alright, but shortcut to death as they are pretty much lost and have run out of water. (But not apparently of fuel, as the antique lorry has been running for days by now:P, i seriously wanna know what kinda engine it has :D) Just in time they stumble across their next road companinion, "the Gypsy" woman who is wandering around the desert in search of water herself, carrying a small leather pouch filled with water (Didnt you know, you can survive long enough by just having a sip of water every day!!! No you can not, i was just kidding , but apparently "the gypsy" woman could :P)
Vishnu the true hero he is, decides to take her on a ride too :P. The Gypsy woman revels to us that her husband was murdered by the water dacoits for trying to get water from a well. Run out of water(Yeah, the magical leather water pouch "the gypsy" woman was carrying was not magical after all :P) and options, they now stumble across a fenced out well, which the gypsy woman says is the property of the water dacoits. Desperate that they are, Vishnu ignores her plea and decides to get the water. He leans into the well which is shown filled with water (Yeah, a well FILLED with water in middle of desert!!!) with bottle in hand to fill it, but alas, the waters just a litte beyond his reach. Frustrated they decide to drive on. (No sir, we are humans we do not use any tools that would have helped us get the water, tools are only for birds n animals, like crows and monkeys :P)
They finally end up at the place where our mechanics mela is supposed to have come. But wait a minute, theres no mela in here, its just more sand. (Did he get the dates wrong??? :P) The ever optimistic that our mechanis uncle is, he now advises them to put up the cinema, apparently ppl will just flock in wherever they put up "cinema" :P. True to his word, we have ppl flooding in no time, and they have enough water now to drink and splash around. And just like that we have one hell of colourfull mela (Yeah, again in middle of nowhere :P, lights, music and all) After several cinema shows, they are shown having made bagful of money by selling tickets for cinema(literally bagfull:P), they discover stashes of Vishnus dads "Tel" (hair oil) in the lorry and after Vishnu gets laid with "the gypsy" woman, they are shown waking up again in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, they were all just dreaming about the "mela" :P. What do they do now? Hell they continue with their journey (Point: Having dreamt about drinking water is enought to quench ones thirst, psycho-logy 101:P)
Are they able to reach the end of their journey? NO not just yet. They are stopped again, this time by the water dacoits, whose well our hero Vishnu had so foolishly trespassed.(Yeah, i guess they had this sophisticated device that helped them pinpoint exactly who had tresppased their property and even track them down, its curretnly in beta testing they will launch it in market soon :P). To teach the fools and all the people a lesson not to tresppas on their property he asks his minions to set the well they had trespassed on fire (Yeah, you heard me right set the water on fire :P and heck didnt he say it was his property? set his own properyt on fire? Brilliant sirji :P) The villain gives a lecture on how he runs the best distribution system in the world and is better than the corporates. Takes them to his lair (sounds more lika an industrial tour? :P), with the antique lorry and all. He says hes got all the power in this land and to demonstrate his point further, he says he will take "the gypsy" woman for himself. Vishnu our hero at this point gets angry (Yes sir, very very angry) and shouts "Mard banna hain?"(translation:"want to become a man?" :P) at the villain and runs to his lorry, with 3-4 of the gun trotting minions running behind him trying to stop him(Inflation!!!No bullets :( ) from reaching the lorry. One would imagine at this point, the lorry had somethign incredible hidden which would save our hero and his friends. But unfortunately guys :(, what can be trully described as WTF moment, he gets out a bottle of hair oil, walks to the villain and tells hims "Tel lagao mard bano"(translation:"apply the hair oil and become a man" :P), at this point the entire theatre is awe struck at the brilliance of the move :P( no just kidding, more like dumb struck, i could see everyone look at each others faces trying to figure where this was going :P) The villain is shown applying the hair oil, and admiring his reflection in the water (yeah, no exageration there :P) He immediatly wants the entire stash of oil for himself. The hero then bravely barters the oil for their release and water (Yes yes, no exageration here either :(. ) They are released with out any harm with litres and liters of water and FINALLY end up reaching a village where they dcide to distribute the water among the villagers as they say, it rightly belonged to them.
In the last 5 minutes of the movie, folks, Our burly mechanic dies with a smile on his face while watching a Charlie Chaplin classic with the villagers (Laughed to death?? Probably :P) Gypsy women and the kid decide to go their own way, and Vishnu drives his "antique" lorry to the city where the local museum is located but drives it straight into the sea instead of the museum :P. Decides to take a quick swim in the sea followed up by a tel(Hair oil) malish and is last shown driving on a bike away to someplace....(No i didnt change ANY details, thats how the movie ends without any exageration whatsoever:P)
At the End of the movie, heres the discussion i and my friends had:
Friend in a dazed voice:"Dude, you know how it feels when you rip a thousand bucks into pieces, set the pieces on fire, and then piss on the ashes?"
Me in a dazed voice: "I think i know how it feels :|"
Friend in dazed voice:"Tel Lagao mard bano!!!"
Me in a dazed voice:"Tel Lagao mard bano!!!"
P.S: Yes, i spent 1000 Rs for 4 tickets :|
P.P.S: On hindsight, it appeared the director was paid to make an ad for the Hair oil :P
P.P.P.S: Again, on hindsight KCK appeared to be an ad for the Japanese telephone, this one for oil whats with all the movie length ads :P
P.P.P.P.S: Dont belive me? Go watch it yourself, n plz plz, if you get the joke about the oil, share it with me :)
"
