Aagey Se Right

What happens when the legendary bumbling Tinkle comic book hero Shikari Shambhu comes to life on big screen? What happens when the lead role of the movie is given to a non-living organism? What happens when the reality of today is mixed with purely illogical comedy? What happens when a mother-of-all-spoofs film tries to be simple, to the point and on your face, and the one-liners have never been heard of in any comedy before? Well, the answer is simple – you get Aagey Se Right.
UTV Spotboy continues the tradition of picking up wild directors; this time with Indrajit Nattoji who comes up with one of the zaniest and more bizarre comedies of 2009. And he succeeds in primarily making the audiences laugh with his first Bollywood outing itself.
Dinkar Waghmare (Shreyas Talpade) is a simpleton who would rather play marbles with the village kids than to become a police officer. But due to his overbearing and possessive mother, who has dreams of him going to the police force, he starts off his journey to the police station. However, on the way, his Bajrangbali gun gets stolen. On the other hand, terrorist Balma Rashidul Khairi (Kay Kay Menon) gets shipped from Pakistan to Mumbai to put his plan into action, but loses his heart to a bar dancer Pearl (Shehnaz Treasurywala) and, in true Bollywood ishtyle, gives up his ‘profession’ for the ‘sake of love’.
Other people involved are Rashidul Khairi’s Mumbai based sidekick, Raghav Shetty (Vijay Maurya), who notices Khairi’s lovelorn attitude and renames him Janu bhai, other than giving him a completely new avatar and changing his lingo from the ‘Paak Urdu’ to ‘Mumbaiyya Tapori’. Shetty later leaves the whole business himself and starts a new catering business (watch his scene with the Pundit in the temple, you will have a stomach pain giggling throughout). Interwoven between these stories is the clichéd story of ‘undying love’, Romeo-Juliet ishtyle!
And all this while, Dinkar keeps getting hallucinations of his overbearing, if not over possessive, mother, pleading him to find the gun before someone else does. All this leads up to an interesting (if not fantastic) climax in the police function.
On the whole, should one go for Aagey Se Right? The answer is YES! It is a refreshingly well written and directed comedy, with a lot of predictably unpredictable situations, full of spoofy humor, and powerhouse performances by the trio of Shreyas Talpade, Kay Kay Menon and Vijay Maurya. Sonia Bhatt (Mahie Gill) suits the role as the zany, bizarre SMS-us-yes-or-no reporter to the T, though people might not appreciate her in this one, as comparisons might arise to her eclectic performances in Dev.D and Gulaal.
Special mention must be given to Nattoji for writing out her role so hilariously that one starts to laugh whenever she utters either ‘SMS’ or ‘420420’. Shehnaz Treasurywala looks pretty and acts fine, though she isn’t given much of a role to display her acting prowess in particular (she has an infectious smile though). Shruti Seth as the Mother-India-wrist-on-forehead-type-Juliet hams, but her role is to ham, due to the simple fact that she plays this person who overacts with each situation. Shiv Pandit plays well, but his role isn’t written well enough. But the best supporting role is that of Shreyas’ mom, Bharti Achrekar.
The movie has its own share of plus points and flaws. Let’s start with the flaws:
• The first half does not take off, and one wonders if it's the right movie. Even the comedy in the first half doesn’t strike you as funny.
• Editing in some places is choppy.
• The movie becomes slightly problematic with too many characters being packed in; something which might irritate as well as annoy some people who were expecting a simplistic comedy that doesn’t tax their brains. All this results in many thinking that the movie goes directionless after a point.
That being said, the plus points are many:
• I’ve never seen such an elaborately well made title sequence in Bollywood since ages.
• The movie boasts of a well-layered storyline, which the movie enthusiasts will notice.
• The director has written in some hilariously unique one-liners that will leave you in splits throughout. Also, the humor is not forced down into your mouth. It is around. People who pick it up will laugh a lot.
• The music is well placed and adds to the funny quotient. Watch out for ‘Maahiya’, in which Shreyas does the monkey-dance, as well as ‘Love Flashback’. But the song that stands out is the more subtle ‘More Piya’, which shows the beautiful chemistry of Menon and Treasurywala in a nice and simple way. The only disappointing picturization turns out to be that of ‘Daav Laga’. Period.
• The spoof of Bollywood’s habit of remaking Hollywood movies is well placed, though in this context, it is the Bhojpuri industry in picture here. The Bhojpuri adaptation of Spiderman (called Makadman) makes you laugh.
Technically, the movie is nothing much to speak about, though the motion graphics used in the title sequence and the end-credits, as well as in the interval card, are worth mentioning.
Writing is crisp, and could have been tighter for the first half, which apparently drags on and on till the interval point, because there is extra focus on the characters, something which should not be included in a movie such as this one. Subtle politically and morally correct messages are encrypted into the movie, with the inclusion of the likes of ‘love can change even the hardest of hearts’ and ‘a guy with a good intention is always helped by God’, as also ‘God never does wrong to any being’, something which is directly denoted by the Hanuman sticker on the gun. However, they might never be noticed due to the fact that Nattoji’s writing never gives the viewer any time to breathe – at least in the second half.
With everything said, the consensus is – let us welcome yet another promising writer-director in Bollywood, Indrajit Nattoji, and hope that his next outing will be far better than this debut outing. In short, watch it for Shreyas Talpade, Kay Kay Menon, Vijay Maurya, or the whacky journey of Waghmare’s Bajrangbali gun!