Bheja Fry / Race

Bheja Fry


Bheja Fry is sort of Anbe Sivam-lite; a film with the same basic storyline but less ambitious about its message. So we have a self-centred, self-absorbed man and a good-hearted, simple man who is initially a thorn in his side but ends up teaching him a few basic lessons about life and love. While Anbe Sivam painted its story on a much larger canvas with its atheist underpinnings and communist messages, Bheja Fry is more modest and takes the comedy route.

Rajat Kapoor plays a rich businessman who gets together with his rich businessman friends every Friday night for some fun. But the fun is at the expense of someone else since each of the friends is supposed to bring along someone who is expected to be the entertainment at the party. When Rajat hears about Vinay Pathak, a government servant who launches into a song given a chance, he calls him over, planning to take him along to the party. But Rajat hurts his back and so is stuck with Vinay at his house.

The film is very funny and keeps us chuckling quite consistently through its short running time. Considering the limited locations and characters, it comes up with enough interesting and innovative ideas to keep the story moving and make us laugh. The way things are mixed up between Sarika and Rajat's ex-girlfriend and the way the income tax segment is handled are especially clever. The themes are a bit adult but the film doesn't resort to slapstick or double entendre and keeps the humor quite clean.

The film belongs to Vinay Pathak. He brings the character to life and gives it the perfect mixture of naievete and goodness. He may drive Rajat up the wall but to us, his simplicity and innocence are quite endearing. Rajat looks the part of the rich businessman and does his part, which is to look increasingly exasperated as the movie proceeds. Sarika, as his wife, is classy and plays it straight. Milind Soman has a supporting role.

Race



If I were to list things that I like in a movie, twists would come pretty close to the top of the list. I love it when a movie takes me by surprise with its plot developments. But Race definitely takes things too far. This is a film loaded with twists but the twists exhaust and confuse us and end up becoming laughable.

It doesn't look like the film's director duo started the film with a finished script in hand. In the name of twists, the film periodically throws up plot developments that simply negate everything that went on before. These developments are then explained away by giving us new information about the past that dramatically alters everything what we saw before. A good twist is based on things that were in plain sight and simply makes us look at them in a new perspective. But the twists here don't surprise us since they are based upon information that we had no chance of knowing. And after the second such twist, the movie turns into a joke as nothing we see can really be taken seriously.

But the twists do ensure that the film's pace never lags. The plot's convolutions keep us engaged and the film definitely can't be called boring. And though the twists themselves are overused, the way some of them are explained is pretty ingenious.