November 30th, 2007 
Deepak SPEED Cast: Urmila Matondkar, Zayed Khan, Battered Cell Phone Direction: Vikram Bhatt Hell, cell’s bells. Broken, bruised, battered, a handset turns out to be quite a hutch/airtel/Vodafone ado about something. A lady in calf-leather boots, freshly kidnapped, yells, "How dare you! I’m a British, citizen." Unimpressed, the bozos bleat bah-bah. Aha, then, she pokes away at a few wires, a plastic spindle and a nimboo-green plate. Aloha, it’s never too late. See, the mobile’s alive, kicking and screaming again. Help! Vikram Bhatt’s Speed bhi Kabhi Cellular Thi may be swiftly edited and decently shot but sorry, it’s an exercise in vacuity and senselessness. Here the London streets can become Ballard Pier and coconut trees sprout in the Queen’s Palace. Alarmingly, too, the British countryside resembles the cheapest-to-hire location in Goregaon’s Film City. Tut tut. Indeed, serious matters are afoot. The Indian Prime Minister, a Gayatridevi Sinha is to be assassinated in London (never mind if the shoot’s in good ole Powai). Since she’s played by Suhasini Mulay, you’re not worried. She always survives. She keeps smiling like Mona Lisa gone wrong and addresses a public meeting attended only by 10 or maybe nine junior artistes. Best of all, she’s accompanied by the riotous Raj Zutshi, Indian cinema’s most underrated comedian yet. He just has to show up and there you go tee hee. Mirthfully, Zutshi meets bad guys in a London-cum-Powai toilet, and keeps cleaning his hands with a napkin as if were Lady Macbeth. He isn’t. Actually, everyone’s quite cuckoo. Take the Baida Fry Bawarchi (Sanjay Suri) who’s actually an MI5 spy (wazzat?). He behaves like Kiefer Sutherland in the TV series 36 Hours, which means he’s as perplexing as a crossword without clues. His wife (Urmila Matondkar) is the kidnapped one. And like Kim Bassinger, she’s networking seriously. “Gasp, puff, huff, pant, eeeeeh, grunt, ouch…aiyyya," is the only line of dialogue assigned to her. Heavens! Meanwhile, Zayed does a Run Khan Run all over Britain. Or Powai. And he unwraps an ugly teddy bear to gift to his angry girlfriend Tanushree Dutta. Understandably, she gets angrier. She also rolls rosogollas in her mouth inspired perhaps by Marlon Brando’s marbles-in-the-mouth in The Godfather. And so what else? Well, Amrita Rao… no no… Amrita Arora is killed after one antara (stanza) of a supposedly sex’ysong. Not surprisingly, you don’t miss her. More: Aftab Shivdasani in a Flapping Trenchcoat delivers a [...]
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