It is a movie made on Silk Smitha's life. And it makes you want to take your own. It hurt even more because I had chosen to watch it in the middle of exams and from the first scene it smote my conscience since it was precious prep time wasted. For those of you that haven't seen it this is the story narrated by Emraan Hashmi's character, Abraham, who might as well have gone and drowned himself off the coast:
In a place a little way off from Madras a young girl dreams of reaching the skies. She literally attempts to do the same by getting onto a ladder before her mother basically tells her to get her ass back on the ground and proceeds to accomplish the same by shaking the ladder till the girl falls off. For a second it had me hoping that the film would proceed on how the girl made it big with the help of prosthetic legs and became a dancer or something in south indian films, but sadly this does not happen and so I dolefully settled back into my chair to watch what seemed to be a below average-waste of time movie.
As the girl grows up in true South Indian, plump, ghagra wearing style she develops a mantra to justify all her stupid decisions in life. It goes something like this : "Jab bhagwaan ne ek zindagi di hai toh do baar kya sochna?" (When God has given you one life then why think twice?). No one bothered to tell her it's because God hoped we'd respect life more as the better evolved species. Anyway, so one night Miss Reshma (yes that's her name) jumps out of her window (we later find it's the night before her wedding) and runs off. This provides ample time for the film makers to show the names of the people who have been cast in this pathetic venture.
So Reshma (Vidya Balan) reaches the big city and begins to live in a hovel which seems to be part of a brothel or atleast shares one of it's walls with it. While living there and surviving on crumbs from her 'steel ka dabba', the only thing she bothered to run away with from home, Miss Reshma learns the art of making sex sounds and thus entertains herself at night. There is also an Amma who she is friends with and who she conveniently discards once her career takes off. One day Miss Reshma is hungry and goes to become a heroine. The guy tells her he can't help her and sends her off with 5 bucks. She uses that money to watch Suryakant's (Naseeruddin Shah) movie. Suryakant is the shit in the movies and she has apparently always loved him. Inspired by what she sees, she goes back to the guy who blew her off and as happens in these situations gets to be part of a song sequence because the other girl conveniently fails to turn up. This is the point where the audience is supposed to think : Fate, Destiny, Kismet etc.
So Miss Reshma, our plump beloved sets the screen on fire with her sultry, vulgar dance moves coupled with a jiggling pot belly and of course the hunter which is the deal breaker. Alas, the movie is an Abraham (Emraan Hashmi) direction and he is English speaking, Literature influenced, attempting to be Guru Dutt but not even managing to be himself director who abhors all vulgarity and insists on cutting the scene because he is against making the audience think from their balls rather than their brains. When Reshma goes to see the film, her scene isn't in it!! Haww!! All that hunter time wasted! Tch. Tch.
However, the producer of the film laments that his film is not selling and is then told of the director's censoring of the song. He watches it and after salivating over images of the hunter wielding Reshma decides he must have her! After a long search (I forget how they did it), they finally find her, name her 'Silk' and bring her in for the 'Oooh la la' song with none other than Suryakant. A timid Reshma fails to give the required shot and this puts Suryakant off. Off he goes in a huff and a puff into his changing room where Reshma follows him and offers him 501 sessions of sex in response to his boast of more than 500 lays. What follows sadly, is not the end of the movie or an unplanned pregnancy but they give a perfect shot and she's a hit and in everyone of the over-age star's movies.
Soon, she's as famous as he is! One day she's at his place and his wife comes in so he hides her in the bathroom and sleeps with his wife instead. Reshma is devastated after watching through the bathroom keyhole - delusional fuck that she is. She goes off the bender and decides to go bet on horses. The horse that wins belongs to none other than Suryakant's brother Ramakant (Tusshar Kapoor). They start some sort of an affair which ultimately leads to nothing because of course 'bros before whores' and blood being thicker than water etc.
During all this time, she has moved into a bigger house and is also an alcoholic. And where is Mr. Abraham you may well ask ? He is busy hating her and doing nothing else in particular apart from saying a few deprecating sentences from time to time in the background about her. There's also a journalist called Nyla doing the same, but she's just there for the big bindi effect.
Lest the audience think that Silk has been completely unaffected by all of this, she gives a very 'i have baggage and therefore shall justify my actions' speech at an awards ceremony and rather than hitting Mr. Naseeruddin Shah on the head with the trophy for agreeing to do such a bad film, she walks off with it.
Later, as time passes, people realize she's not that special, her popularity dwindles and she predictably goes into depression. She puts all her money on making a movie with her in triple roles which is supposedly an idea copied from Abraham's movie. This is her downfall, since his movie does well and hers doesn't. Therefore, she loses her head completely and ends up in a porno film shoot from which she escapes because the police arrive and then hallucinates on the streets.
Anyway, this whole time that Abraham's been hating her has actually been good for him because her downfall makes him realize he loves her and in the middle out of nowhere, after she's been ditched by Suryakant and Ramakant (who wanted to marry her) he turns up at her house for drinks and smokes and they become a couple. A proper couple. How we know that is because they don't kiss until their stupid song is over and that's much later but also because she goes to sleep with her head on his shoulder rather than down south and this is supposed to be an indication for the audience that she is now seriously in love.
The movie ends with her killing herself and with Abraham not reaching her on time. Poor bastard had gotten her mother to come visit too! *sniff*.
The entire time after intermission, a small child kept howling in the movie hall as if trying to express what the rest of us could not. The fact that this was an 'A' rated film had obviously not been a deterrent to his parents. Overall, pathetic performances by Miss Vidya Balan whose stomach flab had more screen presence than she did and Mr. Naseeruddin Shah who was an absolute and utter waste. Mr. Tusshar Kapoor was only in the film because he's Ekta Kapoor's younger brother and thus he can be ignored completely. Emraan Hashmi's character did nothing but act all pissed off because Silk Smitha stole his thunder and then acted all weird and sad in the song that was picturised with him and Miss Vidya Balan. But they kissed in the end, so I guess it was all good. A very badly written script, and an insult to the audience and their money, this movie should have been given a 'P' certificate for -Painful and Pathetic.
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