Subhash K Jha takes a look, once again, at the Salman Khan-Sushmita Sen film, Tumko Na Bhool Paayenge, which also feature Dis Mirza, released in theatre 23 years ago.
What kind of a filmmaker would sign the stunning Sushmita Sen and keep her out of the narration till past intermission? Perhaps a death wish commands the filmmakers to indulge in the most absurdly self-defeating exercises.
The film’s protagonist, Vir (Salman Khan), is forced by his boisterous father to drink a jug of milk with egg yolk and jog all over a village. Vir’s father (Sharat Saxena) is a Thakur, supposedly in a village in Uttar Pradesh. He makes stupid statements like, “Thakurs aren’t supposed to use their brains. They get a headache if they do.”
The same could be said of filmmakers who make such preposterously illogical films in the hope of selling absurdity as a novelty to the audience. Tumko Na Bhool Paayenge can be divided into two not-so-neat halves: the village and city halves. Or, for the sake of a more appealing segregation, we can call them the Dia Mirza and Sushmita Sen halves. In the rural (Dia), half the entire cast bursts into smatterings of Bihar-UP dialects to authenticate their geopolitical bearings. Elsewhere, everyone speaks normal Hindi and Yankee-accented English, and for further cultural confusion, they even burst into a Bhangra number.
But let’s not look for logistic bearings in this unbearably far-fetched action-drama about a young innocent in the village who frolics with the frilly giggly belle to some terribly cacophonic numbers, fools around with his hail-fellow-well-met dad and then begins to see visions from a past life. Is he on drugs or plain batty? Neither! Vir isn’t who we think he is. It takes a while for director Parasher to unravel the protagonist’s identity. By the time the deed’s done, we’re quite confused about our own identity as moviegoers. Are we tolerant or plain dumb to sit through such hyper-humdrum?
Post-intermission, Vir moves to murky Mumbai to sort out the mess in his head. It’s time for the Sushmita half. Needless to say, this is the far slicker, more exciting, and more controlled and organized half of the narration. As we watch director Pankaj Parasher finally getting on with the show(for whatever it may be worth) we wonder what took him so long.
In the post-intermission half, Parasher comes to grips with his hitherto lax narrative as the amnesiac Vir tries to piece together his terrible past to discover a whole closetful of secret lives within his persona. Combining elements from Renny Harlin’s espionage thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight with fragments of newspaper headlines, Parasher straightaway takes us into Vir’s pre-amnesiac life as the sharp-shooting Ali whose metropolitan existence as a well-adjusted Muslim in Mumbai is thrown asunder when a police commissioner (Mukesh Rishi) offers Ali and and his best buddy Inder (Inder Kumar) a chance to eliminate scummy underworld gangsters in fake encounters.
Instead of saying, “Stop right there,” the two young men become deeper and deeper embroiled in the march of mayhem, until finally, director Parasher is left with a bloodied, impetuous climax where Ali and Inder – both shirtless, while we’re largely clueless-battle it out man-to-man in a fight to the finish.
Throughout the post-intermission half, Ali’s girlfriend Mehak (Sushmita Sen) remains the only voice of reason. We can’t help but marvel at the sensibleness and sensitivity that Ms Sen brings to her severely limited footage. Even in this outrageously overblown thriller, she can be seen trying to make sense of a progressively nonsensical scenario.
The efficacy of action films depends largely on narrative tightness, technical gloss, and production finesse. In Tumko Na Bhool Paayenge, we’re constantly shocked by the poor production values. In many places, the film is tacky. The skittish and kiddish supposedly romantic exchanges between Salman and Dia Mirza in the first half are bland and irksome. The effort to cash in on the leading man’s real-life liaison with Aishwarya Rai by making pointed references to yellow-press gossip in a village-fair scene, is downright crude.
Strange that Parasher, who earlier did a slick adaptation of Beverly Hills Cop in his directorial debut Jalwa and later made the rip-roaringly entertaining double-role flick for Sridevi in Chaalbaaz should falter so badly with his words and visuals in trying to create a double-role vehicle for Salman Khan.
Romping around in multi-colour red-pink-purple dhotis in the first-half, Salman paints a pathetic picture of juvenile sexuality. Salman’s efforts to pitch his dialogues at a “normal” conversational level further contorts the film’s medieval mood of stylized melodrama and exaggerated word play. He’s more at home in the second half, where he comes into his own in the edifying presence of Sushmita Sen. Their breakdown sequence in the hospital, where she confesses she has married his best friend, is a high point in the film’s uneven dramatic construction.
In the effort to make Dia Mirza’s character lively, the actress ends up looking even more inadequate. Inder Kumar, Salman’s treacherous friend, has an interesting role. He has worked hard on his muscles to match his colleague in the climactic combat. That’s the only time the narrative acquires any sinewy muscle.
Most of the time, director Parasher seems to have little control over the ranting rhythms of the drama. He allows the narration to meander and drift into strange and absurd avenues that are neither entertaining nor credible. Inexcusably, there are signs of haste scattered everywhere. Sushmita Sen’s character isn’t even properly introduced into the narrative. She just swims into sight and makes a place for herself in the implausible scheme of things.
Salmaniacs might be thrilled by yet another brawn-jaaye-par-tashan-na-jaaye performance from the star. For the rest of the moviegoing, junta Tumko Na Bhool Paayenge is an experience best forgotten.
