Subhash K Jha looks back at Ekta Kapoor’s 2003 film Kucch To Hai in a new edition of This Day That Year.
You see all those familiar faces from Ekta Kapoor’s soaps, and you go, “Uh-oh, not an enlarged and expanded soap-on-celluloid, please!”
But wait. Ekta Kapoor’s second feature film (the disastrous Kyunki Main Jhooth Nahin Bolta is best forgotten) is a crisp and crunchy whodunit with enough red herrings and other appetizers to keep you open-mouthed all through. The characters are all campus cookies, either crazed by love (check out the song ‘Tere ishq ki deewangee’, done in rusty browns and chocolaty hues) or unfriendly wackos in masks and with daunting slasher blades chasing the students down eye-catching corridors.
What could have been a reprehensibly violent celebration of the slurpy fantasies of a freaked-out sicko is turned by producer Ekta Kapoor and her co-directors into a fun-filled fantasia with fear creeping up on the narrative at just the right speed. The film is so well paced we never feel encumbered by any specific component in the smartly assembled ‘jig-saw’ (Tusshar and his comely co-stars do the jig, the mysterious killer wields the saw).
Anil Mohile’s background music instigates bouts of creepy-crawlies in the plot without resorting to banshee wails and creaky violins. The songs (by Anu Malik) and the choreography lend a captivating credibility to the narrative’s claim to inflame. From the bleeding balladry of ‘Kya pyar karoge mujhse’ to the raunchy rhythms of ‘Tere ishq ki deewangi’, the numbers are nifty and appetizing, with the two lead stars, particularly Esha, displaying a zen for zingy gyrations.
In the best choreographed number ‘Yeh mera dil’ (incorporating elements from the 1970s’ John Travolta-Olivia Newton-John musical Grease), Esha does an intricate Bharat Natyam eyebrow movement, which Tusshar promptly tries to emulate, and, like a child who picks up noodles with bare fingers when chopsticks fail, wriggles his eyebrows with his fingers.
Such moments energize and enthuse the plot far beyond its limited source material. Indeed, Kucch To Hai goes beyond the Hollywood slasher hit I Know What You Did Last Summer in search of themes and plotting devices that give the “slasher” genre from Hollywood the comforting touch of the familiar in Bollywood. The horror is opened up, so that we can touch the humour underlining terror.
The central love triangle among Tusshar, Esha, and newcomer Natasha is cannily formulated. And the murder spree that qualifies the triangle doesn’t suffer from the film’s romantic ambitions. Once again, after his debut film Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai, Tusshar plays the underdog, but with great conviction. His character Karan’s efforts to woo the campus stunner Tanya (Deol) is peppered by self deprecatory devices that enhance the actor’s boy-next-door image.
The other star-kid, Esha Deol, also seems to be improving with every film. If in her last release Na Tum Jano Na Hum she had some glorious moments to herself, here, her timing in the comic and dramatic sequences shows a marked improvement. The third protagonist, Natasha, is a product of television. She has a wistful face that conveys heartbreak effectively, certainly better than the other recent debutantes.
The actors from Ekta Kapoor’s serials fill out the plot’s canvas and give a certain invigorating adrenaline-rushing vibrancy to the proceedings. But that fine actor Rishi Kapoor is wasted in a role that scarcely allows him to exercise his vast range beyond a scowl. Tusshar’s father, Jeetendra, makes a token appearance as his own son’s father—a crowd-pleasing gimmick that works dead-on, just like the corpses that jump out of secret places to elicit a scream of thrill in this well-contoured crime drama.
Though there are two directors and two cinematographers (one of the latter, a lady, Fawzia Fatima) navigating the thriller across a jagged precipice, producer Ekta Kapoor succeeds in instilling a remarkable homogeneity in the storytelling. The speedbreakers in the murder mystery are surprisingly well synchronized. Whether it’s Johnny Lever doing a comic turn or Anu Malik stepping in to bathe the Swiss Alps in a melody, the narration never loses its concentration.
The evenly paced editing ensures that the audience remains with the plot to the end. The climactic portion is particularly gripping. Sure, this isn’t the most original of films, and it doesn’t aspire to achieve any extraordinary heights of glory. And sure, Kucch To Hai has no social messages. Unless you count uncluttured and energy-driven entertainment as a message for sane mainstream filmmaking.
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t make an effort to see what Ekta Kapoor has done to one of Hollywood’s most engaging genres: the slasher-thriller. Like any whodunit, you may not be enthused to encore the experience. But it’s fun while it lasts. Kucch To Hai is a cleverly constructed film. It looks, feels, and SMELLS right—like a bunch of freshly plucked wild flowers. This is one film where lots of people get killed. Fortunately, none of them would be a film distributor.
