Saturday, January 19, 2008

more thoughts while watching Yaadein

This Very Special Edition of my blog will allow you to vicariously enjoy the experience of watching Yaadein, minus the horror of all those transparent tanktops and other scary clothes. We'll focus on one of my favorite scenes: the anticlimactic crocodile scene.

To catch you up to speed, the hero is Ronit, played by Hrithik Roshan, and the heroine is Isha, played by Kareena Kapoor.

Without further ado, here is a Very Special glimpse of my thoughts during this fabulous scene.



What is this? Some kind of weird spring break scene?

Isha and her friends look awfully happy to be going to an island with danger signs posted everywhere.

And now they're running and screaming in terror. Is King Kong hiding out on the island or something?

So, they were scared because someone started playing clips of a crocodile walking around in a zoo? Okay. I do like the sound effects, but they might be more effective if the roars were coordinated with footage of the crocodile's mouth moving.

Wait, how did Isha get so far away from everyone else? They just got to the island a minute ago.

Wow, that's a nice stuffed crocodile. And I like the way they're cutting between the stuffed crocodile next to Isha and the crocodile footage from the zoo.

Hey, movie, the 1950's are calling. They want their special effects back.

You know, they should at least have attached a string to the stuffed crocodile's mouth so they could move it up and down. It's really hard to be scared of a crocodile that's not moving at all.
I think Kareena Kapoor would agree. The fake-scared looks in The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra were more convincing than this.

Oh, so now Isha's friends are leaving without her. Way to be manly, guys. Leave the girl behind with the scary crocodile while you race off in your boat.

Oh, but they're telling Ronit about it, and he'll be manly and save the day. It's a good thing he was hanging out by the docks on the mainland.

Never mind, it looks like Isha's going to take care of it herself. She'll get rid of the crocodile by . . . throwing her shirt at it? Um, okay.

And here's Ronit, looking muscular. Maybe now he'll wrestle the crocodile or something. That would be sweet.

No, I guess the crocodile is just going away. Maybe it was scared off by his massive biceps. Or by his sense of fashion.

Oh no, Ronit just found Isha's shirt. Maybe he'll think the crocodile ate her and he'll start crying manfully and stuff.

No, I guess not, because there's Isha. Sleeping? In a tree?
Oh, I think she fainted or something. In a tree.

Although she kind of looks like a lion's kill.

All right, so they're back in the boat again. I guess the crocodile didn't attack them after all. That was anticlimactic.


Dude, Ronit, we get the point. YOU HAVE BIG MUSCLES. WE KNOW. You don't need to keep flexing them every few minutes.

Heh heh. They're out of gas. Ronit, your little rescue attempt might have been a bit more impressive if you'd remembered to fill up the gas tank first.

Okay, I take it back. It is more impressive to rescue the girl by swimming back to the mainland with the boat in tow. I just hope the water isn't as infested by dangerous beasts as that island was.

And he's still swimming. How far away are they anyway?

Maybe there is a point to his muscles after all.

Still swimming. But look, there's a boat right there. Ronit, look to port! There's a boat. I bet they'll loan you some gas, or even give you a lift, if you ask them.

Okay, I guess he wants to do it the hard way.

So now it's dark outside? Seriously, how far away are they?

And it's morning again, I guess. Dude, Isha is still unconscious. When that girl faints, she doesn't mess around. Or maybe she woke up, saw that the man was doing all the work, and didn't see any point in letting him know that she was functioning again. I dig that.

Oh good, they made it to shore. And Ronit's in the hospital with a funky hospital cap on? Okay.

Wuss. Can't even rescue a girl without ending up in a hospital.

But it's all good, because now she knows she's in love with him.

Wow, that was so romantic, I guess.

But seriously, why didn't he wrestle the crocodile?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

So...you're thinkin' I shouldn't put this one in my netflix queue?

Chantalita said...

My favorite line from this:

maybe she woke up, saw that the man was doing all the work, and didn't see any point in letting him know that she was functioning again. I dig that.

So funny Cindy.

Anonymous said...

I agree, chatalita.

Cindy said...

The movie isn't unmitigatedly bad. There are a few cute moments, and some of the songs are rather fun. It's mostly just in the costuming and special effects and dialog and plot that the movie really goes wrong.

And if you love Coca Cola, maybe you'll enjoy seeing references to Coke inserted into every other scene. "Oh, the mom is dying, and she wants to pass on her Coke keychain to her husband. That's so sweet."

rosie said...

So, the 100 Hour Board says to stay away from this movie, since it's a total snooze. Would you agree with them, or would you say, perhaps, that it's cheesy in the extreme, but not bad all in all?

Cindy said...

I don't think boring is exactly the right adjective. Dissatisfying, I'd say. The movie sets up lots of expectations, but everything just kind of fizzles out. It's like the crocodile scene -- they set it up so you think the crocodile is actually going to pose some sort of threat, and then it just wanders off in a really anticlimactic way. Another good example is the scene near the end where Ronit's uncle has him locked up in the house to force him to marry the girl he doesn't want to marry. Ronit punches out the goons his uncle hired to keep him there, grabs a car, and kidnaps the girl he's in love with. You think the movie's finally going somewhere, but then all they do is ride a boat up and down the Thames and sing about how they love each other. Really? That was your plan? And then two minutes after they land, Ronit has a conversation with his mom and goes back to the house. So you've really got to wonder what the point of that whole escape sequence was.

I think a major part of the problem is that the movie can't decide what it's about. If you asked me to describe the overarching plotline in K3G, I'd say it's about a family that's been broken up and needs to come back together again. If you asked me to describe what Yaadein's about, I'd have to say something like, "Well, there's a man, and his wife dies, and he loves Coke and his three daughters, and they move to India, and two of the daughters get married, and one of them has problems in her marriage, and the dad unwittingly arranges for the guy his third daughter really loves to marry some other girl instead, and his daughter pretends not to love the guy because she doesn't want to hurt her dad, and the guy escapes from his evil uncle but doesn't do anything about it, and then the guy apparently decides that he'll only marry the girl he loves if the shareholders of his uncle's company tell him that love is more important than money, and then the other girl turns out not to be evil after all because she doesn't insist on marrying the guy who just told the whole world that he wouldn't marry her if it weren't for money and duress, and then the daughter won't marry the guy because his family doesn't respect her, and then the family decides that they do respect her, and then the movie ends." There's no unifying theme or plotline that I can discern. Well, there is this idea they talk about in the very beginning and at the very end about dads being friends with their daughters, but I can't tell whether the movie thinks that this is the good or bad idea. I thought I figured it out at one point in the film, but then the movie kept changing directions. It's almost like the screenplay was written piece by piece by about 50 different people (or perhaps trained monkeys) and each person only got to see the scene directly preceding the scene he or she was in charge of writing. Each scene seems to fit more or less with the one before it, but as a whole it just doesn't flow.