Chashme Baddoor

David Dhawan is surely aware of the empty-headedness of his film

The problems with remakes, of course, is that in all likelihood two sensibilities from two different generations are going to be out of sync. The maker of the first Chashme Baddoor, Sai Paranjpye, made her film in the middle of what was variously called the ‘art’ or ‘middle’ or ‘parallel’ cinema movement, and was clearly influenced by it. The characters in her film respond to situations as India’s middle-class would have in the early 1980s.

A remake of this film ought to have been a contemporary version of literate characters involved in a comedy about the nature of, and the difference between, romantic longing and a true relationship. It is easy to say that times have changed and audiences don’t want to be burdened with too many ideas. But surely, a narrative can only work if it is based on a train of thought, no matter how serious or trivial, and this film has none.

David Dhawan is probably aware of the empty-headedness of his film because he is forced to cut to a song every time the situation reaches a cul-de-sac of inanity. When Sid, Omi and Jai, three guys on the cusp of manhood and variously wooing the same girl in Goa, fall into limbo during their conversations, the cinematic solution is always the same—a juvenile sing-song on beach sands or the waterfront.

The girl, Seema (Taapsee Pannu), is the most important character in the film because it is she who makes the decisions that influence the narrative, but the actress playing her is unable to construct a persona that makes her irresistible to the three dudes. She plays it like a virtuous ‘virtual’ woman on Facebook—posting wry updates about men in general when she meets Omi (Divyendu Sharma) and Jai (Siddharth), then clicking furiously on ‘like’ when she meets Sid (Ali Zafar).

Well, Dhawan said he would update Chashme Baddoor, and he did. He turned it into kitsch.

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Ajit Duara