“Rang De Basanti” started candle protects all over the country. Something similar was expected from Halla Bol. However, its unique and can start something called as “Pee” protects. If you wonder what is this all about, you will have to watch the movie.

Oh My God! What is this? Rajkumar Santoshi, where are u lost?

Ashfaque (Ajay Devgan) is a artist from a small town who is part of the theatre group run by Sidhu (Pankaj Kapoor). Sidhu in turn is a Dacoit turned theatre activist. Ashfauque dreams of making it big in Bollywood and is ready to do anything for it. He does that. He also changes his name from Ashfaque to Sameer Khan.

He looses all his goodness for the the supreme place of the super star in the Maya nagari. He is turned from a simple humble good human being to a self centered, careless, false person in his journey to stardom. Sneha, his love interest from the town is also his wife now but due to his changed nature, they do not have good relations and live separately in same house for their child. However, that does not affect Sameer and he continues to indulge himself in his self centered glossy world which is very far from humanity.

One night creates ripple in the settled selfish life of Sameer. He gets shattered from inside as he witnesses a murder in a disco. He knows the girl and recognizes the killers but he does not disclose it to police as those are from very high society families with lots of money, power and contacts including a minister Gaekawad (Darshan Jariwala). However he is unable to sleep and the images of the girl being murdered follows him. Then his concious wakes up and he decides to tell truth to the police. What happens next is the story of Halla bol!

Rajkumar Santoshi starts the movie on a promising note but does it in Madhur Bhandarkar Style. The selfish super star and film world around him is introduced and presented Madhur Bhadarkar way. Lots of real life actors from Sridevi to Boney Kapoor to Jacky Shroff, are used to create film industry ambience (not so new, yeah?). However, it feels like we are watching a copy. However the murder scene is shot very powerfully and really stuns audiences. We seat expecting greeping drama after that but the film goes directly into 80s style of masala movies and looses steam.

Film drags till interval due to week script and narration. We hope that things will speed up post interval however barring some good scenes here and there, the movie goes into infinite loop of directionless social masala drama. It looks like the movie has been handed over to some assistant of an assistant director and Rajkumar Santoshi was on a holiday. Only few scenes like the murder incident, attack on Sameer, some marvelous renditions by Pankaj Kapoor reminds us that we are watching a movie from the veteran director. But that’s not enough.

Its cliched social drama of 80s which tries to be contemporary movies like RDB, but fails flat on nose. It has nothing new, nothing worth remembering and except the unique protest idea which Sameer implements. The idea is to pee on the carpets of the minister’s  home. So are we supposed to start “pee protests” like this? How “pee”triotic it is!

Why do people like Rajkumar Santoshi go wrong like this? Why do they try to imitate success of others and other formats when they have ability to create their own unique world. Cinema Audience is dying to watch that.

On the performance side, Ajay devgan is ok but looks old now. Vidya Balan looks stunning and does competitive performance. Tusshar Kapoor is used in the film scene of Sameer Khan where he is shown to cut the role of co-stars. Tusshar does his job honestly. Kareen Kapoor as part of Omkara scene looks stunning. Darshan Jariwala is wasted. All other cast has performed OK.

The star performer and the saving grace of the movie is Pankaj Kapoor. He bring the otherwise below average flick average level. Applause to him. Why film makers are not able to make use of such brilliant actors in our industry? He really deserves some better films.

Cinematography is good. Music is forgettable except 1 song used in promos.

This movie is complete waste of money, time and actors. It could have got only 1 star but some scenes mentioned above and performance by Pankaj Kapoor.

What a Waste!

BR Rating: **
BR Verdict: Pee…. fect!
BR Advise: Watch it if you have nothing else to do (i mean if u are also bored of sleeping continuously 3-4 days)

- Reviewed by: Prashen H. Kyawal