Via Darjeeling

Saturday is the best day of week for me now, earlier it used to be Sunday until I started working. It starts at 11 o'clock and ends at 12 o’clock; you are just at the beginning of a nice weekend. This Saturday was one of the most boring days however. I don't know the reason but may be it was cloudy and almost all of my friends were busy with something. Me and my room-mate decided to go for a movie. As we ran through stupid films and there endless insane narrations / promotions in Pune Times, it was really hard to find a good movie. But we are so determined and hopeful that we decided to go for it anyways. Via Darjeeling was selected mainly because it's a Hindi Movie (my roomie's primary concern, he can't tolerate English movies unless they are action packed ) and the star cast. Kay Kay Menon, Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Sandhya Mrudul and Sonali Kulkarni was a solid combination I guessed. But initial half hour was enough to prove that I was terribly wrong. A boring Saturday morning followed by dose of crappy movie ruined the whole day.

The movie starts with a quarrel between a hired car driver and Kay Kay. It doesn't stop with few heated exchanges but goes on and results into some serious repercussions. Kay Kay and Sonali's honeymoon turns into a nightmare when Kay Kay goes missing. Sonali calls up a police inspector (Vinay) to investigate the case. Upto this level, the film is tolerable but it looses the track when the story suddenly moves to a small get together in Rajat Kapoor's house where Vinay narrates his experience to the group. Then there is a series of endless, illogical and irrelevant discussions. Each one of the group members is from a background somehow related with media and they each narrate a plot of what could have happened to Kay Kay. The movie is a poor mixture of their views about the characters and nothing else. The songs are ultimate examples of how things could be misarranged and lyrics are in any aspect not related to the theme. About acting, everyone played their part but no one is really mentionable. About the overall plot, its very badly arranged, the characters look like not attached to each others and there seems to be a shade of artificiality in acting. The dialogs are so shoddy that at some time audiences feel that they could have written in better ways. On a positive note, the director has shown something which is new to Hindi cinema but the presentation could have been much better.

Few lessons that I learnt:
1. Do not judge a film based on it's cast.
2. Do not go for a movie when you are not sure if it's worth watching or not.
3. If you have an intense desire to waste your Rs. 150/- ; bring some good food, eat and sleep.
4. Always prefer a little nap over any film.
5. English / Marathi movies are generally better than Hindi movies ( this in fact is my opinion since start and Via Darjeeling has made it even more stronger).