Delhi Belly: *Punch Drunk Love*

I promised a counter-view to A's take on Waking Life. As much as I hate procrastinating, I shall hold my guns for some time. The real challenge for now: Delhi Belly.

To the angst and disbelief of many-a-parents, we did not find the movie obnoxious and yes (if not all) some/most of it is true.

Right on the heels of Pyaar ka Punchnaama, we knew AmirKhan Productions really had to pull out a rabbit from the hat to keep the BoxOffice score-sheet divided between AamirKhan Productions and everything else. And a rabbit he pulled. Not just any rabbit, but an all singing, all knowing, all dancing - king rabbit, but disguised cleverly and mischievously. But yes, we all laughed, and all who laughed knew the mischief.

As for me, as I sit down to write this piece, after watching the movie for the second time in the first week, the real challenge lies in how to stay true to the experience and treat that it was, without indulging in ravings about Poorna Jagannathan and my oft-declared-in-the-past-week love for her.

I shall try.

I remain assured that you, the rare and precious reader of this obscure piece on the web, have already seen the movie. I shall not, even momentarily or customarily, assume that you have come here without having already seen the movie.

Instead, I dedicate this piece to celebration of all things that end well. A celebration that lasted a good 4 hours past the movie, with laugh riots and DK Bose jokes filling the air :)

For me personally, it marks a rare departure from - you know they should have killed that central guy/character in the end. I liked the movie in-spite of all characters kept alive. Though that is not to say I wouldn't have liked it dark, Mithya being the point of reference.

As promised, earlier, I will not even pretend that I am reviewing something. I will just share the things I loved the most. To begin with - Poorna J, as Maneka. Correspondent with the Times of India in Delhi. Single, divorced, pretty and charming.. um errr.., Yeah and there are other good things too - the music from Ram Sampath (I hear a friend say he is quite a popular name in the Indian rock circuit.., I will take his word for it). The music is indeed, a surprisingly strong part, inspite being goofy, all the tracks make for good listening. Personal favourites being Jaa Chudail

and Tere Siva. The latter for quite obvious reasons. The tag line of the movie "shit happens" quite succinctly describes the plot and somewhere 20 minutes before the climax you could sense that all roads from here on lead to a shootout at an everybody-meet-everybody else scenario. But as I said earlier, the rabbit out of hat this time around is a clever rabbit and the movie stands apart. Vijay Raaz with his 'ever so pure' dialogues delivered with the 'ever so pure' mannerisms singularly holds the greys of the film and imparts just the right amount. I remember Monsoon Wedding, and I remember Vijay Raaz from Monsoon Wedding - he was good then and has only gotten better since then.

The surprise element of the movie though is Poorna J.

I remember watching DCH in my early teens and I remember walking out of the movie theater feeling 'punch-drunk-love', for the first time. It was Ms. Zinta then. More then a decade and some 50 odd movies later, I walked out of another theater, quietly smiling to myself as I quietly updated the mental status to 'punch-drunk-love'. It must have been a good movie.

I conclude wishing you all an equally joyous experience.

PS: Inspite of probably knowing the entire existing readership of this space by first name and the last, I still pray that Poorna stumbles upon this post. So at the cost of sounding like a eff-ing irritating chain mail, may I request you to please help spread the word and pass on the link to 10 people. After all its just six degrees of separation :)

Cheers,

ReviewKaka