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My two very loquacious and articulate movie buff friends, coincidentally named Yash Sutaria and Huma Advani, came out of the movie hall along with me after we had watched Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups. As the reviewer among them and I was glassy-eyed with shock, with my brain into ‘Mute’ mode. Guns, girls, growls and gandi baat: this apology for a mass film had everything—in excess.
Deafened and almost anesthetized by the human and every other noise for 194 minutes (as per the Censor certificate that is the length of the film, though it felt like it was 491 minutes long), I found perverse pleasure in hearing two ‘normal’ human voices. I quietly switched into recording mode to hear my friends’ conversation about this benumbing ‘blaster’piece starring their mixed-up namesakes. Here is their conversation.
Yash Sutaria: I knew it! The trailer said it all! This was almost a KGF 3, worse than KGF2. I should have not come just because you both wanted my company.
Huma Advani: The audience too deserves it! When they give KGF2 a Rs. 400 crore-plus business in Hindi alone, they will have to suffer such stuff afterwards. It’s like praayaschit (repentance)!
YS: Yes, and my namesake, Yash, has not only decided to clone his hate-filled-baleful-eyes-suffused performance in that previous…er, film, but also go that extra mile to maim, slice, skewer, decapitate, disfigure and shoot human beings with great glee, almost as if he is a terrorist on the loose.
HA: You are right, except that he is supposed to be the hero here. You know, I had actually watched KGF2 again to see just what I had missed that made it do better business than even Dangal.
YS (Ignoring me): Did you find out what was that mysterious factor then?
HA: No, I found nothing! But I only ended up contributing my bit to the film’s collection.
Me (Hazily): I did the same too, but on TV. And I too was flummoxed.
YS: But in today’s specific exercise in Toxic-ology, do you feel that all the five leading ladies were really needed?
HA: Did you by any chance say ‘bleeding’ ladies?
YS: I think your ‘earsight’ is fuzzy because of Ravi Basrur’s ‘volume’inous score. And the Tabaahi perpetrated by that song and the others manufactured—by a coterie of uncontrolled cacophony creators.
HA: Yes, guess the songs have ‘hit’ me. Three music makers from Saiyaara are here. Shows that Yash wanted a ‘hit’ at any cost. To come back to the ladies, you overcounted them.
YS: How?
HA: A sister of the hero, like Nayanthara, does not count, unless it is Aishwarya Rai Bachchan to Shah Rukh Khan in Josh. Remember the sisterly Naaz’s and Nazima’s of the 1960s and 1970s movies? Can you call them heroines? And Huma is like a negative lead, though it will be foolish of me to term her close to Bipasha Basu in Ajnabee. What’s more, Tara Sutaria is the beti of the villain.
YS: So? When the hero goes on one of his many bedroom sprees because most ladies fall for him, does it matter? And Tara is a rebel, and Kiara and Rukmini do the balancing act, Kiara in the circus and Rukmini for a while in Yash’s life, such as it is.
HA: But tell me, would you term Salvador, played by this not-so-menacing-as-Yash chap Darrell D’Silva a villain? He seemed too tame vis-à-vis Raya, the first Yash.
YS: Oh, yes. There were two Yash-es, I now remember.
VA: Are you sure you were not sleeping?
YS: I will be honest. I tried to, but have you ever tried sleeping in the din of a noisy factory?
Me (Still befuddled): Hello, I remember a big-name editor who had gone to sleep in KGF 2 and waking up with a start at a gunshot and asking me, “How much more time will this go on? Any idea?”
HA: Do you feel the film became less abominable after Yash 2, named Ticket, came in?
VS: Are you crazy? That was just a gimmick written by Yash and that Mohandas lady, the co-writer and director in this exercise in female objectification.
HA: It’s true, a woman is a woman’s greatest enemy.
YS: Still, don’t you think it was a praiseworthy attempt to set a Ram Gopal Varma-like Gangsta saga in pre-Independent India, that too in Portuguese-ruled Goa as the story’s base?
HA: No, I think this one’s title should have actually been Go Goa Gone, but Raj & DK have already made a cult comic classic with that name 13 years ago, so maybe that title was not available…But wait a second! You used the word ‘story’! Story? Story?? You mean you actually sensed one here? Now that’s a story!
YS: Oh, come on! Yash wrote the film with that same Geetu Mohandas, a director known for weird stories like Moothon, which was globally appreciated. And won multiple international honors. And don’t you think Toxic describes the film’s content and context best?
HA: It does for sure! Between them, they only managed a yarn that is neither for those firangi audiences nor for Indians. But seriously, in all this mess, I found Kiara Advani like a needle in a haystack: a sharp object in a messy bundle, I mean.
YS: I still say that some critics and some of the audiences might like that surreal or whatever- you-call-it twist at the end.
HA: Let’s ask our critic friend what he thinks?
Me (Suddenly alert): Hello, I call myself a reviewer as different from a critic. I only regret buying a ticket to watch this story of a character called a Ticket. But I have recorded this conversation. I will now use it as my review instead of trying to write one on my own. But first, let me take a painkiller. My head’s splitting. Besides, I find that this film is a Monster Mind Creation. For me, that should read Monster’s Mind’s Creation.
Rating: Sorry folks, Yash and Huma gave only the review. Not the rating.
KVN Productions’ & Monster Mind Creations LLP’s Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups Produced by: Venkat K. Narayana & Yash Directed by: Geetu Mohandas Written by: Geetu Mohandas & Yash Music: Vishal Mishra, Ravi Basrur, Tanishk Bagchi, Faheem Abdullah & Arslan Nizami Starring: Yash, Rukmini Vasanth, Nayanthara, Kiara Advani, Tara Sutaria, Huma Qureshi, Akshay Oberoi, Darrell D’Silva, Sudev Nair, Balaji Manohar, Kyle Paul, Sanjeeda Sheikh (Sp. App.) & others
