Kites was Anurag Basu-Rakesh Roshan team’s miserable attempt to make a highly melodramatic Hindi movie into something that resembled a Hollywood movie.
The movie is only worth the scenes where they show Barbara Mori and her tantalizing curves and smiles. Its sort of a disappointer if you’re a Hrithik Roshan fan. Remember Dhoom 2 and how Hrithik got the whole audience spell bound with his amazing moves and ‘acting’. This movie promises nothing. The only fast paced song in the movie looks like Saroj Khan’s version of B-boying gone horribly wrong!
So then one would wonder why it has got 86% ‘fresh’ rating at Rotten Tomatoes and the fact that almost all the critics have gone at length to praise this film bar a few. Did i write something just now that makes me look like a complete mental? I didn’t check my cynicism at the door when i went for the movie. In fact i never really had any. But i left the movie with two bags full!
The storyline for the movie, is one that has been written, re-written, taken and re-taken many times in Bollywood. Tweak the characters a bit here and there, redefine who is going to play the villain this time and rewrite the ending to be a bit too dramatic and we have a new Hindi movie.
The hero, J (god knows what his name in full is.might be Jackass) is a dance teacher and marries immigrant women to get them green cards (ya like officers in the US are dumb enough not to spot that). When the rich daughter of the villain falls for J, he decides to marry her for the money. But he then discovers that the lady who is marrying his brother-in-law was one of the ladies he had married for the green card thingie. Enter the heroin Natasha a.k.a Linda. Rest is predictable movie stuff. Chases, explosions that are very typical to Bollywood films, gun fires, a badly taken Mexican Stand-off, love scenes, sacrifices etc. etc.
I’m not saying that similar storyline has not been copied elsewhere. It has been. But they all try to add a little something that makes the movie worth watching. Road Trip and Euro Trip both revolve round the same story line. But the story develops in its own unique way in both the movies. Kites simply fail to do so.
Wait a second, on second thought, i really understand why Kites did well in the overseas market and not in India.
Imagine that you have been having dosas all through your life. You have had masala dosa, pain dosa, ghee dosa, egg dosa, plain dosa, paper dosa, ragi dosa, set dosa and even something called as the freaking American chopsuey dosa. To get rid of this, you decide to travel to the US to try new food items. Then one fine day your friend tells you that he has found out an excellent place where you get amazing lip-smacking food. You are elated and you cant wait to eat something else. You dream of all the new variety of food that you are about to taste. But much to your dismay your friend takes you to Dosa Plaza! How about that uhh? Now thats exactly how i felt when i saw the movie.
Now if you were originally from the US and had no idea how dosas taste like, you will for sure enjoy the dosa. If even you ordered a Mexican Roast Dosa (WTF!!!)
The only thing that the movie offers the audience is the perfect figure of Barbara Mori. (she has one of the best figures in the industry) and the enviable chemistry between her and Hrithik. As my wife put it as we left the theater, “what an amazing lust between the actors…”
For Barbara, who felt bad as the movie did bad in India, lets watch the movie….
For Barbara!
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