Dhoom 2: the review

Remember how you purchase a really cool looking firecracker during Diwali. You wait until the moment when you have to light it, and it just fizzles out. Welcome to Dhoom 2.

After Dhoom, the makers of Dhoom2 created a lot of hype, with a "stellar" star cast as Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan on the screen at the same time, with some cool-looking promos with a suave cop and a cool thief. I think they themselves bought into it more than the audience, since that is all this movie is about, hype.
The movie's (alleged) plot is about Mr. A, an international thief who robs only invaluable things, is a master of disguise, and has managed to fool police all around the world. Nobody knows what he does with his loot, nobody knows where he will operate next. And he brings Jai Dixit (Small B), Ali (Uday Chopra) and Shonali (Bips) together to catch him. Like an oracle Jai predicts Mr. A's next move within 10 seconds of hearing his exploits, but even then Mr. A manages to give them the slip multiple times. Until Jai plants a mole with Mr. A, which Mr. A also manages to win over. Thus starts a final heist, which is also successful, followed by a motobike chase amongst valleys (reminded of Dhoom 1?), and of course it has to end happily since there are too many people on screen whom we hate to see dying.
Dhoom 2 is so cheesy that it reeks. 21st century effects meet Dharmendra and Jeetendra's death-defying bullet dodging capabilities, peppered with gravity-defying stunts. Motorbikes fly, and so do jet-skis. Aluminium is magnetic. Bullets totally miss everything, people jump on and off trains with dexterity that is impossible even if the train was stationary, and jump off cliffs with seemingly nothing other than "maa ka diya hua aashirwad", 'coz only that can save them the way that they are. Mr. A deserves all his loot, since not even one policeman, irrespective of country, is able to shoot someone who is about 20 feet away from them, pretty much a sitting duck. The background music begs the audience to consider whatever they are seeing as cool. And Bollywood finally got tired of portraying the spineless policeman who is always bought in by the villain. So they created designer police: people who wear skimpy clothes, designer outfits, have beards because that is their current hep look, travel worldwide to catch crooks, and then do anything but catch them. The camera work that I thought initially was pretty good, is so repetitive and with the sole purpose of hiding special effects glitches, that it is nothing short of jarring. There is no shot that stays for more than 5 seconds on the screen, and so you're flashed by, not the pace of the movie or the cinematography, but the fast-changing camera.

And then there's the language. I don't know who speaks like Aishwarya's Sunehri and Uday Chopra's Ali, but God help them! It is such a pathetic mix of Hindi and English that the only funny thing about it is that the director actually thinking it would be funny. And no, its not just in the dialogues--there are entire songs in that language! Which brings me to the music--there is nothing in it. The movie is full of songs, that either introduce new characters, or make it obvious that the director wanted a 5-minute filler. And not one of them is good, and Hrithik and Aishwarya dancing to highly awkward, muscle-spraining choreography doesn't help at all.

The movie is a contest of skin show between Bipasha Basu and Aishwarya Rai, and fortunately they do look very good in the movie. If only the movie were one big Garden Varelli ad instead of a 3-hour long saga of nonsense! Uday Chopra has 1-2 very funny lines (amongst a total of 736 lines, so you get the picture). Abhishek Bachchan is in the movie for the sake of completeness--he was one of the main reasons Dhoom 1 worked, and so they simply couldn't do without him. The movie does gross injustice to the current ultra-cool image of AB. But Hrithik Roshan walks away with most of the screen time, and gets to do the relatively smart stuff in the movie. Although he is shown to be meticulous, the heist plots involve very filmy escapes. One good point (finally) in the whole movie is Hrithik's disguises. They are very good and very well-done, and only if the director had taken the extra step to make the overall plot as good.

In a nutshell, don't see it. Even if you are dying to see a toned Aishwarya sans loads of pounds, even if you are dying to see Bipasha Basu in skimpy clothes, even if you are dying to see Brazil, even if you are dying to see Abhishek and Hrithik sharing screen. I know they've done it before, but "Mai Prem ki Diwani Hoo" begs not to be counted...