November 12, 2010
Cast: Helen, Zeenat Aman, Kabir Bedi, Rituparna Sengupta, Yuvraj Parasher, Kapil Sharma
Director: Sanjay Sharma
Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyun… ambitiously tries to be India’s answer to Brokeback Mountain. Unfortunately, to even refer to Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyun… as a film would be stretching the truth.
It’s unlikely that you’ve ever seen a movie as absurd as this. With the idea of making a gay love story, director Sanjay Sharma gathers a spectacular bunch of ham artistes like Zeenat Aman, Helen, Rituparna Sengupta, Asha Sachdev and Parikshit Sahni, and pairs them up with stiff-as-wood newcomers like Kapil Sharma and Yuvraaj Parasher, making them all speak stilted Hinglish dialogues. One of Dunno Y…’s biggest crimes is how it massacres basic English grammar.
This is the kind of movie in which the country’s biggest superstar is married, but a closet gay. That isn’t the most shocking part. The superstar is played by, heaven help us, Aryan Vaid, sitting a bathtub and stroking a gigolo’s face with his foot.
In fact, this film’s script, written by its lead actor Kapil Sharma, is awfully amateurish and you wonder if it was scribbled together on the set. He unfolds his story in a Catholic home where three generations live together, headed by the matriarch played by Helen. All this family does is fight, have steamy love affairs or throw parties where they get drunk, bite into chicken drumsticks and play – hold your breath – pass the parcel!
Until its interval, Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyun… is a mish-mash of ridiculous moments and third-rate acting. Post-interval, the married son of Zeenat Aman, played by Yuvraaj Parasher, starts seeing a gay prostitute played by Kapil Sharma. The director aims for tender moments, but once again it backfires. You’re tickled by a scene in which the two lovers force-feed a mountain of bread to tiny puppies, but you’re turned off by their titillatingly filmed love-making scenes. The film rumbles on to a teary Brokeback Mountain conclusion, yet Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyun… does little for the gay cause through its cliched representation.
Of the cast, only Maradona Rebello shows a flicker of acting as Zeenat Aman’s youngest son in love with his brother’s wife. Yuvraaj Parasher seems carved out of stone, while Kapil Sharma accompanies all of his lines with a creepy smile on his face. Rituparna Sengupta tips into overacting, screaming cuss words like a shrew over the phone in one scene. Zeenat Aman is Sphinx-like, barely showing any emotions, except when she leers at herself in the mirror and says: “You’ve still got it.”
This definitely gets my vote for being the most unintentionally funny film of 2010. Which is why I’m going with one out of five for director Sanjay Sharma’s Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyun…
You might wonder why and how a film like this got made, but believe me, it’s so comical, you get your money’s worth just laughing at it. Indeed, its only merit lies in the fact that it’s so bad it doesn’t bore you, even for a single minute. Watch it… go on, I dare you!
(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)
The biggest pool of homosexuals is in showbiz and still I wonder how the heck they’ve never came up with any good movie on gays!
Comment by PS — November 13, 2010 @ 5:13 am