Gulaal - Review

Black Friday was very engaging,No Smoking was shocking and DevD was wonderfull but with Gulaal Anurag Kashyap moves into stereotype territory.A complete loser as an hero and a characterless woman as the leading lady.The so called brilliant lyrical songs were pathetically placed in the movie and tends to irritate you more than entertain.

The movie was made with the intention of poking fun at the communalism in India,broadbasing it on the struggle for Rajputana,however the struggle itself as depicted in the movie is too trivial.

The first half begins well enough with a stunning fireband speech by Menon and moves along tolerably with Dileep's life with the charismatic Ransa,his ragging and then his involvement with the student elections.Ransa,brilliantly acted and easily the best and most engaging character,gets knocked off by his illegitimate brother.So Dileep the loser he is accepts to become the dummy candidate and wins an rigged election.You can question why Dileep was made the candidate when the election was rigged but then this movie is not concerned with logic.

Kiran,Ransa's illegitimate sister,a losing candidate,then moves in on Dileep.Now till then he had this loser-loser love relationship with Anuja,but when another girl wants to have sex with him conviniently forgets her.From here on the movie goes predictably the girl manipulates the poor guy to confrontation with Menon and he gets thrown out from both politics and from Kiran's bedroom as well.She now moves on to Menon,the political veteran he is falls for this too.

Meanwhile Dileep probably the only living organism in this entire fking universe who does not understand why Kiran left him,familiarly spirals down into booze and sleaze and alienates Anuja[god knows why one would not cuddle up to a woman like that and go ravishing after meatier girls].He then goes psycho and decides to take revenge[!!!! why this sudden homocidal tendency??? two days boozing cant be the explanation],shoots Menon and his cohorts all the while demanding to talk to Kiran.

Meanwhile Kiran's brother is making grandiose plans to become Rajputana's senapati by bumping off Menon and his trusted sidekick Bati.Our hero now moves in on Kiran's hq and shoots everyone here too and has a dialogue with Kiran.The loser he is,he does not shoot her and lets her go while the other goons come in and shoot him.Then comes a long pointless walk back to his home,having a chest wound[dedicated to a certain captain perhaps :) ],and he dies.Kiran's bro becomes the new senapati movie ends.

I could not for the love of God understand all this fuss over a GS seat.It might have made sense some twenty years ago with the Govt Univ model but with the number of private colleges and better transparency in most govt. colleges too this does not make sense at all.And the comedy portrayal of the Rajputana moment deosnt help.

Piyush Mishra and Ransa provide the movie's tolerable moments however the much appreciated songs tend more to irritate than entertain.The two most promising characters,apart from Kay Kay Menon of course,in Ransa and Anuja remain undeveloped and wasted.Overall avoid paying money for this one.