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Review: Karma Aur Holi
Should you see the English version or the Hindi one? English, please. Not because it’s the original version, but because, surely, you don’t want to hear Naomi Campbell act (technically speaking) in badly dubbed Hindi, writes Shashi Baliga.
Karma Aur Holi
Cast: Sushmita Sen, Randeep Hooda, Suresh Oberoi, Rati Agnihotri, Shauvik Kundagrami, Suchitra Krishnamoorthi, Armin Amiri, Naomi Campbell, Maya Lilly, Vincent Curatola, Drena de Niro, Sticky Fingaz, Chandan Sethi, Deepal Shaw
Direction: Manish Gupta
Rating: *
Should you see the English version or the Hindi one? English, please. Not because it’s the original version, but because, surely, you don’t want to hear Naomi Campbell act (technically speaking) in badly dubbed Hindi?
And because, one of the very few pleasures this film offers is the chance to see a celebrity from the West reduced to a minor character in a film made by an Indian. Shall we say we’re quits vis a vis Pink Panther 2?
Director Manish Gupta ambitiously collects a cast that takes a large part of the film to merely introduce (even the listing above doesn’t tell the whole story). Which means there’s not too much time left to flesh out his characters or build up any kind of storyline.
Which is, in short, about how Dev Kohli (Hooda) is trying to get a financer for his sinking magazine while his wife Meera (Sen) is trying to make a baby. They have a Holi party to which practically the entire cast is invited, and they end up playing Truth or Dare, leading to all-round confessions.
So where does the karma bit fit in? Dhoondte reh jaoge. All you’ll get is uniformly stilted dialogue, amateurish acting for the most part and a mish-mash of stereotypes as Sen acts like the real-life diva she is, Hooda plays hot husband, and Vincent Curatola (Johnny Sacrimoni of (The Sopranos) suffers the same fate as Naomi Campbell.
Perhaps it’s this cavalier treatment handed out to his actors that’s got Manish Gupta such bad karma?
