Karzzzz - Movie Review

Himesh is back with a vengeance and without a cap.

If you think it is the re-make of Subhash Ghai’s Super-hit Karz, think again. This is Himesh Reshammiya’s movie. In his first movie, he played himself (Himesh Reshammiya, the rock star). In this movie, he attempted to do something “different”, he played Monty, who is a rock star. Same Difference? You bet.

The story is set in Kenya where Ravi Verma (Dino Morea) a millionaire wins a property case against an evil man Sir Juda (Gulshan Grover). Sir Juda strikes a deal with kamini (Urmila Matordkar) who makes Ravi Verma fall in love with her, marry her and then kills him by jumping out of the plane with the only parachute when there is a technical fault in the plane. She and Sir Juda then gobbles all the money and property and becomes princess kamini and kicks Ravi Verma’s mother and sister out of the house. After few years, Ravi Verma is reborn as Monty and during one of his mediocre song he starts playing the signature tune which he used to hear in his past life and starts seeing the flashes of his previous life and he gets determined to find more about his previous birth. In between, he gets enough time to meet a girl Tina (Shweta Kumar) who in true appreciation of his rock star image takes him as his duplicate. The story keeps true to the original movie except the Himesh factor. Whenever Himesh is around, girls go weak on their knees, people stop doing their work and his friends keep on saying “never-said-before” dialogues like “Monty you are a rockstar”. The songs are bombarded at a regular interval and they are truly a notch down than the hit songs from himesh we are used to. When Tina goes back to Kenya, Monty follows her and meets Kamini. He then comes closer to kamini and convinces her that he is her husband by telling her things only her husband would have known (like “Tum brush kiye bina morning tea piti ho”, their suhaag raat details which unfortunately are not told to audience). But he maintains that he does not remember how he died, which is obvious because the man who remembers common, simple things like morning tea can forget shocking incidents like his death. This small “clever” twist is in trend with providing twists in the remake to bring shock value to the audience which was started by Don and unlike the later is total useless and dampens the overall impact of the film. The truth that he knows he is Ravi Verma should have been hold for the climax. Then he finds his mother and sister whom Kamini had claimed to be dead and then true to original, narrates his tale in the song sequence to expose Kamini.

The film consolidates the argument that though Satish Kaushik is a tremendous actor he is a mediocre director, who oscillates between Roop ki Rani Choron ka Raja and Tere Naam. Though, this is not a path breaking cinema but over all treatment of the film, except few instances, is mediocre. May be he was compelled to consider it as Himesh’s movie instead of remake of Karz. There is no chemistry between the lead actors as well as the characters are not properly developed. There are no tension, romance, and suspense elements in required doze, so the important values for entertainment are missing. Urmila is competent but looks the same as when he kills Ravi Verma to when Monty is born and returns as a young guy in form of Himesh. The new girl is total mis-match and what is with the use of voice of dubbing artist for newcomers. Why cannot the director/producer invest time in giving proper voice training to the newcomers or why cannot they just select newcomers with good voice? Alas, we forget that she is a star-kid (daughter of director/producer Indra kumar). If you consider the past performance then himesh has improved a lot. But that is when you consider him as himesh, otherwise, he hyper-acts. It is easy for him to play rock star but it is hard to digest the action sequence where he jumps high in the air and punches the goons. In passing though he extends his mithun-da sequence. In his first movie if he attempted mithun-da style dance, here, though voluntary or involuntary is debatable, he tries to speak dialogues like him. Hear carefully the dialogue (“Yeh Mohobbat bhi kya cheez hai…..”) before that title song, Ek haseena thi. Danny Denzongpa acts well as kabir who keeps on quoting the famous dialogues from old films. Rohini Hatnagadi does okay job as Ravi Verma’s mother but she has given far better performance then this.

The film stays true to the original except few “clever” twists and changes. So the film is based in Kenya/South Africa instead of India. And instead of killing Ravi Verma by running over and over by car, kamini kills him by crashing the plane. When this scene was going on I was wondering how would they show the plane later when kamini tries to kill monty same way as there is no way you can try to run over a person by plane over and over again but I doubted the director. He shows his skills by showing urmila fly the plane and attempt to kill himesh by running him over again and again. This scene sums up the efficiency of the whole film.

Though one thing you should give credit to himesh for whatever he has achieved today is by himself and his hard work unlike other star kids who still cannot act. Though I was fan of his music before he became rock star I am not excited to see him as an actor. And you can already see the adverse effect he this acting career has on his music. It is better he goes back to producing music instead of singing and acting. He has an enormous talent as a musician and should use it for good.

So give it a pass unless you are one of the following:

• Fan of Himesh Reshammiya, the rock star (this movie is must).
• If you want to know how to look young even in old age (do more research on kamini).
• If you want to know how to not make a remake.
• If you want to see himesh without a cap, shweta kumar without a voice and very old (in terms of age) urmila without white hair.