Janasheen Hindi Movie
Director Feroz Khan nearly finished off Fardeen Khan's career as an actor in his debut Prem Aggan , and in the latest offering Janasheen , the senior Khan does more of the same thing.
Janasheen is like an opulent obituary to all those involved with it. Dreadfully disjointed and abominably unpalatable, it's a travesty rather than a celebration of mainstream cinema's most cherished conventions.
It's also a screeching advertisement for beachwear of every colour, size and taste. At various stages of the narration's drunken progress you can catch Fardeen, and/or Celina Jaitley and a sorry newcomer Pinky Hirani dressed in bikinis, briefs or shorts.
With the atonal songs blaring incessantly and unthinkingly throughout, one needs nerves of steel to sit through what Feroz Khan calls a complete entertainer.
Janasheen tries to compensate for its basic lack of exciting ideas and its perceptibly stagnant attitude to entertainment (the plot and treatment being strictly 1980s) by throwing in flashes of designer-realism.
The club where Celina plays the violin and shakes her hips captures the sweaty ambience of a real-life discotheque.
Feroz Khan specialises in club songs. Remember Zeenat Aman gyrating enticingly to Aap Jaisa Koi in Qurbani ?
Celina, however, possesses neither the rhythm nor the sex appeal of Zeenat. Her dancing is so weak (and the callow choreography doesn't help in any way), it has to be supplemented by Kashmira Shah's heaving and thrusting paces.
Kashmira plays the Bollywood version of hell's angel. She's psychopathic, freaky and corny... but still not appealing in her subversive seductiveness.
Her vamping reaches a kind of queer crescendo when she kills Celina's brother (Yash Tonk) to join Saba Karim (Feroz Khan) and his gang of international criminals. Later she too lies dead at the bottom of a pool. Along with the film, one might add.
The cinematography by Neelabh Kaul (who did such a decent job of Out Of Control last week) is as uneven and patchy as Feroz Khan's Arabian-Afghani accent which slips in and out like the leading lady's clothes.
From an evening gown to a bikini, one never knows what Celina will be wearing while fiddling with the violin. Ah, suspense!
Some of the characters and their affections are fairly strange. While Yash is paired with the ogre-like siren who gets turned on by blood and gore, Johnny Lever's leading lady is a chimpanzee and they even undergo a wedding at the end.
Feroz Khan was always ahead of his times. Say hello to bestiality. As for topicality, there's a reference to the civil war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It comes on right after some more beach babes have thrown sand into our pale faces.
The editing and direction (by Feroz Khan) are as jerky and spaced out as Kashmira's character.
To the suave gangster's role Feroz Khan bring a twinkle-eyed, kohl-lined enjoyment. He seems to be the only one having fun.
Part of the finishing fight has Celina's face being suffocated in a plastic bag. When Fardeen rushes to her rescue he first wallops the baddie for a good 10 minutes before removing the bag from the girl's inert face.
With or without a plastic bag, Celina is equally deadpan. Her voice needs urgent modulation and so does her selection of roles.
Harsh Chaya as Fardeen's father looks much more convincing in a plastic bag.
After a surprisingly spunky performance in Khushi earlier this year, one thought Fardeen Khan was getting better. Janasheen takes him back to Jungle . Without Ram Gopal Varma to show him a way out.
