Heroine Hindi Movie
Filmmakers have an uncanny habit of creating stereotypes out of almost nothing. So you have typical romance, stereotyped action or even typified characters. However, Madhur Bhandarkar takes the credit of stereotyping his own films by his own films! Confusing as it may seem, let me go ahead giving you a brief account of his much hyped Heroine.
The film starts off with the breakdown of a once upon a time superstar Mahi Arora (Kareena Kapoor) who courtesy all her insecurities and blow hot and cold, mood and spoilt mannerisms has come spiraling downward in her career. She hails from a broken home and takes to alcohol for the slightest of problems. Most of Mahi's insecurities arise out of her relationship with superstar Aryan Khanna (Arjun Rampal) who is seeking divorce and wants to keep their relation under wraps. Mahi's eccentric ways only increase from thereon as she takes of drugs, more alcohol and cigarettes. After breakdown no 1, the actress bounces back and kick starts her career afresh with the help of a PR agent (Divya Dutta) who turns Mahi into a brand, keeps her in news, gets her endorsements and suggests her to date a famous cricketer Angad Paul (Randip Hooda) so as to be in the news. However, despite all her efforts, her career once again comes crashing down and she actress tries picking up the pieces almost through the film after her countless breakdowns.
Madhur Bhandarkar through his films has always exposed to brooding and murkier side of various streams; be it of dance bars in Chandni Bar, media in Page 3, the underbelly in Traffic Signal, the fashion industry in Fashion amongst others. Claiming himself to be a realistic filmmaker, Madhur this time around chose to expose the secrets of the big bad world of Bollywood. However, as Mahi in the film kept losing her sheen in her career, Madhur's film also kept spiraling down in its narrative.
Much like his earlier films, there seems absolutely no flow in the narrative, leave alone a storyline. The film keeps going on in circles and gets tedious and monotonous. There's nothing unseen or unheard shown in this film so in terms of novelty, Heroine holds zilch value. Madhur literally picks out the hit scenes of his earlier films and places them exactly in the same manner in this film. So you have a trio of wannabe socialites gossiping at parties, gay make-up artistes, manipulative friends etc. Even some of the characters have gotten repeated only to make you keep reeling in dejà vu.
Heroine only works for Kareena's performance. Not only does she look splendid in all her glam shots but pulls off her no make-up look with equal ease with her flawless acting. Had it not been for Madhur literally turning her into a modern day Meena Kumari with the excessive soppiness, Kareena actually would've left her mark with this character.
Arjun Rampal does a good job in portions while gets reduced to moping around most of the film courtesy the morose script. Randip Hooda acts well but one cannot help but notice his weirdo spiky wig that he dons in most of the scenes clearly showing continuity flaws.
As for the rest of the cast, Divya Dutta as the PR, Lilette Dubey as Mahi's mother, Sanjay Suri as actor Abbas Ali, Shahana Goswami as a Bengali actress, Ranvir Shorey as a Bengali filmmaker, Mugdha Godse as an actress among others only get typified in their parts.
Music by Salim-Sulaiman works in parts too. While Halkat Jawani has surely picked up among the masses, the rest of the songs only add to the gloominess in the film and also appear quite like Fashion songs.
Over all, Heroine is nothing but a rehashed version of Madhur's earlier movies and clearly a disappointing affair. Watch only if you are a Kareena Kapoor fan as she alone is the highlight of the film.
