The Movie Review – Ugly Aur Pagli

Star rating:

Actors: Mallika Sherawat, Ranvir Shorey
Director: Sachin Khot
Producers: Pritish Nandy Communications Ltd

The makers of ‘Pyar Ke Side Effects’ bring you another slapstick comedy in the form of ‘Ugli Aur Pagli’- a boisterous comedy marked by chases, confrontations and crude but practical jokes. Though the movie has been typecast as a slapstick comedy, I think ‘Ugly Aur…’ takes the genre of slapstick to another level…for that matter a literal level as the tag line goes “99 slaps and 1 kiss.”  The movie is funny beyond any doubts, but if you ask me there is nothing exceptionally hilarious about it that would make your stomach ache or make you laugh till tears roll down your cheek. And surprisingly enough it were the women in the theater who were laughing more than men…probably because a man was getting slapped by a woman.

 

Beyond, the slaps that have been used as comical tool to tickle the funny bone in you, the movie has a story too. It is essentially a romantic comedy and revolves round the central character of Kuhu played by Mallika Sherawat, an attractive and aggressive girl. Right at the beginning she bumps into the another central character Kabir Achrekar, played by the tremendously funny Ranbir Shorey. One of the first things that attracted me towards the movie as a viewer was its star cast. Though not a multi starter or an SRK movie, Ranbir and Mallika are crowd pullers enough because of their natural acting prowesses and appropriate comic timing.  Kabir is a loser and the director does not mince meats to show that in the very first scenes of the movie.

 

Though it is an old concept to use the theme of female subversion for comedy in Hindi films, I thought was refreshingly different here. Kuhu has not been portrayed as the wrong girl, but has an air of attitude about herself, which seems to speak large and say “take me or leave me.” At many occasions I thought that the situations depicted in the movie were quite exaggerated and so were the characters, and seemed only like caricatures without any connection to reality.

 

Apart from the brilliant acting, the movie can boast of good music…or atleast that’s what I think. After a long time Anu Mailik seems original in the movie. Part from all this, one thing that always disappoints me about Bollywood is the tendency to copy from western films. And even ‘Ugly Aur Pagli’ was no exception. This film is said to be a copy of the Korean film ‘My Sassy Girl’. However, I thought that the directors had made a decent effort to make it look finally different.

 

Finally, for the one who have still not watched the movie, my only tip is “Don’t take it too seriously.”