Tom Dick And Harry
Starring: Celina Jaitley, Dino Morea, Anuj Sawhney, Jimmy Shergill, Kim Sharma, Rajpal Yadav, Shakti Kapoor, Gulshan Grover
Director: Deepak Tijori
Every now and then comes a cute comedy that's naughty but also nice. A film that's mindless yes, but also unabashedly entertaining. A film that makes you smile from start to finish. This week's new release at the cinemas, Tom Dick and Harry is not that kind of film.
It is in fact a completely insensitive and a highly offensive sex-comedy about three friends, each burdened with a different handicap. Dino Morea playing Tom is deaf. Anuj Sawhney as Dick is blind. And Jimmy Shergill plays dumb Harry. These three roommates do pretty much nothing in life, besides checking out their red hot neighbour Celina Jaitley from their room window.
Another sub-plot running through this film involves international Mafioso Gulshan Grover who's been ordering his henchmen to kidnap pretty girls from the street so he can sell them off to international buyers. These two plots collide when Celina is almost kidnapped by Grover's goondas, but saved in the nick of time by these three boys. Now Grover's gunning for our handicapped heroes, and they've got the hugest crush on Celina.
Even comedies require a basic plot because that's what keeps the pace going. After all, how many jokes can you possibly tell in a three hour film? But the weakest link in director Deepak Tijori's Tom Dick and Harry is the script itself - it just isn't there! Now unlike the West, where comedy itself is a broad genre that is divided into sub genres like adult comedies and children's comedies, in Bollywood every other film really is designed as a family entertainer.
So remember, kids are watching the same films as adults and expecting to derive the same entertainment from them. Now in that scenario, it's highly inappropriate to pepper your film with sexual innuendo and tasteless jokes that are bound to make adults uncomfortable about the fact that they're exposing their kids to such titillating humour.
The blind guy blows up condoms and distributes them among children at a birthday party thinking they're colourful balloons. Or the blind guy mistaking a transvestite for a girl only to discover the horrible truth after a round of fondling. Is this really the kind of humour you want your children to enjoy? Is this really the kind of film you'd be safe to leave your children in the company of?
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Director Indra Kumar's Pyare Mohan which released only a few weeks ago also dealt with a similar theme - handicapped heroes searching for love. But I have to say that Tom Dick and Harry is far more insensitive than Pyare Mohan and I can't believe I'm saying this because Pyare Mohan was a very bad film.
In Tom Dick And Harry, they constantly refer to each other as abbe andhey, abbe behre, and the villain keeps referring to them as "defected pieces". That's just not funny beyond a point. However, what is occasionally funny, I must admit are the in-jokes -- particularly the one involving Shakti Kapoor who's playing a police officer who's been assigned the responsibility of busting a sex scandal.
He says, completely poker faced that he's going to get to the bottom of this racket, and he'll do it by creating a sting operation no less. Also quite funny are the references to other popular Bollywood films and icons. The three villains Gabbar Singh, Shakaal and Mogambo who're a part of Gulshan Grover's darbaar.
Or then the reference to Black when they boys tell each other that they'll never be as sharp as Amitabh Bachchan or Rani Mukherjee in following each others instructions. Apart from a few moments that just about make you laugh, the humour in Tom Dick and Harry is largely slapstick, and almost always tasteless.
Now you need to understand, I have no problem at all with films that are no-brainers, I have nothing against mad-hatter comedies. But I won't buy rubbish in the name of comedy, and neither should you. Tom Dick and Harry offends your sensibilities because it is both crude and insensitive. Prostitution and handicaps are not the subject of jokes -- they're just not funny.
Add to that the fact that the three actors in main roles are not the finest performers even when they're acting with all their senses in tact -- ask them to perform with one sense missing and you can imagine what the result must be. Nevertheless, of the three it's only Anuj Sawhney who makes an impression with his occasionally well-timed jokes. As for Dino Morea, Jimmy Shergill and Celina Jaitley -- let's just say the less said the better.
You know how sometimes you're in the cinema watching a film and the power goes out. You get restless and you get angry as you wait for the power to come back on and for the film to start again. Well, when I was watching Tom Dick and Harry, I kept praying for the power to go out and for it to never return. That's how unbearable this film is.
A serious piece of advice to director Deepak Tijori: Spend at least a few days working on script, my friend, it won't hurt. A piece of advice for you: Stay far, far away from this travesty. But if you must go, carry a rotten tomato with you. Tom Dick and Harry is so painful that sleeping on a bed of nails will probably hurt less. It is more of a horror film than a comedy, if you ask me.
Rating: 0 / 5 (Such Crap!)
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