Ramsay Brothers are miles ahead of Ramu
And they are honest filmmakers, and certainly better entertainers.

Meet Ram Gopal Verma, the bang bang director, whose 'Bhoot' has been recently released.
Verma's films are quite predictable now. They start with smart beginning credits and then follows a poor copy of a C grade Hollywood entertainer with 'bang bang' music and all kind of disintegrated and bizarre camera angles.

Give a video camera to an over enthusiastic kid and he will do exactly what Ramu does. And what does Ramu do? He watches cheap DVD movies, calls a guy with a synthesizer, tells him to pick this music theme from this film or that to be used in this Ramu flick or that. Same exercise is repeated with the story and shot divisions. And the film is ready for release as yet another Ramu classic.

Ramu does something more that a kid may not do. He calls his friends in media who are so overwhelmed by his towering personality that they write nice articles about the 'new Ramu flick that explores yet another genre of cinema'. They bullshit all along. This is how 'Ram Gopal Verma' brand name survives as Indian cinema sinks to lower depths and cinegoers are taken for a ride once again by a big name. Some may take it as a big achievement by Ramu in a world where crooks are extolled as heroes.

'Bhoot' is all about fear according to Ramuji, the great filmmaker of India. That is why kids are barred from watching the film. Why? One fails to understand the ways of India's censor board. 'Bhoot' is a low grade children's film. Some unimaginative kids may have liked this comic flick and film industry may have found its bottle of Bisleri after a prolonged spell of drought. However, there are owls sitting on every branch of the tree. You cannot expect them to think differently from one another. And what about the fate of the film industry? Only He knows. One believes He is not one of these owls.

Urmila Matondkar thinks that Ramu has been good to her because he offers her interesting roles where she is able to showcase her histrionic abilities as a great actress. She is the biggest victim of Ramu hype. He has turned her into a joke of an actress. One hopes she does not believe in what is being written about her performance in Bhoot. If she does, it will be an end of her career as an actress. In a film that revolves around her character, she has been asked to do what all the Ramsay actresses can do a thousand times better. Forget about them. There are these girls in TV serials like Aahat who deliver much more creditable performances, with no support from 'bang bang dolby music and sound effects'. This actress must walk out of Ramu camp to save her career before she grows old and also looses the capacity to do good character roles as they are very demanding.

Urmila should interact with her co-stars like Tanuja to learn a few things about acting. This gem of an actress appears for a short while and leaves no doubt about her acting prowess. One was watching her intently to find even one single trace of false expression. The age could have taken the toll of her craft probably, one wondered. Nothing was missing. She is still a great actress and would remain so. And thankfully through her daughter, the lineage would continue. Rekha made her presence felt as usual. She looked slim, and well maintained. She has never been as natural and spontaneous as Tanuja. She has always had problems with Hindi language. Bachhan influence was not very good either. But she looks graceful in spite of all the efforts of the director to turn her into a caricature. However, a brain dead Ramuji has succeeded in turning Victor Banerjee and Nana Patekar (who always carries the burden of being another Rajkumar on his strong shoulders) into inconsequential jokers. Nana too was so eager to climb on to Ramu bandwagon to save his dying career that he could not say Na Na to Verma. This is the breed of insecure actors we have who instead of looking for a good script, look for big banners in spite of being big stars themselves.

People say that Ramu works with a 'BOUND SCRIPT'.  The theory of 'BOUND SCRIPTS' has been doing the rounds of the industry for quite some time now. Small time actors and actresses who have nothing to do but to show their oozing breasts, painted legs, pumped up muscles, bare torsos, and 'chaddhis' in films, also talk about this phenomenon. We had a film called 'Armaan' that was made with a bound script written by the entire Javed Akhtar Khandan. One is told that it took years before the script was crafted. The super star of the millennium was the sheet anchor of the film, who was given a hairstyle by none other than Aaamir Khan's heartthrob. This heartthrob did a worse job of Priety Zinta, yet another  heartthrob of A.Khan. While these actors were mulling over their hairstyles, they just forgot  to open this 'BOUND SCRIPT'. It remained bound. We will soon have an archive of  'BOUND SCRIPTS', all classics, never read or opened but made into films. Who reads classics anyway these days? Ramu's bound script started with Shyamalan's 'sixth sense' and ended with Ramsay's 'Rooh Ka Badla'. He must have watched 'Sixth Sense' and would have decided to make a film. Since he was going nowhere, he would have called for Ramsay classics to finish the project somehow. In between we have a lot of  'bang bang' going on to scare us somehow or the other. All kind of Ramsay ploys have been used. In fact it is the Ramsay effects that make the movie a bit scary. They are not even the best of Ramsay effects. And who are these reviewers who got scared by the movement of the lift and the murder of the lift man? There could not have been a funnier moment in the film. I heard even dogs and cats and mice and cockroaches and the tiny little blood sucking bugs in the cinema hall holding their stomachs and howling with laughter when that shot came on the screen. There should be some limit to 'chamachagiri' folks.
 

Filmmakers like Ramu are like blinkered bullocks pulling a cart laden with bad smelling garbage. They have lost the capacity to smell   obvious ideas and possibilities in a story. Within Bhoot there were possibilities that could have made the film a worthwhile experience. For example, when Urmila speaks in the voice of Victor's daughter there is something very chilling about it. However, Ramu must have gone deaf with constant banging going on in the film to build on  these possibilities. One did also feel that it was a chance after-thought.

Ramu should stop pulling the garbage cart. He has been raising a lot of stink now.  And the guys and girls who have been writing good reviews of Bhoot are spreading that stink.  Stop doing that.