Mixed Doubles

Rajat Kapoor’s Mixed Doubles should come as a ray of hope to millions of budding and bubbling filmmakers including paper, pizza, and provision delivery boys and girls.

Film making has become a pedestrian job. Here is what you need to make a film these days. For the script you need nothing but a list of bad X rated jokes on recalcitrant and unpredictable behaviour of Mr. Dick and the ever hungry nature of Ms. Pussy; for actors get your wife and a few friends who could tell these jokes in front of a camera; in the name of equipment a camera and a few minor lights are sufficient. The problem of composing a shot will be so easily resolved when you shoot the film in your cramped one bed room hall flat with the help of a few ‘sun guns’ and small lights that can run on power from normal domestic electrical sources.

You may, in all probability, succeed in making a few hundred times better - more entertaining, meaningful, uproariously funny, and cost effective - film than Mixed Doubles. Who knows, you may even get nominated for an Oscar for your original, realistic, witty, and humorous portrayal of the day-to-day realities of human existence. The Oscar library may write to you to send the script of your film to preserve it for posterity. Man, you will be be immortalised.
 

A lot of people may get upset about MD for moral reasons. This reviewer has no moral qualms. It will be foolish to judge a film, a book, a poem, a music composition, a dance sequence, and a painting on the parameters of morality. Never do that. You can only judge ordinary mortals with outdated yardsticks, and not their extraordinary creations. There can be nothing immoral about a child born to unwed couples though having sex without condoms and marriage may be termed as a fatal and immoral act according to some AIDS activists and morality watch dogs .

What works for MD is its tantalizingly titillating title that provides tasty fodder to the rich imagination of a normal filmgoer and highlights the theme of the film succinctly.

Nothing else works beyond this as the script of the film fails to explore the comic or tragic possibilities inherent in the subject. What do you get out of it finally? An important cinematic experience? Can you call a bundle of mediocre and juvenile sex jokes being cracked by a handful of comedians for the benefit of a static camera that?

When the success of a film or a play is gauged by the number of times it makes the audience burst into laughter, why do we have to spend crores on making a film? You can make the audiences laugh with no investment in film making talent. What you need is the expert guidance and help of a chemical technologist who supplies you cylinders of ‘laughing gas’ that can be integrated with the theatre's air-conditioning system. It will create perfect chemistry to generate genuine laughter. It will be much more sublime, high tech, and yet low cost hilarious an experience than watching films like MD. Kya jaanleva aur dhansu idea hai baap? Sab log hanste hanste aur pet pakad ke  hil, hil, ke marenge. Kamaai hi kamaai hai isme. Zindagi kaamyaab ho jayegi.

Indian cinema is under the attack of SMTV (Somehow Make Them Laugh Virus) now. Earlier, it was GTAHOV (Give Them A Hard On Virus) affliction. And of course the deadliest one that that corrodes and cripples the being and body of Indian cinema is FTHFV (Flick The Hollywood Flick Virus). There is an urgent need to cull and destroy these viruses to save our cinema.
 

RKS