Gali Gali Chor Hai Movie Review

Movie Review: 'Gali Gali Chor Hai';
Star cast: Akshaye Khanna, Sriya Saran, Satish Kaushik, Mugdha Godse, Anu Kapoor;
Directed by: Rumi Jaffery;

While credit must be given to writer-director Rumy Jaffery for focusing on the issue of corruption, noble intentions don't necessarily make a notable work of art. Certainly 'Gali Gali Chor Hai' (GGCH) must have sounded amusing and topical on paper. It is a savagely stinging satire on the harassment of the average law-abiding middleclass man, played with arresting earnestness by Akshaye Khanna, in the hands of various touts, middlemen, law enforcers, goons and politicians all of whom infest the tranquil city of Bhopal with the destructive determination of termites eating into a 'system' that has long ceased to be if any consequence, moral or ethical.

Bharat (Akshaye Khanna) works as a bank cashier who plays Hanuman in the local Ram Leela and aspires to upgrade to the lead role of Ram someday. When he refuses to offer his house for the political campaign of a local candidate (Murli Sharma), the politico's younger brother (Amit Mistry) gets him embroiled in a bureaucratic mess.

He is forced to reclaim from court, a table fan supposedly stolen from his house, for which he has to bribe everyone from the constable, witness, lawyer to even the thief. He ends up paying a fortune for the fan, which, in first place, was never his. Problems persist when he wishes to get rid of the unlucky fan.

The basic theme and treatment of this political spoof is right away reminiscent of Pankaj Kapur's well-liked TV series ' Office Office' which highlighted the common man's vulnerability against a corrupt system. Moreover in a society bogged down by bureaucracy to extremities and where anything and everything is feasible, writers Mumukshu Mudgal and Rumy Jafry don't need to go that extra mile to make the black comedy believable enough. Things fall into place in the script almost through the inherent spirit of bribery. The story also smartly establishes the irony that when another household object is actually stolen, the cynical Bharat never reports its loss.

But once the 'systematic' exploitation is firmly established in the first half, the audience expects the tables to turn in the second half with hopes that the hero would give his detractors a taste of their own medicine. Some sequences are really funny but by large the screenplay seems 'fanatically stretched over a single conflict.

Unfortunately, for all his sincerity, Akshay Khanna's Bharat remains clueless about what the script hopes to achieve by showing the character running in and out of police stations and court premises, except to project the helplessness of the common man into a script that seeks to desperately extract creative juices out of the bourgeois desperation which has baffled, bewildered, frustrated and destroyed the under-privileged classes the world over.

Akshaye is first rate in portraying the angst of someone who is perplexed as to the way the system functions. He transfers his anxiety to the viewer who is as helpless. That is the mark of a mastermind. Shriya Saran as his wife has a small but significant role. Murli Sharma who plays local MLA Manku Tripathi and the guy who plays his brother don't have much of a role. But just the minimum time they have on screen is enough to have a maximum impact.

The problem with Jaffrey's movie is its dry almost clinical treatment of the theme of corruption and the Common Man. While the ambience, characters and the plight of our hero Bharat seem authentic, the languid movement of the story suggests a far less involving sequence of events than what we set out to witness when we sat down for a movie.

And what on earth is that item song with Veena Malik lighting up her vital statistics with Christmas bulbs. A symbol of the common man's dream gone bust?

The final scene and the dialogue by Bharat, 'Yeh system ke gaal pe tamacha hai' is what really has you reeling. He does get to play Ram after all, using all the strength of a Hanuman!

Overall, this movie is Timely, Topical and Terrific!