RGV ki Jhaag.......

Froth –noun (courtesy www.dictionary.com)
1. an aggregation of bubbles, as on an agitated liquid or at the mouth of a hard-driven horse; foam; spume.
2. something unsubstantial, trivial, or evanescent: The play was a charming bit of froth.

The counterpart of “froth” in Hindi is “jhaag”

The question you ask after coming out of RGV ki Aag is that why wasn’t this movie called RGV ki Jhaag.



Come to think of it, the movie is actually all Jhaag and no, this jhaag is not the Ghadi detergent cake variety.

“An aggregation of bubbles”, you bet the movie is just that.

You have Heero played by Ajay Devgan who switches between looking like a loser boozer and a Tihar jail inmate acting in a humorous Republic day skit.

You have Raj played by the new lad Prashant who thinks anyone with a 6 plus height and a two day stubble is Amitabh Bachchan.

You have Ghunghroo who tries to compensate for the lack of acting skills by face contortions and ends up irritating like ghunghroos jingling at 3 in the night.

You have Devi Ji (yeah, with an emphasis on Ji) played by Sushmita who starts off with great dignity but later loses it all by first cooing with Raj and then playing a stupid Shadi Ram Gharjode with him for Heero (Veeru).

You have Narasimha, the new age Thakur played by Mohan Lal who is all stoic, strong and silent. Even his family members believe his fingers got cut in an accident. But when he sees Raj and Heero chasing the thugs away for the first time, he gets so carried away that he invites the whole clan to his living room and narrates them the whole story as a grandfather narrating Bikram Betal.

You have Rajpal Yadav who tries to make us laugh by changing his voice (an extremely painful rendition) and face contortions. You end up confused whether who irritated more – Rajpal or Nisha Kothari.

Amitabh, thankfully is the only saving grace of the movie. He looks brutal, psychopathic, filthy and carries his disgustingly sadistic role with panache.

Post facto, there’s not even a single dialogue in the movie that you remember after you leave your seat, so much so for a Sholay remake.

The movie falls flat miserably.
There are just too many weak links.

Casting is pathetic, Ajay looks too old with Nisha Kothari all with his eye bags and Sushmita looks like doing baby-sitting with Prashant.

There is absolutely no chemistry between the lead pair. Jai and Veeru worked so well because they were different, one a garrulous flirt and the other, a strong silent type. Here, both are similar. The characters are extremely badly written and half baked. Heck, you don't even feel anything for their friendship. Jai dying in the original is a landmark scene which induces heavy feelings and even tears in the soft hearted to this day. In Aag, Raj dies and you don't feel a thing, you are just not bothered.


Gunghroo as the new Basanti should be nominated for the rotten pumpkin award for most irritating performance, if there is one.

The scenes recreated from the original classic are extremely painful and headache inducing. Imagine a heavy eyed Ajay sitting near an old well with a gun to his temple and a bottle in the other and saying “Mar Jaoonga”. 50 other people surround the well and shout, “Parvati mummy, haan bolo na..” in chorus and all of this in the typical dark, semi dark sepia toned RGV canvas lifted straight from Sarkar. Humorous, duh!

Songs are below average and you don't remember a word or a sound of the cacophony once you step out of the theater. Background score is non-descript at best.

Urmila in Mehbooba number looks enticing and the Abhishek Bachchan jig, though out of place, may seem like a relief to some.

The movie fails because of various reasons. On the face of it, it looks like RGV was too pre-occupied with his maverick film maker status, “I am a revolutionary and anything that I do will turn into gold regardless of whatever I do in it.” and his star-maker status, “Yeah, I can take any Tom Dick Harry and get a performance equal to Jai in the original Sholay” and not really into making the movie. Several of the great performers have been reduced to carricatures simply due to lack of application from the director. At times you have to pinch yourself that this is actually directed by RGV who has a name for himself in intelligent film making and has been crying hoarse about his being the greatest Sholay fan out to re-interpret the magical classic.

Aag is a bad piece of cine-making. Just that. Comparing the original classic with this Aag-Jhaag is an insult to our collective intelligence.

In the end, the movie is nothing but RGV’s ego-trip. In that sense, we may actually call it RGV ki Jhaag.