Deep inside a moronic inferno

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Daal Mein Kuch Kaala Hai!

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Please, puhlease read the list of names on top again, then close your eyes and think of what a film with this charming circle of creeps of Bollywood — Shakti Kapoor, Aanandbalraj, Raja Chaudhary, Aman Verma — and Veena Malik could be about.

You are probably thinking innuendoes, dirty jokes, sex-crazed old men climbing over each other to get to a semi-clad Veena Malik. Nothing of the sort.
Daal Mein Kuch Kaala Hai! is an imbecile film, if it can even be called that, with not even a coherent idea of a story. It’s just a camera capturing many idiots doing their special idiotic thing around Ms Malik who, though shapely and pouty, is always fully clad.
It all begins when an aspiring producer Daboo (played by director Aanandbalraj, one word) sells his house and rushes over to aspiring actress Malai’s house. (Malai, yes, that’s Veena Malik’s name in the film and the only real non-veg joke. Ha ha.) Daboo arrives with a suitcase full of cash and says he wants to make a film with her, Malai, in the lead role. Malai shrieks, and then shrieks some more, and then calls up her boyfriend whom we never actually see and they hatch a harebrained plan to rob Daboo of his money.
The gruelling journey Malai undertakes to get the suitcase is very long and ludicrous. It involves a carload of ragtag morons plus two irrelevant kids, a chuffed-with-himself-for-no-apparent-reason Vijay Raaz, the world’s most pathetic don on a scooter (Shakti Kapoor), a truly thakela cop played by Jackie Shroff, a paan-walla played by the forever-flapping Bobby Darling, and the entire army of doubles of Bollywood stars, right from Dev Anand's to Anil Kapoor's. (Daal Mein Kuch Kaala Hai!, sadly, is dedicated to Dev Anand. But the amount of beating and humiliation the poor Dev Anand duplicate is subjected to made me wonder if the director was trying to say something. I didn't wonder too long.)
The climax, so to speak, takes place in a Bigg Boss-like enchanted palace (appropriate, I’d say, given the ensemble), where Sudesh Berry appears intermittently on a screen to convey nothing of any significance except that he still insists on imitating Amitabh Bachchan. There is also a lady’s bhatakti aatma which takes it upon itself to deliver a moral science lesson, and this she sometimes does by taking Malai's form and doing item numbers. The bhatakti aatma, in case you are interested, is the dead wife of Aman Verma, owner of the enchanted palace. His whereabouts are not explained. There are also some fat bhoot log who appear at random, though I'm still not sure why.
We get to the climax after what seemed likes months with people just running around in circles, literally, slapping and insulting each other, while Malai jumped and screamed simultaneously every time she was required to say something, anything. One dialogue by Malai that I've committed to memory is, "Uff! Ek taraf bhoot, doosri taraf goonde log".
The highlight of the film — I say highlight in the sense of clips of farting babies that make it to YouTube and become instant hits — is the film's climatic scene. It begins with the entire cast of the film running up and down and round and round in the enchanted palace's living room, chasing Daboo and his suitcase. Suddenly they all get transported to an iron staircase on the palace's terrace where Daboo and his suitcase are at the top, and all the others, over a dozen people, are lined on the steps below. Suddenly again, an electric wire comes to life and starts inching meaningfully towards Daboo. It takes Daboo a while to figure what the electric wire is trying to say to him. He finally figures and presses it into service, on the staircase’s railing. All the occupants of the staircase, now with white, animated lines of current dancing inside their bodies, start juddering and making what they think a human's expression would be if a human were being electrocuted. But this electro-nonsense goes on for so long that every time the camera takes a long shot, only a couple of earnest people are juddering while the rest are just standing, looking very bored. It’s a classic.
Before I sign off, let me tell you two things. One, what an especially pained film reviewer said in the middle of this film: "Veena Malik is a graduate from the Rakhi Sawant School of Acting". And two, actor-director Aanandbalraj, one word, is the guy who played Debu in the Anil Kapoor-Madhuri Dixit starrer Ram Lakhan. He’s the guy who wanted to marry Radha and kept saying throughout the film, “India is great”. India, indeed, is great. Where else will they put money in the hands of complete morons?