Less titillating, more annoying

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Jism 2 (A)

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Once upon a time, on the beautiful island of Sri Lanka, there lived two titties and two titty-crazy men. Two hours later they all died.

This pretty much sums up the story, USP and raison d’etre of Jism 2. Pooja Bhatt’s Jism 2 is a lazy, annoying film that’s been put on screen simply because the Bhatts — father Mahesh and daughter Pooja — saw the commotion that Sunny Leone’s entry in Bigg Boss’ house in December last year generated and were the first to strike. They saw a milch cow and rushed in with their bucket. Daddy dear made Ms Leone an on-camera offer — a clever move that took care of all other producers/directors who may have been getting their own buckets ready.
The Bhatts didn’t wait for her to be out. Well, how often do you get an angel-face desi porn star? That’s such a rare and exotic creature that first-mover advantage guarantees box-office bliss. But in their excitement on finding and bagging their mojo, the Bhatts forgot that just putting Ms Leone in teeny-weeny, lacy lingerie items and having her smooch two men don’t maketh a story.
Jism 2’s rag-tag story involves one porn star, Izna (Sunny Leone), her yearning for Kabir (Randeep Hooda), a man she once loved and then lost, and one googly-eyed dimwit, Aayan (Arunoday Singh).
Izna picks up Aayan at a nightclub, takes him to a room and rides him. All this puts Aayan in a very good mood and he offers Izna coffee and a post-coital tete-a-tete about Kabir, once the “best police officer” in the force who went rogue.
Aayan is soon joined by his Intelligence Bureau boss, Guru (Arif Zakaria), who tells Izna that Kabir is not only alive, but is a wanted man, and that she must help them extract information from his laptop that will help them save India’s VIPs. Kabir, he tells Izna, has already killed some 38 VIPs, and India can’t afford to lose more.
Izna starts to pant.
Guru then tells Izna about a psychiatrist in Zurich who was treating Kabir for “mood disorder”. According to the psychiatrist, Kabir is still in love with Izna.
Izna is now not only panting, but also pouting, because she can’t believe that the man she loved and slept with and wrote love letters in blood to is alive. While panting and pouting, she says, “Use pyaar karna meri woh pyaas thi jis-se meri pyaas bujhti thi.”
Jism 2 is riddled with such putrid dialogue, and every time someone mutters them, there’s nothing to do except to focus on Ms Leone’s ample bosom. And believe me, it’s always up to something — it’s either heaving, jiggling, or just smiling and saying “hello”.
Anyway, a deal is struck, Rs 10 crore are deposited in Izna’s bank account and they all head for Why, a resort in Sri Lanka’s picturesque Galle district. Here Aayan and Izna pretend to be a soon-to-be-married couple next door to Kabir who is very seriously pretending to be a musician by singing operatic numbers in his beauteous blue den.
To prepare to spy for India, Izna is handed Barbara Taylor Bradford’s Playing The Game and told to memorise a few pages in case she is asked how she and Aayan, now posing as Karan, met and fell in love. Izna is as incompetent at this spying game as her handlers, so she forgets to burn the book. But that’s nothing compared to what Aayan does — he shouts out their plan and abuses Kabir, with Kabir in the next bungalow — or how all the spies send each other long, detailed SMSes and leave their phones lying around.
And so this goes on, inept spying, smooching, steamy bedroom scenes and rubbish songs till we come to the sermon we were dreading. And then, they all fall down.

THE BHATTShave a different take on love from, say, Yash Chopra. Their love is dark and brooding that doesn’t loll about in the tulip fields in the Netherlands. Their lovers crave and loathe a bizarre sort of intense intimacy; their love drives lovers insane because true love, in their book, is obsessive, violent and physical. It’s a noose that chokes and then kills. That’s all very well, and it can be erotic as long as we are in on the strangulation from the beginning. If we get a peek into the lovers’ neurosis, we are game.
But here, in Jism 2, we must assume that because Ms Leone's breasts are always ready for action and she is nicely curvaceous and cute, men go potty just looking at her. And if they have spent a night or two with her, bus, phir toh un ki lag gayi.
Chalo, I say, yeh bhi maan lete hain. But kuch toh batao, about why this love is driving everyone insane. Nothing. Jism 2 is just two perky boobs with an idiotic, flimsy story woven around them.
Director Amit Saxena’s 2003 Jism was an erotic thriller which had a story, because it was written by Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity) that Mahesh Bhatt copied and took credit for, as is his wont. For Jism 2, Mr Bhatt should have just copied another Hollywood thriller, put his name to it and saved us from this nonsense. But he didn’t. So while Jism 2 doesn’t have a coherent story, it uses up all Bollywood cliché and corny lines.
No doubt Ms Leone distracts us from the film’s off-putting proceedings. She is sexy and has a refreshingly brazen attitude to smooching, foreplay and fornication — she uses her body more than her face as an invitation. She strikes sexy poses, thrusts her stuff nicely and does interesting lip action that put you in the mood. But one look at her expression and you start to laugh. And you laugh every time Arunoday Singh arrives. Poor thing, he has been given a village idiot haircut and a character to match. And he manages to make it worse with his gargoyle-like expressions.
Though Randeep Hooda is always good when he is horny and brings interesting, dark shades to the film when he arrives, there’s little he can do when he has to mouth dialogue like “Tumhari maang sitaron se bhar doonga,” immediately followed by “Meri is raat ki subah hogi ke nahin?” Don’t know about his, but hamari raat is dark and dreary.