Review: Rocket Singh – Mice are Nice

Ranbir ‘Rocket’ Kapoor just cant seem to set foot in the wrong direction and is in the form of his life! Much like the purple patch of Rahul Dravid in Australia or Sachin’s desert storm in Sharjah. Well that might have been a little over the hilt, but then the guy is making awesome choices. From playing a cad in ‘Bachna Ae Haseeno‘, to a slacker in ‘Wake Up Sid‘ and now a street smart salesman in ‘Rocket Singh‘, the scion of the kapoor family has been filling up the cineplexes like no one else. The same guy whose flamboyant printed tees got more eye balls than the movie itself the last time he was on screen, makes a u-turn. Harpreet Singh(HP) is everything that Sid wasn’t, except the fact that he barely passed his exams while Sid failed. A frail built sikh boy with a turban and kara, isnt always hero material. Inmost cases they are friends of the  hero or other side characters to fill up a story. The above rule doesn’t apply to the man who single handedly beat up half of Pakistan with an uprooted hand pump.

Every time HP is humiliated you just can’t wait for him to spring up and yell ‘Oye, no
if
no but
sirf JattOye, no if no but sirf Jatt‘! Sadly, that never happens and our boy Rocket just shrugs away the catcalls and gets on with his work. Louw stories are the yashraj forte and no story is complete without the ‘pind ka shera‘, ‘paraandey wali kudiya‘ and the basic ingredients you’ve seen ever since DDLJ hit the screens. Actually it is the single reason why a majority of punju kids are named Simran or assume the pet-name if else. The only thing that that connects the movie to the land of ‘sarson ka kheth‘ is the title character and his grandpa. How on earth can you have a yashraj movie that doesnt feature Rani Mukherjee? It’s not like she was busy auditioning for Jurrasic Park-4 and missed the casting call. Also how does a movie cover the whole boy-meets-girl and the courting stuff that follows all in just one song? It is so against the yashraj commandments where courtship is an elaborate process spanning 10 reels. Another howler was the lack of songs and gallivanting in foreign locales with the words ‘rab‘, ‘soniye‘, ‘sadde naal‘ and ‘hadippa‘ sprinkled generously on the lyrics. As a consolation however, the so-called love interest offers noodles to a complete stranger who stopped at her doorstep to sell computers.

So what do you do when you score 39% in commerce, consider yourself unfit to sit for the CAT and don’t want to go the call center route? Well the answer my friends is that you either take up farming(not farmville you idiots, but the real deal instead) or become a salesman. Afterall ‘customer ke naam main hi likha hai marcustomer ke naam main hi likha hai mar‘, yet the incorrigible Rocket Singh refuses to treat customers like the effluents from a local public sulabh complex. The movie pays a lot of attention to the finer details like wearing wind-cheaters to evade roadside soot, tucking ties into pockets while eating and slacking at work. The character is very well written and punctuated with some corny yet memorable lines. He isn’t afraid to pawn his two-wheeler to a supplier or sell it to pay up for failing to comply to an order. When asked to stop by a temple on way to his first client by a ravishingly tasty looking Gauhar Khan, ‘Emotion pe control hai, scooter main petrol hai‘ is all he needs! Shimit Amin yet again teams up with Jaideep Sahni to dish out a tight story that is fresh, new and totally works. The characters are very well etched and have some awesome lines, whereas the so-called female lead played by Shahzan Padamsee despite having some witty ones, fails to make an impression. D.Santosh as the hilarious Girish Reddy takes the cake as far as supporting roles go this year, and the gaudily made up Gauhar Khan never ceases to titillate the eyeballs. Watch it, in a theater if possible, for we give it 6 out of 10 on the DappanKoothu scale!

(Image Courtesy: glamsham.com)