BackIs Great Grand Masti’s trailer safe for human consumption?
The CBFC, which asked for 89 cuts in Udta Punjab, has also ensured 22 cuts in Great Grand Masti
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A doctor is using a naked male patient’s penis as a lever. Every time the doctor moves the patient’s penis, it chimes. After giggling for a while, the patient informs the doctor that the clock on the wall is chiming, not his penis. A woman wants to play Statue with her brother-in-law. She starts tickling him. He gets an erection and loses the game. A man goes to take a leak on a beach. A cobra bites him in the derriere. The antidote? His two male friends will suck the poison out from his buttocks. There’s a haunted house. The three male protagonists are sitting at the dining table and the entire table elevates. It’s not a ghost. It’s because they have erections which have elevated the table—but sadly not the IQ of the creators of this trailer. There’s a woman who lives in the haunted house, but she’s actually a ghost, a buxom one at that. There are more women, all of them not only seem to be desperate to be seen on celluloid, but also seem to be playing ghosts who wear very few clothes.
This is not me hallucinating or channelling my inner Ramsay Brothers. This is the synopsis of the trailer of the third film in that trilogy which will go down in Hindi cinematic history as the point in which the civilised world imploded—Great Grand Masti. The film stars that Unholy Trinity of “actors" who only seem to get roles in sex comedies—Vivek Oberoi, Aftab Shivdasani and Riteish Deshmukh. The main semi-naked female ghost is not some desperate ingénue from small town India who had to grab whatever opportunity Bollywood threw her way. The female lead, if you can call it that, is Urvashi Rautela who was Miss Universe-India, 2015.
These are the moments when you wish beauty queens would indeed use their breasts for global peace, instead of using them for an Indra Kumar film. Rautela is a two-time Miss India winner. She won in 2012, and had her crown taken away because her age was fudged. And then, not one to give up, she took part again in 2015 and won again. And then was launched in Sunny Deol’s film, Singh Saab. (You can thank me for the trivia later.)
I must say that it’s good to see that Vivek Oberoi, Riteish Deshmukh and Aftab Shivdasani have found their niche. Oberoi, Deshmukh and Shivdasani only act in what Bollywood likes to call “sex comedies" and what I like to call an assault on the senses. That they’ve been acting in this series for 13 years, since Masti was released in 2003, speaks volumes for their dedication to the trilogy and to their craft.
Don’t get me wrong. While I am of the strong belief that while an Udta Punjab or Masaan or Court and Sairat are essential to make, I also believe cinema which requires audiences to not exert themselves intellectually at all is as essential to get away from the humdrum of life. But must it be so puerile? And so offensive? This is not even of the calibre of the Carry On series or American Pie. This is the same old erection jokes, with the same old talentless trio. The only saving grace this time is that none of the actors are speaking directly to any of the actress’s breasts. But then we only saw the trailer, god knows what wonders the entire film holds.
Before the trailer was “launched" last night, Riteish Deshmukh tweeted from his handle “@Riteishd", “MASTI ka BHOOT sab pe chadega!!! #GreatGrandMastiToday Trailer Out Tonight."
The poster, compared to the last two films’ posters, with strategically placed bananas and fizzing champagne bottles, is very tame. The elevated humour of the film can be seen in the naming of the characters—Meet, Amar, Prem. So they can get introduced as “Meet Amar and Prem". It’s very, very evolved.
How did I know this film was being released? Because Vivek Oberoi, realising all publicity is good publicity, decided since nobody was talking about him, he’ll push himself into the spotlight by praising arch nemesis Salman Khan’s film, Sultan. Which is ironic when you realise that the ‘Central Board Of Film Cutting’ has removed a scene from the film which referred to Salman Khan’s Judwaa. The Central Board Of Film Certification (CBFC) has been keeping itself busy and along with asking for 89 cuts in Udta Punjab, it has also ensured 22 cuts in Great Grand Masti. It’s good to know Pahlaj-ji found Great Grand Masti less dangerous than Udta Punjab. But then he most probably felt a kinship with the filmmakers who seem to be inspired by Pahlaj-ji’s song, Khada Hai Khada Hai.
Seriously though, whatever else I may have to say about this great and grand franchise of films and its trinity of thespians, Great Grand Masti does serve many important purposes for society. First, it’s a lesson in the fact that you can have all the opportunity in the world—Aftab was launched in Shekhar Kapur’s Masoom, Riteish is Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son and had Bollywood opening every door for him, Vivek Oberoi is Suresh Oberoi’s son and has worked with Shaad Ali, Mani Ratnam, Ram Gopal Verma and Vishal Bhardwaj—but you may still go down in Hindi film history as career sex comedy stars. Second, just because you’re Miss Universe and have been launched in a Sunny Deol film, it doesn’t mean you won’t be cast as Object No.1 in great grand style in Bollywood—all because you want to see your face on 70 mm. And third, and most important, for the first time, for the price of a film ticket, doctors can now get their patients to experience how they’ll feel if they were lobotomized.
You can watch the trailer, if you must, here.
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