Woodstock Villa Hindi Movie

Feature Film | 2008 | Thriller
Critics:
Woodstock Villa is quite a terrible film- not really in the most obviously obnoxious or offensive way, but worse- so indifferently made and so uninvolving, that the only parts that might surprise you do so only because they are so amazingly ridiculous.
May 31, 2008 By Jahan Bakshi


Imagine a near-empty movie hall. A few people sat shifting in their seats at the back of the theatre- muttering and sulking, waiting for Woodstock Villa to end. Away in the front rows sat I, howling with laughter.


Movies like Woodstock Villa have the ability to make you go on an emotional and cerebral roller-coaster ride. For the first half of the film I was getting bored to death, wondering if the movie would ever really take off. Then, having lost hope for the film and its possible redemption, I sat feeling depressed and confounded, wondering how such a poor script actually manages to find its way to the multiplex. Do the producers actually expect people to pay to watch this?


But towards the end I was so amused by the sheer inanity and of it all that I couldn't help but crack up. The way the film ends seems to suggest that the makers think they have actually pulled off a stunning twist, a genuine revelation on the audience. If they do, they are sorely mistaken.


Woodstock Villa is quite a terrible film- not really in the most obviously obnoxious or offensive way, but worse- so indifferently made and so uninvolving, that the only parts that might surprise you do so only because they are so amazingly ridiculous.


The story follows a good-for-nothing cad Sameer (Sikandar Kher) who desperately needs money to pay off his debts accumulated with his lavish all-play-no-work lifestyle while Arbaaz Khan and Neha Uberoi play an unhappily married couple. When Zara (Uberoi) asks Sameer to 'kidnap' her and ask her husband for ransom to 'test if he still loves her', he jumps on the offer. What follows is a plodding tale of lies, deceit and murder.


Even at my kind and lenient best, I have failed to find a single redeeming point about the film. Bunty Nagi's editing is plain annoying and tries to treat every scene as a sensation, with incessant dissolves, split frames, flash cuts, jump cuts, slow motion, the works; Vikash Nowlakha's camerawork just passes muster while giving your eyeballs a lot of painful exercise. And the best thing I can say about Anu Malik's music is that maybe it's not as horrendous as it sounds.


The dialogues by Milap Zaveri are an embarrassment, and the screenplay by Sanjay Gupta, Rajiv Gopal and S. Farhan is totally bankrupt of logic. Songs are arbitrarily and unnecessarily placed in the film- after a seriously dull credit sequence, we are subjected to Sikander Kher singing in Mika's lecherous sounding voice, and a crucial point of the story is interrupted by Sanjay Dutt pretending to play the drums and guitar through another nerve-wracking song.


Sikandar makes a debut that is just about okay, while Arbaaz Khan and Neha Uberoi desperately seem to be vying for the title of the most wooden actor in this enterprise. Meanwhile we have Gulshan Grover doing his typical cartoony bad-man act, while Shakti Kapoor does a bit role, playing an over-the-top (what else?) Sardar.


The makers have obviously wasted a decent lot of time and money on this sheer farce. My solemn and obvious advice to you is to avoid committing the same mistake.


Jahan Bakshi

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