Movie Review - Kick: All about Being Human, Salman Khan style

Rating: 1 Star Bottom line: Salman Khan has grown up. He is all of 10. By now it is a given, that if you go to watch a Salman Khan film, you are basically going to watch some whacko, madcap action and corny lines. The criteria is not how good the film is but how bad it is in a good way (read cheesy Salman a la Dabangg way). Kick doesn’t quite meet Salman Khan being Salman Khan standards all the way through. It goes through Dhoom hangover in the second part and settles on ‘being human’. The kind where you see little girls and boys worshipping their ‘Kick’ uncle. Thankfully they don’t burst into a Childrens Day song. So Kick Uncle predictably makes his grand Dabangg entry in a weird motorbike cum car. He spends half the time giggling every time the heroine in the backseat (Jacqueline Fernandez) falls on him and the other half jumping through air, wielding off men with swords. His modus operandi is this: first he helps one group of people and then he helps another group of people attacking the first group. The resultant chaos gives the self-proclaimed 10 years old muscle man a so-called ‘kick’ or a high. He was born on Feb 29th, which apparently has come in his life 10 times. His silly games frustrate Jacqueline who incidentally is a psychiatrist. Dr Psycho wants to examine this specimen of a ‘human being’ and of course, is crazy enough to fall for him. Soon she is seen trailing around saying, “main use therapy kaise doon” in pubs where he is dancing wildly, high on desi daroo. Thankfully, the writers (and there are plenty including Chetan Bhagat and Rajat Arora) include more watchable characters and actors like Randeep Hooda and Nawazuddin.Salman flits from a seemingly schizo personality of being Devilal to Devil. Hooda is a cop who chases Devil who masterminds robberies Dhoom style. Nawaz too is after Devil’s life. Only, he is a bigger devil himself. He can be pretty scary and hideous too with a caricaturist wicked cackle. When Salman imitates him, we get a fleeting glimpse of the more tolerable, sometimes likeable Dabangg guy. But then the damage has been done, more with him trying to croon ‘hangover’ song. To top it all, he has decided to be Kick Uncle who cries. 10 year kids may have a great Eid this weekend. Hopefully, they will count the multiple number of times the word ‘kick’ is used, to entertain themselves. As for the adults, if you still want to kick yourself later, go ahead. You may just get a breather with Nargis Fakhri’s hot item dance. Hopefully she will convince Kick Uncle not to sing ever again. (The writer tries to make peace with her own filmmaking nightmares, of being a scriptwriter, actor and assisting film icons by moonlighting as a film journalist.http://gayatrigauri.blogspot.in)