TEVAR: ZERO HEAT

(Star rating: one star)

When a film cannot make the most of a fine actor like Manoj Bajpayee as a villain in love, you know it’s doomed even as a B grade film. Boney Kapoor’s home production, Tevar, starring his son, Arjun Kapoor, has its money and muscles all misplaced.

There is a dialogue that describes Arjun’s character, Pintu. It goes something like this…mix up Arnold Schwarzenegger and Salman Khan and you get Pintu. Clearly, Tevar’s agenda is to project the filmmaker’s son as the next action hero. It doesn’t matter that he has more baby fat than action abs in his body. It gets worse when he is teamed with a heroine-girl from Mathura - Radhika (Sonakshi Sinha)who makes the same big eyes in movie after movie. Since they look pretty with glycerin drops,there is not much to complain here.

Since its been decided that Pintu, a good for nothing son of a cop (Raj Babbar) in Agra, plays action action, besides kabaddi kabaddi, one third of the film gets directed by action director, Sham Kaushal. When he is not saying ‘hu tu tu’, he is busy mouthing lines like “kiski moru gardan, kiski toru haddi” and beating up eve teasers. Incidentally, Agra seems to be full of such miscreants.

The next one third of the film is devoted to long boring songs. One includes Radhika’s dance that has the villain, Gajendra Singh (Manoj Bajpayee) smitten. Another song has the young Agra boy and the Mathura girl running from goons. After all, in Pintu’s words, that’s all he is good at: running away.

The rest of the film indulges in cheap old lines and cheaper drama like getting Bajpayee to drop his pants and taking a vow that he will only wear them when he gets his runaway bride. Bajpayee clearly does not quite relish this role as his usual power packed dialogue delivery lacks the punch in Tevar.

Boney Kapoor was probably hoping to repeat the success of South remake, Wanted. But debut director, Amit Ravindernath Sharma, doesn’t add much novelty to this remake of 2003 Telugu film, Okkadu.

Shruti Haasan, who appears for an item song, is the only welcome sight here. She looks both hot and sweet and definitely deserves more than an insipid number in scanty costumes.

Tevar is a bad beginning to 2015.You might be better off watching or playing kabaddi.

(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)