Snip Review

Indian film experiments never had it so good, if such films as Snip are any proof. A spoof that mocks any number of mainstream masala films, this small budget film by (mostly) debut artists shows that descendants of comedies, which began as early as Kishore Kumar's zany Chalti ka Naam Gadi, are doing rather well. The only difference could be the use of language. Otherwise, this genre, recently popularized by films such as Bombay Boys, has the same light-hearted chutzpah and spontaneity.

Snip revolves around Tara (Sophia Haque), a small time chic hairdresser. She is the special hair stylist of an aging superstar, Monty Kapoor (Sohrab Ardeshir). Munna (Saurabh Shukla), who believes that he is Capone and calls himself Al, is generally making life difficult for Monty during one of his extortion visits, when Tara descends on the scene. The much-harried film star's nerves are on edge anyway. Mounted on a stuffed tiger as his seat, Monty refuses to sit still for a moment. With a swipe of an ill-judged swoop close to Monty's monstrous ears, Tara snips off a huge chunk of his meaty ear, and the senti (&) mental superstar runs amok in his flat and, at last, on the toilet seat - some place! - breathes his last.

The shell-shocked Tara and Al Munna are accomplices now. Or so Tara thinks. She has to hide the small time criminal in her hip flat where he wreaks major havoc. Into this melee walks in Abdul who has borrowed some money from Monty to buy himself an auto rickshaw. The problems he lands his chota companion Salim (Noor Mohammed) and himself, once the crazy rich cross his path, make a runaway (literally) comedy, which shows how the small fry are always reduced to pulp in that big, bad city called Mumbai.

A black comedy, the film has many a naughty laugh up its sleeve on the crazy ways of the richie-rich of the economic capital of India. It mocks the mainstream films - romance, mystery, whodunit and so on - in a cute way, too. The "heroine" of the film is a flip-side version of the glam dolls who populate the mainstream. There is no hero either! In fact, the film laughs at the sixties' heroes. The villain is a cool creep who dons poor Tara's wigs and nail paints, and generally makes a nuisance of himself. The film hints, moreover, rather openly, at taboo topics that mainstream films will not touch with a barge pole - homosexuality and pre-marital sex, for example.

A cool film, as our trendy young would put it, the film is an impressive debut, which, moreover, boasts of off-beat set designs by Suzanne Caplan Morwaji. Ashutosh Phatak's sound design and Ravi Chandra's cinematography jell well with the trendy ambience that the film sports. A must if you belong to the urban, trendy, young, cool gang, which prefers a not-so-normal kick. Be ready for boring patches in between, though!