Tere Naam Review

Forget cigarettes, booze and colas - it's films like Tere Naam that should come with warning labels. Here's a definitive guide to the various illnesses, disorders and abnormal conditions that come as a package deal with Tere Naam.

Bad-hair-day-osis: (A condition that is generally known to crop up when you have an important meeting/interview/date.)

Case study: Unfortunately (for us and him), Radhe Mohan (Salman Khan) suffers this condition all through the movie. Initially it's with eye-length strands of gelled hair. If that's not a wig, it must be all the hair transplanted from his chest. In the latter part of the film, he sports an indefinable crop that proves to be a worse eye-sore than the first hairstyle (?). Dudes at Habib's, your services are desperately needed!

Doormat-itis: (Patients suffering this disease tend to believe that they are rectangular pieces of rubber/jute strategically placed at doorsteps to allow people to rub their muddy shoes clean before entering premises.) Case study: Nirjara (Bhoomika Chawla) is afflicted by this rare condition. She allows the men in the movie (her lover - the goon, the lover's goons, her fiancé and her father) to walk all over her, showing that Hindi cinema's version of the Bharatiya Nari is still alive despite the efforts made by Lara Dutta, Mallika Sherawat, Bipasha Basu et al.

Where's-the-story-algia?: (Disease that audiences catch while catching a flick made by Satish Kaushik, David Dhawan and the entire B-grade Bollywood bandwagon)

Case Study: A theater showing Tere Naam is currently the hotspot for germs carrying this disease. It starts out as a college flick with Nirjara, daughter of a pundit, as a fresher, and Radhe as hanger-on-round-college who passed out years ago. Radhe, the stereotype goon-with-a-heart, falls for Nirjara, who for most part of the film is scared of him. The movie meanders between being an obsessive love story and a Robin Hood take-off.

A few good deeds later, she falls for him too. There's time for just one songful of romance between the two, 'cos soon Radhe's head is used as a battering ram by some people he took panga with. A few weird images of the cerebral cortex are flashed on screen, and Radhe is written-off to the loony bin. He doesn't seem to recover, so the doctor recommends that he be sent to a loonier-bin (that looks like a cross between the conventional Bollywood paagal-khana, a prison, The Stonehenge and a shady Ayurvedic massage parlor).

The audience would be on the verge of pulling out their own cerebral cortices at this point, but the story (or the lack of it) gets worse - right down to the very last nerve-grating scene. Blood and gore dominate the screenplay.

Malhistronic-aria: (Loose translation equals bad acting, generally suffered by... yeah, bad actors.)

Case Studies: Salman Khan has lost it... the acting skills he possessed during the days of HAHK, Saajan and, more recently, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. He looks stoned for most part of Tere Naam. Almost as if he knew right from the start that a remake of a tragic (in more ways than one) South Indian film (Sethu in Tamil, Seshu in Telugu) would flop anyway. He would have preferred to invest energy into activities like chasing models-turned-actresses, which Bhoomika is not.

Bhoomika makes a rather wishy-washy debut in Hindi. Her quivering lips and unglamorous look might have worked in Okkadu, but they look sad in Tere Naam. If Sallu fetches more whistles from the men in the theaters, don't doubt their sexuality... Bhoomika does nothing that elicits even a faint tweet. This disorder afflicts the supporting cast, too - mostly played by unidentifiable actors.

Cacophonia: (Experienced by people who don't "get" heavy metal at a head-bangers' concert)

Case Study: Listen to soundtrack of Tere Naam: College song - Dhishoom Dhishoom - Bhajan - Pow Biff - Unremarkable Dream Songs - Bam Bam - Aaaaugh - Naheeeen - Sob Sob - Wail... If this can't assault your ears, nothing will.

Finally, a condition that was observed among all those who staggered wearily out of the theater...

Splitting Headache: (Can occur as a side-effect of various diseases, including watching movies with less than a three-star rating.)

Case study: Understandably, a direct outcome of stomaching 2 & ½ hours of the above-mentioned unmentionables. Audiences who ventured in without health insurance... ouch!