We’d heard that some fathers loath their young sons.

Maybe, the fathers see their grownup, priapically obsessed youthful-looking sons as a rival for their wives’ affections.

But the wise souls at SI never believed in such Freudian drivel and Oedipal fiction. At least, not until we were confronted with hard, rock-solid evidence today in Pankaj Kapur’s directorial debut Mausam featuring his son Shahid Kapur.

For two hours and 45-minutes, we witnessed first hand the depth of hatred, the deadly venom oozing out of every pore of Pankaj Kapur’s body, aimed at his handsome son Shahid Kapur (by Pankaj’s first wife Neelima Azeem).

Folks, Pankaj Kapur’s is no run-of-the-mill Kutta, Kaminey kind of hatred.

Au contraire, this is one of those dreadful Maderchod, aaj tera gaand zaroor maroonga kinda, deep-rooted animus.

And guess what, true to his Mephistophelean game plan Pankaj Kapur acted the saboteur and buggered son Shahid well and truly in Mausam.

Beta Shahid won’t be able to walk normally for the next six months.

Boring Shit

To all those including yours truly who expected a beautiful piece of art from the talented Indian actor Pankaj Kapur in Mausam, all we can say is that the old man expelled one excruciatingly long, malodorous fart on Bollywood fans today.

Try as we may, we’re unable to find any exculpatory evidence.

You see, Pankaj Kapur is no babe in the woods. The old man’s been kicking around Bollywood films and Indian TV serials for nearly three decades.

Yet, the ‘movie’ he unleashed today shows that Pankaj Kapur has learned little of how things work behind the camera. Strange.

A hopelessly shoddy script, pedestrian photography (except in a stray scene or two), ordinary music, wildly implausible circumstances and a ridiculously happy ending dooms Mausam and tosses it on the mountainous dumpster of Bollywood.

Worse, Pankaj Kapur’s willful sabotage makes a mockery of the fine effort the acting crew put in.

Pankaj’s son Shahid Kapur, Sonam Kapoor and wife Supriya Pathak throw in respectable performances as do the others including Manoj Pahwa and Aditi Sharma.

Shahid Kapoor, along with Ranbir Kapoor, is the only hope for Bollywood to salvage its reputation with the Gen-Y crowd.

And we had no complaints against Shahid in Mausam. Whether as the young lad in Mallukot, the grownup Air Force officer or the pining lover, he delivers the acting goods.

Sonam Kapoor is getting better and in a Bollywood filled with two-bit *****  like Priyanka Chopra, Kareena Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai, it warms the cockle of this ol’ heart to finally see an actress with a good bit of class and lotsa grace.

To these fading eyes at least, Sonam Kapoor is a sunshine of delight in a Bollywood filled with varmint. Now, if only the girlie had a better bust, or at least one perceptible to the naked eye. 😉

It’s Pankaj Kapur, who is the arch-villain of Mausam. He screws things up doing a rotten job of the story, screenplay, dialogs and direction.

To yours truly, it seemed as if Pankaj Kapur was in a wild, constant battle with himself as to which aspect he could fuck up the most.

The story with love as its centerpiece is not merely unconvincing, it’s also sophomoric with the lovers Harry (Shahid Kapoor) and Aayat (Sonam Kapoor) missing each other just when you thought they would settle down in holy matrimony and spare us any more of this ordeal. Hey, even in the 1990s (the time-frame for a good part of the movie) it was not really that hard to track down people. Well, if you really wanted to.

But no. Pankaj Kapur would have the two lovebird write letters or confront locked gates or doors time and again.

The dialogs lacked sparkle, the screenplay was downright amateurish and if Pankaj Kapur had any shame in his aging frame he’d have labelled his overall effort misdirection instead of the mislabeled direction.

Like with most Indian films, Mausam too has love center-stage with everything else including in this instance communal violence, Kashmir, Ayodhya, Kargil War, Gujarat Riots, Operation Bluestar etc playing second fourth fiddle.

A multi-year film, the movie starts off in 1992 with a Kashmiri Muslim girl Aayat (Sonam Kapoor) moving to Mallukot, a town in Punjab, and home of the ‘most handsome boy’ Harry (Shahid Kapoor).

Before you can say Sat Shri Akal, the two youngsters fall in love, only to be separated, get reunited only to be separated again, get reunited again and separated until we got tired of the nonsense.

Harry’s air-force portion is ridiculous, particularly the way Pankaj Kapur would have the young officer touch the fighter-jets on the outside as if it were a tender coconut being examined for the quantity of water inside!

Of course, it being a silly, unimaginative Bollywood film Mausam goes hopping around the world, stopping at Scotland, Switzerland, America, not to mention the Indian outposts of Ahmedabad, Punjab, Mumbai and Kashmir.

All in all, we left the theater heaping vile curses on Pankaj Kapur for raising our hopes only to subject us to this garbage.

Avoid this Junk

To compound his other sins, director Pankaj Kapur has most certainly not heard of this thing called Editing.

The movie is way too long with unnecessary scenes prolonging the viewers’ agony. For instance, why in God’s name did we have to watch post-riots the giant-wheel scene, the little girl trapped high above and that heroic moronic rescue act at the end.

Your favorite blog SearchIndia.com strongly recommends that you avoid Pankaj Kapur’s brutal assault on his son.

Some crimes are best left unseen by sensitive eyes.

Related Posts:
Pankaj Kapur’s Mausam Opens to Poor Reviews

  Pankaj Kapur, Shahid Kapur, Sonam Kapoor