Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal

GOAL fails to score…

The latest Hindi flick GOAL caught my attention with its promos promising an interesting anecdote being based on a true incident. The fervor of recent sporting flicks like Chak de and flavor of the game football made GOAL sound too exciting. For me.

The movie opened with a backdrop of South Hall club in London, which had a great football history of making it till league finals with some good players. That was past. Since then it only lost. In present, it was now left to Arshad Wasi a player cum savior of South Hall club trying to put his antics in act, doing everything to bail out the club from its deep debt situation. The only way. Win the football league champion ship. Wasi’s efforts were all set to fail until he comes across one of South Hall’s past hero Tony Singh (essayed by the one and only Bomman Irani), who later turns out to coach South hall to its mission impossible GOAL. The championship.  And since Bomman makes his appearance, you can see the audience sitting upright. That’s the tribute to the actor Irani, if not for the movie.

The talented Arshad Wasi gets a square peg in a round hole kind of a role. His profile and body doesn’t come anyway near a champion footballer. And on top of it most of his teammates, including people like Monte, Deb etc with “out of shape” resembling erstwhile Barbappappa cartoon characters, failed to impress and amuse in equal sense. Their football acumen, discipline, sport ethics, and the overall seriousness to their mission lacked common sense and it was nothing short of non-sense.

 I know when you had just seen a complete refined and brilliant essay of a similar sport backdrop like “Chak de India”, you do tend to look to sip Goal with a hangover of the legendary movie, which you perhaps just saw. Then even if you hadn’t seen Chak de. Goal doesn’t still stir your soul. And you go still in disbelief, if you are a keen footballer or its follower. Perhaps the director and scriptwriter realized this early in the game or rather the movie and were prompt to switch to masala and glamour.

Enter the sexy duo. John Abraham and Bipasha Basu. Till such time the audience, which tries to get on to, a rather serious mode is made to switch gear. Abruptly.

At least John looks like a footballer. He was brilliant physically with all his attempted football textbook kicks and flicks. But was totally dumb and expressionless to display champion’s character in his face. Neither through silence nor through expressions, John “looked” good. But that was no substitute for his great on screen looks. That’s it about him.

Bipasha was all over her boyfriend and her recent boisterous exposure with the star Christiano Ronaldo was replicated with her real-time boyfriend. The devil prevailed over the audience, in majority, in yielding to the temptation of enjoying the much intense smooching scene of Bips and John. Oops. Hot! But for the kind of movie one would expect to see. This hotshot scene was nothing short of shame. It wasn’t a right tribute to football either. It was a different ball game. And did not connect with the spirit of the game or the movie.

Bomman stole the show frame by frame, although, the breakthrough scene, wherein he manages to enroll John into South hall team, by winning a one on one football duel was a piece of con. A past hero, now an alcoholic, Bomman, beating a fit John "legs down" was just unbelievable. Truly!!

For a real story, none of the stars had a compelling character. Wasi, so focused on winning and being a captain, his ego hassle with John looked stupid, if not anything else and John as a champion footballer supposedly more professional looked confused and slimy. Bomman, as Tony singh, didn’t sound convincing either in reasons for running away from playing the final in the past and then taking up coaching for South hall club. In stark comparison, you will see tremendous conviction and reasoning behind SRK in Chak de and Naseer in Iqbal, where they eventually take up coaching.

Yet Bomman and Wasi played it easy thanks to their enormous talent.

GOAL with a western backdrop and desi soul suffers with severe identity crisis. The emotion scenes were rather amusing. That was the comedy track so to say.

The pace of the last 25 odd minutes was commendable and the director and camera work displayed enough passion to keep the audience absorbed. The inappropriate casting of the movie, made up for the lapse by pulling off a good finale sequence. They came closer to the goal, if not score one as a movie crew.

Inspite of all series of cinematic hole, goal yet provides for a good weekend popcorn entertainment.

Cheers … Joker>>>>