Warning: this review contains profanities.
Guns meet guffaws in this film that redefines the parameters of permissible profanity without causing any deep-rooted damage to the moral fibre of our cinema or society. While most of the adrenaline-pumping humour emanates from Akshat Verma’s writing, the film, one suspects, would not have worked without the impeccable casting.
Every actor is just correct for the film. But Kunaal Roy Kapur, Vir Das and Vijay Raaz score higher by a few points. Maybe they got out of the wrong side of the bed faster than the others. Imran Khan makes a deft transition from poster boy to potty-boy. He fits in comfortably with the writer’s smutty scheme of things.
The film makes us wince with its bowel jokes and toilet titters. But the characters seem so relaxed doing the sleazy stuff, we just can’t help falling in love with their innocent luridness.
Shot in congested lanes of Old Delhi, the film almost makes us smell the sweat mingling with the oil as hungry masses dig into unhygienic roadside food. Delhi Belly gives you instead belly cramps. And that’s not the food. It’s the laughter. A breathless ode to audacity and profanity, Delhi Belly effortlessly jumps over all the pitfalls of its fiercely unorthodox storytelling and hits the roof with a whoop of irreverent joy. The sound of stomachs rumbling in protest and pelvises groaning in pleasure have never mingled so defiantly on screen before.
The energy and the profanity spill out of this new-age film on male-bonding. Leaving behind the borderline coyness of Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai, director Abhinay Deo (who last made the staid and sedate Game) does a screen version of a full-frontal. No holds -or holes-barred.
Welcome to the land of the sacrilegious. The world of Delhi Belly is a womb of gangsters and bowel movements. Roars of country-made guns and the rumble of upset stomachs mix in an irreverent but tangy synthesis of the parodic and the profane.
This is as good a place as any to mention Ram Sampat’s music, which is cheeky, over-the-top and unpredictable. Just like the picture-show. This farce-on-speed takes a perverse delight in showering abusive language on audiences who obviously haven’t heard such a torrent of profanities even in the fish market. Teri bahen ki…
Meet the foul-mouthed characters of this unabashedly irreverent flick about the seedier side of Delhi, where, we are to believe, packages containing smuggled diamonds get accidentally exchanged with a stool samples. Blame it on half-sleepy flatmates who zip-zap through the roads like zombies on heat. This unsavoury barter obviously creates some kind of a stink. Look before you poop.
The film’s central characters are three a**holes (excuse the language) who can’t seem to speak a line without abusing mothers, sisters, wives and other female members that are often attacked by,errr, male members.
Horniness and corniness are the cornerstones of this succinctly-written romp-raunch where bodily functions acquire a life of their own. Independent of the filthy lingo(the most graphic Hindi cusswords are used generously) the film has a sharp spiky edge to its storytelling. You can’t miss the bite. The acerbic humour circumvents the goings-on in a swirl of devilishly-written sequences that leave us aghast with their cheeky disregard for cinematic conventions.
Writer Akshat Verma pulls out all stops to give Delhi Belly the texture of a tightly-wound sex comedy. The gags and episodic humour are so brazen they often leave us speechless with embarrassment. Sample this: to escape being caught out by a jealous ex-husband debutante Poorna Jagannathan clambers on top of Imran Khan in panting glory. When she gets off we clearly see a bump in front of his trousers, which is NOT a gun.
There we have it. The first mainstream hero displaying an aroused reproductive organ. Trust Aamir Khan to push the envelope into places where protection doesn’t help.
Delhi Belly director Abhinay Deo spoke to Subhash K Jha. “Delhi Belly was my first film. It was my biggest gift to my parents as the day it released 1st July 2011, happened to be my parents’ 48th wedding anniversary. July 1 was the fourteenth anniversary of my film’s release and I didn’t have my parents this time to enjoy that moment with. So this day will always be a bitter-sweet moment for me. I don’t think any of us who were involved in making the film had ever thought it would get the status and love that it got. It was honestly an eye opener for me in terms of our country’s audience who not only accepted a bold crazy mental film but gave it a cult status. It spoke volumes of an audience who till that point, most filmmakers would consider ‘not ready’. Oh, they were ready and how!! Of course, I was over the moon to see that my first film — I wasn’t even sure it was going to be allowed to release– got this kind of love. This film couldn’t have happened without two people. Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao. Kiran for having read the script and then Aamir to have taken an impulsive call on producing it. Aamir is the best producer one can ask for. He does what the film needs… period. Directing the cast of Delhi Belly was a dream. We were like a bunch of guys trying to have a blast every day of shoot. All I had to do is tell them to be no different in front of the camera from how they are in real life. I wanted it to be a non-hypocritical film. The language the clothes, and the body language was exactly the way it was for guys of that age. No taming. No watering down. Which is why the film clicked with the youth, cause for once a film spoke their language. I don’t believe that the content was scandalous at all. We didn’t make this film with the intention of sensationalising bad language or relationships. I was just really honest with the content written and wanted to talk the language that I would with my friends. Nothing scandalous about that.”
