Tere Mere Phere (Hindi)
Release Date:
September 30, 2011Distance makes the heart grow fonder, but does too much proximity have a reverse effect on relationships? Tere Mere Phere is another comic look at the battle of the sexes between the characters of the movie set in the Himalayas.
Deepa Sahi’s directorial debut Tere Mere Phere is a classic case of formula gone dangerously wrong. When filmmakers in Bollywood set out to make com roms (comic romances), the margin for error is often dependent on the execution and acting talent at hand. One doesn’t exactly expect path-breaking earth-shattering originality as far as the story is concerned, so it really comes down to the limited resources, narrative style (which is a highly underrated aspect) and sassiness of the script at hand.
Unfortunately, TMP goes wrong in every possible department there is. The script is lacklustre, the dialogue stale and even Vinay Pathak seems ordinary as the puppet he is meant to enact. Deepa Sahi is not an unfamiliar name, But she has routinely strived to make something on the lines of Pyaar ka Punchnama, and has ended up creating a horrific Frankensteinic version of A Strange Love Story and Chalo Dilli. It is not a coincidence, though, that the common elements here are Riya Sen (who loses all sense of direction in mainstream Bollywood) and Vinay Pathak, whose career graph has started to resemble that of his old partner-in-crime Ranvir Shorey. As if the creative content in this package wasn’t ordinary enough, the film is tackily shot- with locations like Shimla, Manali and everything Himalayan looking much like Film City and Filmistan. It takes talent, of course, to achieve such flat consistency with one’s entire artistic vision channeled in a completely wrong direction.
Newcomers (I hope) Jagrat Desai and Sasha Goradia are blessed enough to appear on screen in a commercial release, but that’s where their luck ends. One only feels sorry to watch them sink in a ship that was destined towards utter doom as soon as the title was conceived.
Not much to say, really, other than the fact that even veteran artists - whether they have been observing keenly from the sidelines or have carefully learnt their art over the years - cannot suddenly claim ownership over exclusive crafts like film direction and screenwriting. And oddly enough, that is comforting to know, and for that, we are thankful. Nothing should ever come so easy.