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Saturday 22 February 2014

What I want to be when I grow up

I want to be rich.

Upper middle-class won't do.

Upper middle-class can get you branded clothes, access to expensive restaurants, high-end technology, a reasonably fancy car and an occasional foreign holiday. None of which I particularly desire.

Rich will get me the mansion in New Friends Colony that I have had my heart set on, since the age of twelve. Rich will get me the holiday home in Goa.
Most importantly, rich will get me my private movie theatre.

I don't mean a home theatre. I mean a proper theatre that you have to commute to, the one with the darkened halls and the giant screen, screening the newest trailers (and the anti-tobacco lectures).
Just minus the people.

Okay fine, I am perfectly happy watching Dhoom 3 or Phata Poster Nikla Hero or Chak de India with other people. I can even ignore the crying, screaming children then. But not all films are given to collective viewing. Or maybe not all movie-goers are given to watching all kinds of films. Children certainly are not. Nor were the adults at the theatre where I caught Highway.
What is with all the talking? What is so important that people have to immediately tell their friends, during Veera's  (Alia Bhatt) outpouring about a childhood trauma? (I would understand if they were sniggering about the dialogue, in a film like Prince or Love Story 2050 or Race 2, I really would). And what's with the inappropriate laughing? Twenty minutes into the film, when a goon is pawing Veera, there was laughter from the audience. The scene wasn't even being played for laughs (There was a brief sequence earlier with the man, that was). Here, Veera was visibly disgusted. And so was I, with my co-audience. That apart, I loved Highway. Even though I went in expecting a love story, and got...I don't exactly know what.

I can't possibly talk about the film giving the crucial bits away (I know because I spent an hour on that post). Just go watch, preferably by yourself, in a theatre.


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