Waste of Time

Dangerous Ishq

DIRECTOR: Vikram Bhatt

CAST: Karisma Kapoor, Rajneesh Duggal, Jimmy Shergill, Ruslaan Mumtaz, Arya Babbar, Divya Dutta

Rating: 1/2

Some films manage to baffle you from start to finish. Dangerous Ishq is one of those: it is unbelievable in all kinds of ways, not one of them pleasant. Is this the film Karisma Kapoor, who's been away on extended mommy leave, chose for a comeback? Seriously?

It's not like she doesn't have anything to do here. She's busier than all the men put together, giving us four Karismas for the price of one. She starts off by being Sanjana, svelte ramp-walker, madly in love with rich businessman Rohan (Duggal). All is hunky dory till a kidnapping wrenches the lovers apart, and then begins one of the messiest, most patience-stretching flicks I've seen in a while, which drags us from this year of our lord into several layers of the past, flashing back to pre-Independence Punjab, then to some time in the Mughal era, and then to Meera Bai's Rajasthan. This gives our leading lady the chance to get togged out in all kinds of fancy dresses, rush around trying to solve who's behind the kidnap, and speak in dialects: I couldn't make up my mind who was more hilarious, purely on the basis of the accent: Karisma, the 'mainu-tainu' Punjaban, or Karisma, the 'thaaro-maaro' Rajasthani woman.

Shergill is the cop who is in charge of solving the case. He snaps his fingers, and raps out to his underlings: Double up! Quick! There are other men (Mumtaz, Babbar) floating around on the periphery, trying to make sense of what they've been asked to do, which could be anything from drawing swords, to consorting with long-haired soothsayers, to getting strapped in chairs with amateur-looking bombs that look as if they've been assembled from a toy kit.

... contd.

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