Ready (2011) - Hindi Movie Review

Cast:

• Salman Khan as Prem Kapoor
• Asin Thottumkal as Sanjana Singh
• Arya Babbar as Veer
• Paresh Rawal as Balidaan Bhardwaj (Chartered Accountant)
• Puneet Issar as Dadaji
• Mahesh Manjrekar as Ram Kapoor
• Anuradha Patel as Mrs. Kapoor
• Akhilendra Mishra as Amar Chaudhry
• Sharat Saxena as Sooraj Chaudhry
• Manoj Joshi as Barat (Prem's uncle)
• Sudesh Lahiri as Mr. Lehri
• Manoj Pahwa as Laxman (Prem's uncle)
• Arbaaz Khan as Gaurav (Special Appearance)
• Zarine Khan as Khushi and Special Appearance in song "Character Dheela"
• Ajay Devgn as Raju (Special Appearance)
• Kangna Ranaut as Kiran (Special Appearance)
• Sanjay Dutt as Divorce Lawyer (Special Appearance)
• Kubra Sait
• Chunky Pandey as Sanjana's ex lover (Special Appearance)

Directed by : Anees Bazmee
Produced by : Rajat Rawail, Nitin Manmohan, Kishan Kumar, Bhushan Kumar, Sohail Khan
Story by : Gopimohan
Singers : Neeraj Shridhar, Amrita Kak, Tulsi Kumar, KK, Mika Singh, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan
Lyricist : Amitabh Bhattacharya, Neelesh Misra, Ashish Pandit, Kumaar
Music by : Pritam, Devi Sri Prasad
Cinematography : Sunil Patel, Thomas Xavier
Distributed by : T-Series, Rawail Grandsons Entertainment and Software Pvt. Ltd., Sohail Khan Productions

Story:

Pooja aka Sanjana Singh (Asin) runs away from her evil uncles who want to steal all her properties by marrying her to either of their songs. She confronts with Prem (Salman Khan) and eventually they love each other. But Sanjana’s uncles find her and take her away. Prem uses his brains and starts the bluff game. How he marries his girl by making her uncles realize their mistakes is the rest of the story.

Analysis:

Ready is a remake of Telugu hit movie with the same name. Ram, a rising hero played the lead role in it. Salman Khan, who is a superstar, chose to do this role after setting box office on fire with Danbangg. It would be hard for Salman’s mass fans to see him in a sober role which hardly needs to flex his muscles. Especially it will be even harder to accept him in such an ineffective role after that iconic Chulbul Pandey act.

Adding to this director Anees Bazmee’s lackluster screenplay in the first hour made Ready a boring fare. Salman tried his best to infuse life into it but only did in very few instances. Bazmee changed the first half scenes from the original to make it suit to the tastes of Bollywood audience. Although the original’s first hour wasn’t up to the mark it was engaging and in contrast to the second hour which helped big time.

Anees Bazmee tried to make Ready a fulltime entertainer by having too much family drama and so called entertainment in the first half. However, he missed a golden chance of giving the much needed action and mass masala to Salman fans by changing the scenes from the original. Bazmee should have stuck to the original and might have bettered it as he has a superstar at his service. Instead he tried to stick to his image of churning mindless comic capers and that didn’t help for Ready’s course. Most importantly he ruined the character of Paresh Rawal’s which was played by Brahmanandam in the original. For Ready in Telugu this character is the heart and soul and Bazmee failed to understand it.

He retained most of the scenes from the original in second half and few of those worked too. Anees Bazmee tries too hard to make audiences laugh by including vulgar jokes which is absolutely not needed. He could have hired a good translator and translated all the good and neat jokes from the original. Ready, on a whole works only in parts. All the changes that the director brought in prove the fact that he is out of form at the moment.

Dhinka Chika and Character Dheela songs are the saving grace along with Salman’s stunning screen presence. Few jokes here and there worked but Ready is just below the average mark as a wholesome film.

Performances:

Salman Khan is the reason for all the hype surrounding this film and he would be the only savior to make this film a hit or whatever it manages to collect. He did his part so well and used his sense of humor to light up the scenes. His dances in Dhinka Chika are simply superb. Asin looked pale in many scenes and okay in few. An actress of Kareena’s caliber is needed to play this role. Paresh Rawal is good but the director didn’t use his talent properly. There is a horde of artists and everyone did their bit.

Tehnicalities:

Devi Sri Prasad rocked his Bollywood debut with his Dhinka Chika the new chant of B town. Pritam is the main music composer and he is good with his Character Dheela number. Background score is too loud. Dialogues by Farhad are just okay. Sunil Patel’s cinematography is up to the mark. Most of the film is done indoors and even then the cinematographer managed to pull it off with colorful cinematography. Art department played their part in doing so.

Anees Bazmee’s humor sparkled here and there. Putting the interval card as ‘Pee Break’ which later changes to ‘Tee break’ is good. Also the timing in the scene in climax chase sequence where a bike runs over a goon’s leg is hilarious. Bazmee should have stayed loyal to the original script for better results.

Plus Points:

- Salman Khan
- Comedy in the second hour
- Dhinka Chika, Character Dheela songs

Minus points:

- Boring first hour
- No mass masala elements
- Action part is too weak for a Salman film

Final Word: Ready – Not a tailor made film for Salman. But he tries his best to ‘fit’ in.