Even Raveena can’t salvage Diana in this remake disaster
4 min read
Just ended up watching a downright unsettling remake of one of my fav Bollywood songs, Shehar Ki Ladki (Rakshak, 1999), starring Raveena Tandon and Suniel Shetty in the original cover, and immediately regretted having fallen to a random clickbait leeching off a shortchanged website. The latest version stars rap sensation Badhshah who for some weird fetish of the casting director has been paired with actor Diana Penty.
My last date with Diana was unfortunately ages ago when Deepika didn’t have to remind beau Ranveer Singh not to turn up in a skirt and steal her thunder, and Saif Ali Khan didn’t have to change Taimur’s diapers. Her outing with the two stars in the movie Cocktail didn’t take her career to a high in the Hindi movies. Have neither Googled her since, nor have had the chance, quite thankfully, to watch her in any of the movie outings till date.
My colleague, a Hindi movie junkie, is quick to remind me she did star in Parmanu (2018) opposite our desi Hulk John Abraham – I loved him in Rocky Handsome – and in Happy Bhaag Jayegi (2016), but that doesn’t sidetrack my understanding of on-screen emoting, where I have had the opportunity to discover better actors in CGI-birthed dinosaurs and the dragon in the popular Game of Thrones series, one bit. On a comforting note, that dragon emoted better than Emilia Clarke who played the lead role of Khaleesi.
Penty looks suave and petite as a mannequin should and steps in ravishing Raveena’s shoes gyrating to the fatigued beats of Badshah who has overdone himself belting the same notes laced with signature pauses and bass effect. While the YouTube hits will tell you the song from the upcoming film, Khandaani Shafakhana is on course to become the next roaring sensation, it doesn’t in the least show the candle to the original, if the millenials have had a chance to watch it. I had to replay the 1999 original in Abhijeet’s voice to get the abomination out of my system.
Shehar Ki Ladki is in the league of Bollywoodian miscarriages that fail to deliver the promise of better-than-the-original to the listeners and viewers alike. There are others vying for the inglorious spot along with Badshah and Diana’s latest, but the remix of Remo’s hit classic Humma Humma takes the cake in calibrated failure of epic proportion. The song in the movie OK Jaanu (2017) featuring Shraddha ‘Stree’ Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur was to heighten the viewer’s sensation in a ‘honeymooning’ stage that turned out to be disappointingly flaccid in effect. AR Rehman must have been tied in knots looking at the pure disembowelment of his cult creation in one sweeping stroke of commercial enterprise. And, why Badshah? Why? Why does he have to go ahead and ruin classics when he can do so perfectly with his stereotyped rapping and clothing?
No, I’m not done yet. This torture I have had to suffer needs to be shared off the YouTube hits so that poor souls with alternate viewpoints other than the one validated by crawling bots outside the Google matrix can find solace in each other’s sufferings. This brings me up to speed with Jaqueline Fernandez. She flaunts and flexes her toned up body, quite appreciably, but without impact in the recreated hit number Ek, Do Teen. It was Madhuri, guys. Yes Madhuri of yore who got her footing right in the song from film Tezaab and in the process found a foothold in the film industry. Jaqueline cuts an athletic and agile figure which, however well shot and well-received (the video has a 100 million-plus views), comes across as beer gone flat compared to Madhuri’s adrenaline rushed oomph in the unforgettable original track!
Remakes, however, can be surprisingly pleasing to the ears and appealing to the eyes. Not so long back, two of the popular items songs that vied for the top spot were remakes of pre-millennium runaway hits. Shah Rukh Khan’s Raees (2017) showed off Sunny Leone in Laila O Laila. Urvashi Rautela, another starlet, gave the adult star-turned-film star a run for her money with her moves on the catchy remake of Amitabh Bachchan’s Saara Zamana in Hritik Roshan’s surprise hit Kaabil which released the same year, around the same time.
The lamentable remake by Badhsah does stand out as a sore thumb. There are many others like him who must have tried and failed to botox-treat the golden oldies into millennium’s hotties. He is just as followed a star in his own right, which also happens to be his undoing. The exposure reveals his exercises in futility as it has in the past elevated him to an overnight sensation. Even the cameo by original pair – Suniel Shetty and Raveena tandon both of who look refreshingly handsome in their mellowed years – fails to salvage the disaster of a remake. Yes, the Google bots will scavenge the millions of hits to brand it as YouTube’s shining star, but who said ugly doesn’t sell?
