EMI
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Urmila Matondkar
Director: Saurabh Kabra
*1/2
You can repeatedly register for DND on your cell phone but you can be sure that some clever telesales marketing agent will slip through and offer you a service you never knew you needed. In Saurabh Kabra’s EMI one can easily identify with the persistent and annoying telesales callers offering you everything from home loans to health insurance, holidays to headaches. The film shows bankers determined to lock clients in for high interest loans in order to earn their commissions and loan recovery agents with thug bosses single-minded about meeting their targets.
In this scenario, four stories — a newly married young couple (Ashish Chaudhary, Neha Uberoi), a debt-ridden widow (Urmila Matondkar), a hip hustler DJ (Arjun Rampal) with a taste for the good life and an aging father (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) trying to fulfill his son’s dreams — are used to illustrate compulsions for taking loans and reasons for being unable to repay them. Unfortunately, besides Kharbanda, none of the other actors evoke sympathy for their predicament so it is thanks to Sanjay Dutt that the film gets a much-needed leg-up.
Dutt slips back into a Munnabhai character as a bhai who has a change of heart and attempts to solve the defaulters’ problems while also ensuring debt collection. Dutt provides the most endearing moments and the limited laughs in the film. Rampal and Arora are packaged as eye candy and provide several item songs; Matondkar’s character’s potential is never fully explored (but what lovely ethnic outfits she wears); while the pitch of the rest of the performances, including a motley crew of actors who seem to have sauntered off a Ram Gopal Varma set on to this one, is at a different and dissonant level altogether.
Basically it is hard to tell whether Kabra intended this to be a comedy or parody because the script is replete with PJs that fall flat. If he intended a satire or a dramedy, EMI merely scratches the surface. Given the cost of multiplex tickets today, it would be better to divert the ticket and snacks money to your EMI instead.
