Review - Hari Puttar: Farts and slaps!

Breakfast table conversation this morning -
My 6 year old son - "Dad, mom is going to review Hari Puttar today, right?"
His dad - "yes"
Son - "It is like Home Alone, only."
Me - "Why do you say so?"
Son - "Because my brain told me when I watched the trailer. See, there's one boy in a big house, he asks koi hai (anyone there?), that means he's alone. And there are 2 chors (thieves)"
Me - Hmmm... (thinking about this interview)
Son - "I want to watch it, Home Alone was also good."

Like mother, like son - never loses hope...

But to no avail. This one can easily be declared a dud, since the efforts to both change the ambience and to tweak the concept are pretentious. As if they were made to satisfy some copyright law that the makers care about. Seriously, if you are not going to make even half an effort on the details, why bother? Might as well just copy it frame by frame and be done with it.

You have no clue how difficult it is to watch this one objectively, without comparison. Let's just say, it's a lousy-lousy copy - when not Home Alone, they take a scene from Kungfu Hustle and I'm sure it has bits of Carry On if one of the directors claims so.

Actually, there is a bit of originality and contextual alteration. We have one of the burglars using abusive language appropriately beeped off. Now, why one would do that in a kids' movie is beyond me. To top it off, they have a 10-year old being smothered by a skimpily clad Shamita Shetty and a sundry bunch of women. Hmph...

Many a time in remakes, if the story fails, other departments compensate. But here, most performances try to complement the loud character and slapsticky tone. Except Zain and Swini seem enthusiastic and look like they were having fun troubling the adults around. But everything else - the costumes of the two burglars, the sets and locations, the background music - are not appealing at all. If nothing else, just plain and simple continuity to make sense out of the mayhem? Na-ah!

I think I'm just going to get the entire Home Alone series on DVD/VCD for the kids. Much rather have them watch those. On the other hand, it will be interesting to see how they react to Hari Puttar and see whether they think one of their favorites have been ruined. It's only 90 minutes after all. Oops! That'd mean I'll have to watch it again. No thanks, I think I'll pass.