RAEES- Movie Review

RAEES- A Gangster Glorified and Glamorised....
Shah Rukh Khan as a ruthless, middle-aged bootlegger who'll show immense business cunning and will be satisfyingly grey and perhaps even a little dark. But no, you get Shah Rukh, naam to suna hoga, picture toh dekha hoga, playing Wasseypur-Wasseypur in Gujarat, complete with a garba number. Seriously, you'll spot more 'Baniye ka dimaag' in a packet of Haldiram's diet chivda than in the whole two-and-half-hour run-time of Raees, which brings me to the question, where is the Shah Rukh Khan, you'd want to root for in every film? Rahul in Yes Boss, for whom you felt angry or Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman's Raju you championed, Chak De's Kabir Khan you wanted to give a hug too, Dear Zindagi's Jahangir who gave life lessons, or even, to some extent, Om Shanti Om's Om you almost hurt for when he died? Where is the man who made you root for the most filmi, unreal romances? And then, of course, there's Mahira Khan playing either Farzi/Arzi/Marzi/Darzi -- you can't tell for sure because your head is now an echo chamber for the word Raaes and the girl is hardly ever mentioned properly in the film. Let's call her Keo Karpin in recognition of her magical, levitating hair, which flies around her head like a faithful drone at all times. She gawks at everything- curtains, Shah Rukh Khan, telephones like they are aliens playing dandia or something. What's her role in the film? To stop you from watching YouTube dance videos on your phone, when you get too bored........
It's true that Shah Rukh Khan films are like habits we can't shrug off anytime soon. But hey, is it fair to hand his fans a block of paneer and say, 'Yeh lo, butter chicken'? Because as much as his producers and directors would want to believe so, we can actually tell one from the other. Coming to Rahul Dholakia, I was highly impressed, disturbed, intrigued, surprised and raged by Parzania, which won him Best Director National Award that year. Any A Grade Star can blindly rely on Rahul Dholakia because of his commendable direction skills........
Dear, Imtiaz Ali and Anand L. Rai, please project an otherworldly uncanny SRK in your nexts.....