Maa Tujhe Salaam

Sunny's patriotic instincts have now completely taken him over, and this time they've poked him to cough up an irritating hairball in the form of one 'Maa Tujhe Salaam'. Nothing like his previous efforts like Gadar and Indian, this flick makes a loud embarrassing thud as it crashes down in the form of a humongous flop.

The opening sequences show Sunny as the good-natured Major (it's amazing how all Bollywood actors never progress beyond this rank) who spends his days defending the 'border' (pun unintended) with his jawans. These jawans are the brave, intrepid sorts who, when not keeping a vigil over the icy slopes, write to AIR asking for their favorite songs.

Enter Major Pratap's love interest Captain Sonia Khanna (keeping with the Bharitiya tradition, the woman has a rank lower than her would be spouse). Capt. Sonia is an intelligence agent, whose job profile requires her to be intelligent even while she sways to cabaret numbers waiting for Major Pratap to come to her timely rescues. Anyway, when there are no item songs on screen, we are introduced to one villain called Lala who holds the entire town of Junagadh in his muththi.

Lala's most faithful goon is Al-Baksh (it took me a while to figure that it was Arbaaz Khan - been so long man!). Now, this Lala guy has devious plans of his own, which include carving out a new state for himself from Kashmir - which they hope that India will dutifully hand over to Pakistan in view of the "freedom struggle". Lala engages Al-Baksh to smuggle contraband and other such stuff from Pakistan.

When Al-Baksh realizes (whew! finally!) that all his activities are anti-India in nature, he retaliates and launches into an anti-goon thing of his own. Of course, during this time Sunny and Tabu have already sung and danced their obligatory songs and are ready in their combats for action against the insurgents. And this is where the audience start to leave the theater in what seems to be the largest human exodus since the movie interval of K3G.

The movie sucks, and how! Released on the eve of Republic Day, the expectations were sky high, and Sunny sadly fails to deliver the goods. There ain't no Sunny ishtlye shrieking either in this flick, and I confess I was seriously let down. I also hoped for some good-natured anti-neighbor talk, but naah, not too much of that either. Tabu on the other end of the seesaw looks great - she seems to have shed about 1,300kg, and looks as svelte as can be.

There are, on the sunnier side, some major Urdu language classes happening in the flick, with 'a-salaam-waalekum's, 'insha Allah's and other varied utterances by the truckloads. We've always believed that Urdu is amongst the most mellifluous of languages, and these are aural delights.

This flick seems to be an Apollo 13 launch of Arbaaz Khan into the big bad world of acting. Sadly for the whole of humanity, this re-launch doesn't quite propel Arbaaz to stratosphere (where Salman resides), and we have to cope with him for the three hours on screen. Malaika Arora shimmies and shakes for one number where we can clearly see Arbaaz breathe easy. At least there is one bread earner in the family.

As for the flick, stay home buddy - catch the real stuff on TV!