Dr. Mala Chakravorty

Produced by Boney and Sridevi Kapoor and directed by Aneez Bazmi, the film is a caper comedy about cheating husbands and suspicious wives: sort of a potpourri of older hits like Pati Patni Aur Woh (1978), Swarag Narak (1978), Sajan Chale Sasural (1996), Biwi No 1 (1999) and the recent Masti (2004), Kya Kool Hai Hum and Maine Pyar Kyon Kiya (2005). The basic theme is the same as in Masti, where unhappy married men look for excitement in extra-marital relationships. However, the situations, performances and overall presentation make this film much more entertaining than the current breed of sex comedies. By avoiding excessive crudities, No Entry goes a notch above the ‘David Dhawan School of Filmmaking’ it is rooted in. Also, in its final denouement, the movie does not get overtly preachy or sentimental. It stays clearly within its self-designated realm of a time-pass paisa vasool masala movie aimed at providing the masses with non-stop entertainment.

The film is about three men and four women - Prem (Salman Khan), a married womanizer and his devoted wife Pooja (Esha Deol); Kishan (Anil Kapoor) a faithful husband and his super-suspicious wife Kaajal (Lara Datta); Kishen’s fun-loving protegé Sunny (Fardeen Khan), soon to be married to feisty Sanjana (Celina Jaitley) and a sexy bar-dancer cum hooker, Bobby (Bipasha Basu). Prem convinces Kishen, who is frustrated by his wife’s suspicions and constant nagging, to experience the joys outside marriage, and hires Bobby to seduce his unhappy friend. Kishen gets drawn into this intrigue and subsequently ropes in Sunny to help him prevent Kaajal from finding out what has been going on in her absence. The ensuing circumstances lead to complications that jeopardize all three marriages. Before long everyone is running around in a frenzy, with the men desperately trying to fool their wives, prompting two and a half hours of mistaken identities, chaos and craziness in a slapstick comedy of errors. The film gleefully draws in all the ingredients that attract contemporary urban audiences -- vibrantly colorful romance, lush locales, scantily clad buff bodies gyrating to raucous music, and a corny, contrived script. A swift pace keeps us moving from gag to gag without giving us time to question logic or reasoning of any kind. The focus is primarily on the farcical situations these men get trapped in, than in their infidelities, and at the conclusion all the loose ends are tied up and we emerge looking forward to the sequel that promises more in the same vein. 

A decent star cast adds to the appeal of the film. Bollywood’s perennially bare-bodied hunk, Salman Khan, plays the slick womanizer with panache, a character he has played umpteen times in the past. Anil Kapoor and Fardeen Khan reveal a flair for comedy in their shared comic predicaments as the beleaguered newspaper editor and his hapless staff photographer. Lara Dutta, Esha Deol and Celina Jaitley don’t have much to do other than whine, screech, get hysterical and weep, or wear revealing costumes and dance, looking pretty at all times. Bipasha Basu is her usual sultry and vampish self, oozing sex appeal. Boman Irani as the lecherous politician and Prateema Kazmi as his tyrant wife are over the top per the requirements of this slapstick comedy.

Technically, the film is sound. The dialogues are witty and relatively free from the sexual innuendos commonly found in this genre, though the title song is as suggestive as it can get! Cinematography is striking, the camera roaming over exotic locales in Mauritius and South Africa. Anu Malik’s music is nothing to rave about. The song-dance sequences modeled on sleazy music videos are totally redundant to the plot but add immense value to consumers of this genre of films. The film could have done with a shorter run-time and tighter editing. If you are one those who can leave his or her brains at home and indulge in a laugh-riot, this movie will definitely appeal to you. 

Going by the popularity of the film, there are obviously a lot of us that belong to this category. I do believe that once in a while, all of us like to forget the real issues that surround us and laugh for three hours at farcical situations without trying to be rational or analytical. We have had several situational comedies in the past, like Chupke Chupke (1975), Safed Jhuth (1977), Golmaal (1979), Shaukeen (1981), Chashme Baddoor (1981), Angoor (1982), Rang Birangi (1983) that have defied logic or reason yet provided us with wholesome entertainment. What concerns me about the immense popularity of films like Masti and No Entry is that we also seem to have a propensity for misogyny. We laugh uproariously at statements like ‘women are similar to cars and should be upgraded to better versions frequently to add spice to life’ or that ‘women are the source of all misery just as they are the source of all pleasure’. Going by the popularity charts we seem to believe that womanizing husbands make better spouses as they overcompensate for their guilt by paying their wives more attention while faithful husbands return home tired and bored, watch TV and fall off to sleep! We think of marriage as an institution that is claustrophobic and deadening for men, even if the man in question is married to a former Miss Universe!!! We find adulterous males and the situations they are caught in hilarious, and root for cunning Casanovas who can make fools of their seductively moronic wives/girlfriends. The women continue to be belittled and denigrated for daring to be assertive and asking questions. They are blamed for their husbands’ shenanigans that are justified because their wives nagged too much, or the marriage was too dull. The women who are venerated are docile and sacrificing, yet can wear the most revealing clothes and be sexually appealing. In this movie, Bipasha’s character, Bobby the fiery hooker who seems to enjoy her seductions wholeheartedly, has a tragic story that justifies what she does for money and she turns out to be the ideal of sacrificing womanhood!

The message is loud and clear for women, boys will be boys, and if you have the skills to keep your man satisfied, the patience to endure all humiliations he heaps on you and the ability to forgive him all his trespasses you will be rewarded with happiness ever after – of course, be prepared that the man will keep trespassing, and you will have to keep forgiving! The bottom line is that lying and cheating is much more fun for all concerned than honesty and integrity. Going by this rule, this should apply to women as well as men. Marriage must be as claustrophobic for women as it is for men, and if wives cheated, the quality of the marital relationship should also improve instantly. Why is it that no one ever makes light-hearted movies about adulterous females? The few films that have touched on this subject are dark and tragic, like Aastha, Paroma, Fire, Murder, Jism, Astitva. The further women move ahead in real life, the more regressive their representation seems to be in popular media. A movie like No Entry, innocuous as it may seem in projecting itself as a rib-tickling laugh riot, ends up doing more harm than crude movies like Masti as it wraps stereotypical patriarchal notions of men and women and marriage in attractive packages and distributes them to a wide cross-section of society, corroborating and glorifying the retrogressive values it espouses.