Bhai Tera Star Hai, Review: Par sirf ek * star hai
Bhai Tera Star Hai, Review: Par sirf ek * star hai
Flashback. Imagination. Hallucination. Intelligence report. Classified. Top secret. For your eyes only. Password protected. From the OTTers Club.
A producer’s brainstorming room.
Shooting is to begin soon.
Present are the Producers (Eastwood Pictures and Indian Stories 2/Avantika Hari, Sunil Rupani, Sudipto Sarkar and Vivek B. Agrawal), the Director (Vivek B. Agrawal, in his double role), the Writers (Vivek B. Agrawal in his triple role and Sudipto Sarkar, in his double role), Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni (the Cinematographer), Sajal K. Soni (the Editor), Rohan Shah (the Choreographer), Amit Trivedi (the music composer and singer), Rakesh ‘Kumaar’ Pal (the lyricist) and the Sound Department (8 track…er…8 individuals).
Producers and Director (P&D) to Sudipto: Have you thought of something? Where do we begin the story?
SS: Right at the top. From the top. A drone shot of London, including Big Ben, and all its other attractions.
P&D: Not bad. How do we introduce our hero?
SS: With a song. He is a singing star, so what better idea than to introduce him in a song and dance item?
P&D: Hmmm. In London?
SS: Well, it could be anywhere. London, sets, outdoors, Chroma, AI…anywhere. A rocking number.
P&D: Describe him in one sentence.
SS: Rocking, rebel, icon, super, ultra, future!
P&D: You’re on track. What will be his name?
SS: Ajay. Ajay Singh. Ajay, as the undefeatable, and Singh as in the Lion King. Singh is King.
P&D: Our protagonist is a singing star?
SS: Well, actually he is an aspiring actor, with no work, and deeply in debt. Ten thousand pounds deep. And the lender is a mean asshole named Fatty.
P&D: Most money-lenders are.
SS: But Fatty is not a money-lender as such. He owns a large bar, takes bets on the results of cricket matches, mostly on credit, and chases the borrowers, threatening to push XXXXLLLL size, pointed objects into their arses, if they do not pay-up in time.
P&D: You just said that he is an arsehole, and now you are saying that he threatens to shove…
SS: In a manner of speaking. But he gives Ajay till 12.30 in the night to bring-in the money, otherwise he will sh…
P&D: Shhhh.
SS: There is pulsating suspense. We will have a square digital clock on screen, and it will keep appearing again and again, when the time seems to be running out, like the pages of a calendar.
P&D: Just how is he going to repay that debt? £10,000 is not ‘chillar’ (small change).
SS: That is the plot. With the help of friends, by telling lies, and shouting across rooftops that he is a liar, by imitating Pran and Amitabh Bachchan in their first scene together in Zanjeer, spreading word that his girl-friend is pregnant, and so is another woman, the never say die spirit of Punjab, ...
P&D: So, he is a Punjabi Singh? Is he a Sardar?
SS: Maybe. But a mona (without turbaned long hair). But a Punjabi, definitely. So are most of the cast.
P&D: And the setting is London?
SS: What better city could we have chosen? London has a huge Punjabi NRI population. It also gives us an opportunity to bring in the fact that Queen Elizabeth did not trust her pills.
P&D: Pills?
SS: You know, pills, contraceptive pills.
P&D: Is that true?
SS: Could be an urban legend, but who cares? It will hook viewers.
P&D: Shall we move on to other characters?
SS: A bar owner, a man who works a strip club, an Indian British policeman called Hamid, who was a drama director in India, before he migrated to England, two couples who break-up and then try to make-up and then break-up again, …
P&D: What about the language? Will it be in English, or Punjabi or Hindi or…
SS: All three. And some bits in Mind Your Language.
P&D: Mind Your Language?
SS: Some inane words, like ‘weirdo’, some empathising words like ‘loser’. You know, the muted sounds and the asterisks. You know, the muted sounds and the asterisks.
P&D: That will get us an A certificate, with cuts.
SS: That’s the general idea. Most adults like films which are meant for Adults only.
P&D: And the songs will be in…Hindi, English or Punjabi?
SS: All three languages. A deadly, potent mixture.
P&D: Kumaar, are you listening?
Kumaar: Listening? I have already written the ‘mukhda’ (first couplet) of the opening song. You want to hear it?
Amit Trivedi: Hold on a sec, there, Kumaar. Just let me click on my laptop…aaah. Now you can hear it, in tune, with words and music.
A song echoes in the room. “He is a star sona sona, S I R na hona hona, Iskee hype, iskee vibe, what a cool persona.”
All applaud.
Rohan: That inspires me to get into popping and robotics, dime stops, isolations, and tutting.
P&D: What the hell are you talking about?
Rohan: These are modern dance moves. Everybody will dance as if they have bodies made of rubber. Even the British policeman in uniform will dance.
P&D: Ok. Fine. But cut the jargon. Babu, how will you light-up and shoot the movie?
Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni: I feel we should go the whole hog. Zoom to infinity, infinity to zoom, Dutch angles, nadir shots, and point-of-view (POV) body mounts, Bird’s-Eye Overhead View, Body-Mounted and Object Angles, Snorricam, Shelf Cam, Whip Pan.
P&D: Hey, hey, hey! You shoot any which way you want, just cut the techno terminology. With such whole hog cinematography, we will need matching music and sounds, to go with it. Amit, are you game?
Amit Trivedi: Game on. You will get the music you want. It will be mind boggling. You just heard what the title track will sound like. Here’s a Hi-Ethanol Punjabi number, that is bursting with energy and gusto. (Plays a tune, with his own vocals).
P&D (In chorus): Eh gaana zaroor hit hovega.
Amit: Tuhada bahut shukriya, jee.
P&D: Now let’s get to the core about our film. The sound. We want our film to deliver a sound track that will blend with Gen Z, Gen Alpha and Gen Beta. This generation wants everything fast and loud. At what speed of sound can audiences comprehend the soundtrack and dialogue track of a normal theatrical release film?
Sound Department: Sound waves, in a standard theatre auditorium, travel at roughly 343 m/s, regardless of what is playing on screen. Dialogue tracks are edited to match natural human speech cognition, which works best at 2 to 2.5 words per second (or 120–150 words per minute) for clear understanding. Rapid-fire comedic banter, or heavy exposition, may push past 180 words per minute, which begins to challenge listener comprehension, without visual cues or subtitles.
P&D: What if we add sub-titles and comic strip blurbs? How fast can we go then?
SD: In that case, most adult audiences will be able to comfortably read text at 200 to 250 w.p.m. Trained readers, or fans of fast-paced media (like anime with subtitles), can easily process 300 to 400 w.p.m.
P&D: We will play sound at 401 w.p.m.
SD: But why?
P&D: It’s an experiment. We are making an experimental film.
SD: Well, what about the songs and background music?
P&D: Songs will be a bit slower, but the background music will be faster.
SD: How fast? How much faster than its original tempo?
P&D: You tell me.
SD: Technically speaking, 1.25x speed is considered a gentle rush and is easily understood. The brain registers the tempo change, but melody and individual instruments remain perfectly distinct. Then, at 1.5x speed, we reach the comfort ceiling, the maximum limit for complex orchestral scores. At this speed, the musical narrative is still recognisable, though emotional nuance is lost.
P&D: Go on.
SD: At 1.8x speed, we reach the absolute limit. This can be done only with simple, rhythmic, electronic, or percussion-heavy music. Finally, at 2.0x+ speed, we reach the breaking point. Staccato notes blur together, melodies distort, and the brain can no longer separate individual instruments.
P&D: Right. So we go with 2.0 speed.
SD: But Sir….
P&D: No buts here. You will do exactly as we say. Tera Bhai Star Hai will be really Over The Top.
All the others: Have you done the casting?
P&D: Raghav Juyal, Niki Walia, Barkha Singh, Vivan Bhatena, Parvathy Omanakuttan, Vikalp Mehta, Tina Desai, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Vineeth Kumar, Naser Al Azzeh, Dev Agrawal, Joseph Emms, Matt Houlihan, Jeffin Kunjumon and Martyn Spendlove. The interest they have shown in the film is unbelievable. We have asked them to practice rapid-fire dialogue delivery, which will be a unique feature of our movie.
All the others: Raghav Juyal? The king of slo-mo dancing? The guy who was seen in Kill, The Ba***ds of Bollywood and Gyaarah Gyaarah? But you just told us that our film will have everything in fast mo.
P&D: Not everything. Some scenes will be in normal speed. Some rom-motion and some emo-motion. We are thinking of using an old film song. Any TIPS?
Amit: TIPS.
P&D: What do you mean?
Amit: We will request Kumar Taurani, of TIPS Music, to let us use a popular duet from one of his films.
All the others: Good idea. But besides Raghav Juyal, what will be the film’s strength?
P&D: Niki Walia. She will speak ‘theth’ (original, authentic) Punjabi. And guess who will play Fatty, her husband? …..One hint: He is a KAPOOR.”
All the others: Ranbir! We will unbox the box-office.
P&D: Ranbir? You must be crazy! How can Ranbir play a bar-owner and book-maker? He is none other than …Sanjay Kapoor!
All the others: Wow! He goes with the title of the film, Bhai Tera Star Hai! Sanjay Kapoor ka bhai to sachmuch star hai! (Sanjay Kapoor’s brother, a reference to Anil Kapoor, who is a highly-regarded actor).
P&D: 17 years after the world coined the Acronym, we will show them what OTT really means. And we will get a star rating, for our re-discovery!
Rating: Star (1)*
