Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani PART THE SECOND

Things I have done over the course of the past few days to avoid finishing Jaani Dushman for the sake of this ongoing review:

• cleaned my room
• did extra tasks for my job
• bathed four gerbils
• played computer games
• got my foot stuck in drying cement
• fell down the stairs

Finally I had to bribe myself with ice cream to get myself to sit down and finish this film. And then? For whatever reason, my laptop was spazzing out and wouldn't play the goshdarned DVD. Even my computer thinks this film is too bad for anyone to watch.

Normally, I really do enjoy a good bad movie; you can laugh at it, if not with it. But this... there is something to inherently wrong with Jaani Dushman that I really can't just check my brain at the door, sit back, and enjoy. The morality of this film is so incredibly skewed that it completely taints any mocking pleasure I might have derived from this movie. First of all, in what world is it considered flattery for someone to try and rape a girl? I am utterly flabbergasted by an early scene in the movie wherein forgiveness for attempted rape is bargained for with a joke. It sets the tone, it really does.

Next we have the fact that a whole bunch of characters meet dire ends - death or otherwise - throughout the course of the movie. Most of the characters have their butts handed to them by Manisha and her snakey-man boyfriend, who use cheap special effects in lieu of supernatural powers to grind their ax. I'm not sure whether those two are supposed to be heroes or villains; if their cause was justified, they'd more clearly be good guys, but despite having quasi-divine status, they have their facts wrong and are tormenting and killing innocent people. To me, that's completely pointless. I realize that that's kind of a standard setup for a lot of horror films, but... this is just a whole different kind of horrible, really.

I don't even know what most of the characters were there for, now that I think about it. Hey, I have an idea! a scriptwriter must have said. Let's insert every type of cliched Bollywood we can think of, without actually devoting any screentime to develop either the plots or the characters involved in them! Hoo-ray, now we can get that Swiss love song in here after all! I think my favorite parts of the whole movie were the advertisements that played before the movie actually started.

Stilted dialogue, overdone sentimentality, lackluster choreography, horrendous fight scenes, awful acting... I've been able to enjoy a movie in spite of (or because of) all these things. But Jaani Dushman is unique in that the most fun I derived from it was the pleasantly dizzy feeling I got after banging my head against the wall in utter frustration from this film. In the words immortalized by Zayed Khan in Main Hoon Na: AVOID, YAAR. Lest my suffering be rendered futile.

Oh, the things I do out of love for my sister. And Hello Brother! Indeed.