Of cinematic mediocrity

A coupla weeks back, I decided to go for a movie with a bunch of friends from college. Initially there was only me and my roommate. But we figured we could get some more people to come along. The final list came to something like 14 people.
We had initially planned to watch Despicable Me. Or even Dinner for Schmucks. And I had to go home after, so I was carrying my laptop. Big mistake, in retrospect.

Once we stepped off the metro at the Janak Puri West metro station (this is where the nearest cinema hall to our college, Satyam Janak Puri, is located), half the people stopped to try out chuski (most of them being Southerners, chuski generated rather a lot of interest in them), half wanted to go ahead for the movie as soon as possible, and another half went to the ATM to get money. Oh wait...that doesn't add up. Aah well.

To compound everything, it started pouring. I could barely make out the hall in the distance. We finally reached it, after running through the rain and getting completely drenched, and tried to duck under the awning. But being a Saturday afternoon, the theatre was so crowded with people trying to get tickets we could barely even do that.

It turned out that half the Hollywood movies currently in theatres weren't even playing there. And the ones that were did not have any afternoon shows. I was even willing to watch "Grown Ups." Going by its Tomatometer rating (10%), it was bound to be crap. But at least we could get a few laughs out of it. Or The Expendables (39%), simply for the action sequences. But thanks to the SUCKY hall and its SUCKIER schedule, we had to settle for Bollywood. There was a show for Aisha but most of the people with us had already seen that last weekend. So we settled for......Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai.

One of us had already seen it. She wanted to kill herself. And after the movie, so did I.

Then there was the laptop fiasco. They suggested leaving it with the proprietors, for want of a better word, of the adjacent "Juice Shop." You know, one of those shady stalls that for some reason can be found all over Delhi, where the fat guy sitting out front orders the stick-thin guy who actually does all the work to grab a coupla fruits, stick them in a grinder and make the juice right in front of you, while all he does is take the money and if you're lucky, give you your change back, with a look that plainly berates you, to say the least, for having the balls to demand this complex service of them while they would be completely satisfied sitting around in their shop doing nothing all day. They must have a training school for that look. And I was supposed to leave my precious laptop with them. Yeah, right.

Finally one of the senior clerks relented and lemme put it in his office, but not without making me turn it on and checking if there was any weird stuff in there. Though why he did that beats me, it's not like I was taking it inside the hall. Finally he told me, albeit begrudgingly, "Theek hai madam, isse main apne office mein rakh loonga (Fine ma'am, I'll put it in my office)." I was too grumpy and soaking wet to be grateful.

As regards the movie itself, I have never seen so much average-ness in a movie before. Plot: average. Check. Acting: average. Check. Directing: average. Check. Music: average. Check.

Most traumatic experience I've had in a long time. Do me a favor. Don't go watch it. Even if you're bored to death.