The 'Ready' Review

What a painful, bunkum, morally bankrupt movie this is. How does one possibly laugh when one chokes back vomit? Ready is a sort of a film that justifies traveling back in time to pre-emptively kill Salim Khan. The whole thing feels as if director Anees Bazmee threw film clips on the floor and strung them together haphazardly. 

The fact that a film like Ready got made raises some important questions – like why ‘masala entertaining’ stars like Salman Khan seem to be no more discriminating when picking scripts than zoo monkeys are when they eat their own stool? Are they that desperate to see themselves on the big screen? What kind of producer can live with himself after spending money to make a film in which kids take off their chaddis and pee on people’s faces? Do these producers and actors have any shame or integrity whatsoever?

If Ready is any indication, clearly they do not. We’re treated with an aimless parade of puerile ploys for Salman to launch into unwatchably histrionic slapstick buffoonery, as Asin nancies her way through a lobotomized plot about a runaway bride staying at a stranger’s place to escape her goonda fiancé. I mean, is it all about not going to the cops? This woman gets off a flight in a bridal costume and moves into a random dude’s home, and pretends to be his fiancé. One of those zoo monkeys could come up with a more intelligent script than this – that too by just by doodling on the walls of his cage with that aforementioned stuff he'd been eating off the floor.

Bazmee, as he generally does with all his films, presents a vision of comedy defined by forgetful characters, potty jokes, loud women, porn star-ready item numbers, and warring clans gripped by an irresistible, insatiable urge to dominate, humiliate and emasculate each other and the audience. Every third joke in Salman’s latest is self-referential, from naming his own films to mouthing the punchlines of dozens of advertisements. And almost every frame oozes of schlock, from 360 degree flips, to noisy villains, to horrendous CGI shots for the sake of comedy, to a character mistaking Asin’s kindness for sluttiness. There are countless other such migraine-inducing bits scattered throughout but mentioning any more of them would only be a stretch. The majority of the film is all fart jokes and no-brow gags aimed at the mentality of 11-year-old Sallu fans.

The supporting characters make absolutely no sense, the talented Akhilendra Mishra is reduced to an annoying, gelatinous loudmouth; Puneet Issar is faintly unsympathetic with anime-character hair while Mahesh Manjrekar is grating to both the eye and the ear. The less said about poor Sharat Saxena the better.

Ready is nothing but a morally numbing assembly-line Z-grade Bollywood product, surpassing even the likes of the soul-gangbanging ‘Thank You’. Bazmee doesn't even try to give the movie continuity (Sallu takes off his shirt in one scene and is completely clothed in the next) or an ounce of common sense (why is no one looking for the missing Asin?) In fact, he does little but point the camera at Salman while he does his schtick, which only amounts to bumbling self mimicry without any hint of the star’s own absurdist magnetism.  

Ready is an unkempt clearinghouse for cheap, thoroughly laugh-free scenes. For those who regard that as a recommendation, I have two words - grow up.