Subhash K Jha speaks about Rama Rama Kya Hai Drama 
By Subhash K. Jha, February 2, 2008 - 11:55 IST
You know that feeling at molar surgery. Or when your car meets a head-on collision on a dark murky road? You meet that dreaded feeling of disgusted disbelief as you sit through this piece of putrid tripe masquerading as mirth and camouflaged as comedy. At the end of his dreadfully droll drama you look around and ask, 'Why me?'
Whoever thought the script, or the toilet paper on which the garbage must have been spewed, would ever turn out funny has to have his brain surrendered to the institute of archival preservation. Cretinous and seriously maladjusted Rama Rama Kya Hai Drama is that film which could be a serious contender for the trophy of the worst comedy ever made in India. The lines that the two married couples Rajpal-Neha and Aashish-Amrita throw at one another in the bedroom and kitchen make you question the institution of love and marriage. They also make you question the morality and politics of sanity.
The plot is intensely anti-marriage. Perhaps the director or writer doesn't believe in marriage. But does he believes in cinema? The awry proceedings try hard to convince us that there are no rules governing the genre of comedy. Sure, but show us at least one genuine moment of humor in this homage to bilge. Rajpal Yadav playing a man acutely unhappy with his wife runs around on a fantasy binge, imagining other people's wives and girlfriends to be his wife. Aashish Chowdhary, poor guy, looks seriously constipated while Amrita Arora (playing a hi-fi harridan) shrieks at him for imagined trespasses. All this helter-skelter chaos of comedy would have been mildly amusing if the director had cared to even borrow a chapter or two from the protocol of comedy.
Director Chandrakant (heavens help his definition of hilarity) seems inspired by BR Chopra's sex comedy Pati Patni Aur Woh. We even get a reference to that lovable and naughty comedy slipped into the domain of Rajpal's domesticity on a television screen.
Regrettably, the director has neither the sense nor the sensitivity to bring that sparkle which makes a sex comedy a beehive of chortles. The buzz, if any, is in the screenwriter's head as he puts together episodes from badly written stand-up comic acts on marriage. While Rajpal Yadav's habitual hilarity fails to carry the show, a talented actor like Anupam Kher is reduced to a parodic prop in this ode to amused anarchy as seen through the eyes of a director who has probably never known the difference between gags and genuine comedy.
Technically as shoddy as its gets the camerawork and the sets remind us of a washed-out village that has been plundered by a particularly uncontrollable wild boar. Sorry, big bore. This won't do.
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