Whoz ugly and whoz pagli?

‘Yeh Bambai hai. Yahan par sabke paas script hai. Doodhwale se leker Bhansali tak’. This is a line that a peon rudely tells Ranvir Shorey when he goes to sell his girlfriend’s script to a production house. But, obviously the director Sachin Kamalakar when making this film didn’t have a script because ‘Ugly aur Pagli’ is a poor & ugly copy of Korean classic ‘My Sassy Girl’ which was adapted from a young man’s true-life experiences posted on the Internet.

Sachin Kamalakar should have kept in mind that mere copying a film does not work; the basic problem is that the screenplay rewritten to Indian conditions is patently absurd and mind-scrambling. Incidentally, quiet a few scenes from ‘My Sassy Girl’ were earlier lifted in Yashraj’s mind-numbing ‘Neal N Nikki’.

Since the film is a romantic comedy, the director tries very very hard to make the movie differently funny, but the gags fall flat, the humour has few, very few clever one liners!

Individual performances are quite good. To a large extent in the film Mallika Sherawat rocks as the domineering, sharp-tongued woman until she starts crying and Ranvir Shorey polishes his loser act to perfection and manages to rise over the script on most occasions. Cameos by Bharati Achrekar and Sushmita Mukherjee are fun. And I wish that Zeenat Aman hadn't been wasted in a one scene appearance!

Watch the original Korean classic, anyday. Its one of my all time favourite romantic comedies.