Reviewspreviews
One Two Ka One
There are many reasons why One Two Ka One should have been avoided. However, at the time of purchasing the ticket, none occurred to me. Impressed by reports that Pakistani cinema is finally moving in the right direction, I decided to go to the cinema playing this particular film, but was greeted by a nearly empty hall with the fare indicating why it wasn’t full.
One Two Ka One is music director Ronaq Ali’s maiden attempt, but manages to dangle somewhere midway between the disastrous and the fruitful. Inspired by the works of Manmohan Desai and David Dhawan, it is as silly an attempt at the tried and tested ‘lost and found’ formula, but unlike the Indian geniuses who steered even the most idiotic of stories to safety with their imaginative direction, Ronaq Ali’s inability to handle well-crafted characters results in this situational comedy going down the drain.
“One Two Ka One: A Romantic Comedy with a Twist” as it is dubbed, begins with the birth of twins in two rich families (fathers played by Rashid Mahmood and Irfan Khoosat). While still at the hospital, Irfan Khoosat removes the name tags from his twins’ feet because he thinks they are making them uncomfortable. As a result, he gets the three infants mixed up, despite two of them being identical twins. Rashid Mahmood then agrees to have the twins’ DNA test conducted.
In another twist, Irfan’s wife’s brother, who is taking the two babies to Lahore for the DNA test suffers an accident and loses his memory as well as the twins.
The two kids grow up in separate environments with one becoming a mystery-loving coward (Zain) and the other ending up as a street-smart junkie (Faraz). Zain leaves Islamabad because a mafioso is on his trail while Faraz plays a modern-day Robin Hood, helping the suppressed and terrorising the oppressors in Lahore, where incidentally Zain has moved to as well.
They fall in love with two ladies (Reema and Saima) who can’t differentiate between them and neither can their friends, brothers or foes, creating comical situations that have been tried so many times that they fail to amuse anymore. Ronaq Ali’s unimaginative direction becomes evident right at the beginning of the film. To add insult to injury, Irfan Khoosat’s character is shown carrying a gun on him to shoot his wife in case she gives birth to a daughter!
Musicians Ronaq Ali-Sajid Ali, with Mujhe Chand Chahiye and Daku to their credit, fail to produce any worthy songs in One Two Ka One. Most of the songs are set against a fantasy background for reasons unknown, although a couple of them do happen in real life. Not a single song can be called worth-listening. It is surprising that despite being a musician, Ronaq Ali ventured into comedy which is not everyone’s forte. He could have used his musical sense and come up with a romantic musical like Sargam which utilised Adnan Sami as both a musician and a lead actor.
But it would have taken more than a double-role from Moammer Rana to make this film succeed. He holds the entire film together with brilliant acting. Reema and Saima, who play Khushi and Zaara respectively, look older than Moammer throughout the film. Reema adds some new English words to the vocabulary (swit for sweet, bizi for busy and markeet for market), while a heavy-set Saima fails to look glamorous.
Although the characterisation of the roles is the strong point of the film, the handling isn’t. All entries, except the leading ladies’, begin knees-down and an accomplished director would have tried his best to make an impact with a character’s entry. As for the actors, the horrific Don, played excellently by Amanullah, is blind. The sidekicks kick in well with Naseem Vicky playing Faraz’s brother with a hearing problem while Easy remains calm and cool even in the most tense situations. Seasoned actors Masood Akhtar and Rashid Mahmood play Momey’s parents while Irfan Khoosat is at his idiotic best — chirping one liners that are usually more commended on stage. The rest of the cast comprise the cream of Lahori theatre who manage to chip in with a useful scene or two but don’t impress as a whole.
One Two Ka One is way better than many films produced during the last decade, but seems more like an ill-conceived theatre play rather than a full-fledged feature film. It was not as amateurish as last year’s Tere Bin Jiya Na Jaye nor as goofy as Pehla Pehla Pyar, but an accomplished director could have made this film a gem in its own right.—Omair Alavi
