Few weeks back we had "Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge" talking about an unwanted guest in a comical manner inclined more towards the family audiences. And this week we have "Apartment", which has a different kind of invited paying guest, who in just a few days turns out to be cunning, intruding and suspicious. The plot seems to be an interesting base for a good thriller. But the fact that it is all once again copied from a Hollywood movie degrades the project to much lower heights despite of a fine performance by Neetu Chandra.
In other words, Bollywood's fascination of getting inspired from Hollywood Flicks continues till date with "Apartment". Director Jagmohan Mundhra's latest offering is an ordinary rip-off from "Single White Female" (1992) with minor changes incorporated to suit the Indian audiences. I am not aware of that whether it's an official remake of the Original or not but after the recent example of "Right Ya Wrong" I seriously doubt on that.
The writers fearlessly take almost all their ingredients for their story from the Original. For instance, the boyfriend getting caught with another girl and then being kicked out of the house, the ad in the newspapers for a paying guest, the entry of a shy girl as the new guest, she looking after the house and cooking for the land lady, her transformation into a modern girl, a good sympathetic neighbor there to help, the mysterious death of a pet, the schizophrenia angle in the story, the hidden past of the girl and many more sub plots are exactly the same as there in "Single White Female". Even the publicity poster of Apartment is quite similar to that of its Original as shown in the pictures.
Chek out at : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105414/
At one end, the Industry keeps crying out that there is an acute shortage of writers and new scripts to make movies on and at the other, they just skip giving chance to any deserving candidates and take the simplest path of making a project based on another Hit film from the West. That's the kind of fake creative world we are living in and that's the reason why no one dares to consider a career of a script writer in our part of the world.
Anyway, as a movie "Apartment" proves to be a very lazy thriller which lacks the much needed surprising punches at the right places. It starts and ends on the same pace and never picks up even after the real identity of the girl is exposed. Actually, the most exciting part of a story based on schizophrenia has to be the dark past of its victim. But here the director takes you into the past of Neetu Chandra in the second half and comes back easily with no shocking happenings or secrets to be revealed to the viewers. This particular part remains the weakest sequence of the movie in absence of any emotional depth and compassion. After the first hour, the plot becomes very predictable and one keeps waiting for something surprising to unfold till the climax but nothing happens of that sort on the screen. And the movie finishes off on a tiring note, just like many other below average inspired products served to us in the past.
Out of the entire cast, only Neetu Chandra is able to deliver a fairly good performance where she tries to convey a lot through her expressive eyes. But still, she over-reacts in some scenes and also her reasons for becoming a victim child remain unclear & unmoving. Tanushree is natural in her revealing outfits but she seriously needs to look after her weight. Rohit as usual is over energetic and doesn't have much to as per the script but Anupam Kher is calm and cool in his short role of a film lyricist.
Technically the film is pretty routine, with not so great production values and simple camera-work. Although the director could have done without any songs in the movie, still he ropes in Bappa Lahiri to give him all the unwanted tracks which simply fail to impress from any angle.
On the whole, there are far better thrillers still remaining to be watched from the World Cinema and therefore this lousy copied Apartment should be better left empty. So, unless you feel an urgent need to watch it, just save your money for its DVD and give it a miss.
