Zero is a box of assorted chocolates
Babita Kumari storms out of her bathtub. The movie star is late for a public appearance and has decided to go as is, alarming her handler who frantically interjects, asking about clothes, hair and makeup. She’s in a tee and boxer shorts, wears her hair down, and declares herself so fair she doesn’t need to care about makeup. The heroine is a hot mess, but played by Katrina Kaif, there’s the heft of honesty it all. India would let a fair-skinned woman get away with murder — or lipsticklessness. Zero is a film about preconceived notions.
One of Babita’s biggest fans is Bauua Singh, a man from Meerut who showers the movie screen with banknotes and yells, “Bring on all three of your Khans, here I stand meri jaan.” Shah Rukh Khan — one of the three Khans Bauua challenges — plays this coarse, cocksure dwarf. Singh is defined by his defiance.
His whole approach is devil-may-care because he believes God has already done his worst. Directed by Aanand L Rai, Zero is for those who don’t fit in. It is a strange film, one that lets Khan turn on his trademark swoons but also takes him to unexpected places. Zero becomes odder and odder as it goes along, and while the end is impossible to take seriously, the entire film is a fable.
Like many of us, Singh was bred on the movies. In one scene, where Singh is all but bursting at the seams to break into dance, he barks for a Shammi or Rishi number, songs the DJ doesn’t have.
The ballroom waits. His body wriggles with anticipation, for he cannot possibly make a grand romantic gesture without song. His final instruction to the DJ is plaintive: play any damn Kapoor song. It’ll work. And it does.
Anushka Sharma plays a NASA scientist named Aafia Yusufzai Bhinder, and she can’t help marvel at this impudent man.
His ace card with the scientist is his lack of pity for her cerebral palsy. To Bauua, she’s a girl who didn’t give him the time of day, which astonishes him, since everyone stares at the dwarf.
To her, he marks a rude change from the overcompensating politeness she faces. She gets drunk on him. Even the name Bauua, from her struggling mouth, sounds like a burp.
The first half of Zero is flatout fantastic, an unabashed charm offensive from Rai, Khan and the film’s writer Himanshu Sharma.
The dialogue crackles with spontaneity and inventiveness. Singh is routinely whipped by his father (a superbly grumpy Tigmanshu Dhulia) and when this threat is made with the family lying under the stars, Singh asks if his father now wears a belt with his boxers or if he intends to whip him with the naada.
As the film gets fanciful, the seams start to show. Rai is aiming high, but the film threatens to become yet another romanticisation of an obsessive leading man who refuses to take no for an answer. The wit dries up as the drama is heightened. The film needed to go entirely bonkers; the melodrama robs Zero of its essential lightness.
Sharma is solid, even though her speech patterns get a bit inconsistent. Kaif plays an intensely self-aware part — a lovelorn, cheatedupon superstar — and has fun giving this vainglorious character a serrated edge.
Shah Rukh Khan measures up. The visual effects lack continuity and he looks more like a dwarf in some scenes than in others, but the actor glosses this over with a dominating performance and tremendous energy. Bauua Singh is a flawed character with irresistible pluck, and Khan is in top form. Plus, he remains the best lover in the business.
He might be wearing a nutty Dhoom 3 costume, he might have hair like Razzaq Khan, he might speak in fractured English. Still that charm is hard to deny, and, as he boasts in the film, those dimples aren’t store-bought. Romantics across the country are safe no matter how limited the DJ’S repertoire. Any Shah Rukh song will do.