Projected as the first reality film revolving around an upcoming filmmaker and his friend circle boldly confessing about their sexual lives and undisclosed experiences, SABKI BAJEGI BAND has just got people talking, bitching and hitting over each other in its less than two hours of duration on a single location, and nothing else in the name of storyline or script to give you a clear idea.
Yes, the basic framework of the film does seem to be quite daring and interesting, touching controversial subjects ranging from incest, homosexuality, infidelity and wife-swapping to impotence, virginity and casting couch with reference to the modeling world. But the way they get presented with a confused narrative and unimpressive (rather crass) writing, the film fails to strike a chord with its target audience and just remains a courageous, experimental effort lacking any focused vision.
Actually the biggest mistake the director makes here is to begin the film with a moving (handheld) camera shooting many extreme close-ups and then continuing with the same throughout, badly annoying the viewer. Secondly despite being a bold film about many hidden revelations made, SBB never gets into the 'visual' gear and mostly remains in the 'talking' mode only denying the expected entertainment factor to the eager viewer. As a result, after a point one completely gets out of sync with its supposedly brave characters and their poor acts. Moreover the director and its writing team remain utterly confused that whether it has to be a social emotional drama or a sex-comedy featuring many shocking one liners.
Talking about its art-direction, the filmy slides and the house in it (with a wide range of Hindi film posters displayed all over) looks much more experimental than the film itself and then the host with his constant grins turns out to be the most irritating character of them all adding into the uninteresting developments. Music as well as 'Background Score' fails to make any contributing impact to its various sequences and so do the performances that remain amateur to below average including the one by the known Swara Bhaskar.
Nevertheless there still remains one positive feature in SABKI BAJEGI BAND and that's the way it shamelessly exposes the sick double standards of our society raising many straight forward, valid questions. And believe me these are the questions that are tough enough to deal with, moving into those dark, dirty closets of every man & woman's life, they don't really prefer to talk about.
For instance, "How many youngsters would start thinking if there is an indecent offer made to them, along with a major chance in the modeling/film world and a big amount of money too, given as their professional remuneration?" Or "Why its considered to be 'cool' if a young boy has a flirting nature but the same standard doesn't apply to a beautiful girl if she chooses to interact in a similar manner?" Or "Why a wife is supposed to be 'understanding' if she comes to know about her husband's one night stand with another women but not the husband, who is considered justified asking for a divorce right away for the very similar reason?"
In all, as the friends in the film continue making fresh acquisitions and confessions shocking each other like never before, the viewer simply feels like saying "Please stop it", since no-one wishes to even think about these ugly topics for their own individual reasons. And that's where an old, thoughtful saying comes straight to your mind that "Ignorance is Bliss".
