Rocket Singh - Salesman of the year

Oh well! Here I am, back with another post this weekend, which is kind of funny after my long period of estivation, but then there is logic for that. ;-)
Well, what has happened is that a group of us friends have taken initiative and have formalized a Synopsys Group for weekend leisure and the two activities we sincerely follow are playing Volleyball and watching a movie. And I kind of gave myself another commitment, to write about any movie I see in the Synopsys Movie Club as we call it. ;-)

So, for the movie I saw this weekend; here goes nothing...

Rocket Singh - Salesman of the Year

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Prem Chopra, Gauhar Khan, Manish Choudhary, D. Santosh, Mukesh Bhatt, Naveen Kaushik, Shazahn Padamsee

Director: Shimit Amin

Overall Rating: 6.5/10.0 (A good movie to watch, if there are no other plans)

The movie Rocket Singh, revolves around Harpreet Singh Bedi (Ranbir Kapoor), who is a happy-go-lucky Sardar. Just cleared his B.Com., with borderline marks, and having a futile year in study-life, Harpreet is still optimistic about life and dreams of becoming a great “Sales Man”, the job he thinks doesn’t need qualifications, but needs quick thinking and persistence.

So, armed with his confidence and enthusiasm, and of course, his credentials, he starts looking for an appropriate job, and finally lands at AYS, a firm, which sells computers and provides service-contracts for computer maintenance. However, once into the job, he realizes that the “ideals” that his Grandfather (Prem Chopra) had imbibed into him are non-existent and he sees around him the complete opposite. One reason why every Professional, who does a job, will like to see this movie, is that, this is probably the first movie, which very effectively captures and shows the day-to-day office politics, cut-throat competition and the bitching, that exists in office environment. Also, this is shown very brilliantly by excellent acting from the bosses Nitin (Naveen Kaushik) and Sunil Puri (Manish Choudhary), who want absolutely no-nonsense, very competitive and at times even rude.

Harpreet tries his hand at learning the “new” tricks-of-the-trade, which include things like filing wrong information, spying on the competitors, and using everything, from bribes to office politics in your favor for getting your deals and meeting the targets, but fails miserably, since the ideals imbibed into him, cannot be undone so easily. This leads to a mistake, leading to more aggressive targets for his co-workers and in the wake of anger, his colleagues not only make fun of Harpreet, but also keep throwing rockets (paper-planes) at him, and if this was not enough, he gets some “real” criticism from his superiors; which leads to dynamic change of events in Harpreet’s so far silent and straightforward life.

The plot has been well-managed by all the co-actors, and their acting is definitely worth mentioning. All the actors, D. Santosh as Giri, a computer expert, Gauhar Khan as Koena, the ambitious and talented receptionist and Mukesh Bhatt as Chhotelal the Peon live upto their characters. Newcomer Shazahn Padamsee adds a romantic twist to the tale, but her part of the act actually doesn’t have much, to judge her acting capability. However, Prem Chopra’s role as Harpreet’s GrandPa is as refreshing to watch as ever.

Final Verdict:

On the whole, the movie is pretty straightforward, and relatively dry as compared to what the trailers depicted. The one loss I had while going to see this movie is to go with a mindset of a comedy movie, and finding none in return. And yet, the film has some pretty catchy lines, which keeps the audience amazed, but they are too few. My personal favorite is the line which goes, “Risk to Spiderman ko bhi lena padta hein, mein to phir bhi Salesman hoon.” (Even Spiderman needs to take risks; I am just a salesman), and then it has the catchy background music, which goes “Pocket mein Rocket Hein… Rocket Singh”, which is the only lip-synching sound track in the movie.

Another thing the movie lacks is a decent sound track. On a personal note, I felt the story went too slow at times, making it almost a documentary on the lives of Sales-men, and that it could have been made more amusing. Rocket Singh may not fit everybody’s idea of having a good time at the movie, nevertheless, the message the movie sends is very good. If you don’t go to see the movie expecting a comedy flick, you’ll realize, the movie delivers a much needed wakeup call to our conscience.