Producer: Suneel Darshan
Director: Suneel Darshan
Cast: Bobby Deol, Upen Patel, Celina Jaitley, Kangana Ranaut
Music: Himesh Reshammiya
 
Film: 'Shaka Laka Boom Boom'; Cast: Bobby Deol, Upen Patel, Kangana Ranaut, Celina Jaitley; Director: Suneel Darshan; Rating: *

Strange things happen in this tale of two musicians, who are absolute megalomaniacs, and their ego clashes.

When Kangana, playing a ping-pong ball to the two, decides to succumb to the senior musician's sexual advances, she decides to nearly strip right there in the hallway with the valet looking down at his feet. We second the valet's emotion.

You watch this laugh triangle with a deep sense of embarrassment and regret. This could have been the comprehensive film about the competitiveness that destroys the very core of creativity.

Bobby is the senior musician in 'Shaka Laka Boom Boom' who gets jealous of the smug and cocky new kid on the block played by Upen Patel.

The whole ego tussle between the junior and senior musicians echoes the rivalry between Antonio Salieri and Amadeus Mozart. The bits and pieces of life's less spoken drama are turned into a cacophonic celebration of envy and pride, decorated in colours so garish they could make you blind.

And you could go deaf with all the noise that Himesh Reshammiya, Viju Shah (background score) and writer Anurag Kashyap hurl at us.

Surprisingly for a film so steeped in high-drama, there's little motivation for the characters. The crucial jealousy and rivalry between the two musicians is dealt within a few lengthy sequences that are written in the style of random episodes from long-running soap operas.

Bobby conveys angst in some of the scenes. But most of the time he's grappling for a graph.

Upen Patel has a strongly written role, but little to match his embarrassingly high confidence level. He messes up his role with a double dose of self-confidence.

Kangana Ranaut, who was so watchable in her earlier films, looks shockingly lost and washed-out here. Wrong make-up, wrong motivations and wrong film lady!

Celina Jaitley, playing a journalist who sleeps with anyone she writes about, appears almost brain dead.