Prince

All the glitz and razzmatazz of Bond films minus the panache to carry it off.

Vivek Oberoi is Prince, a cat burglar who succeeds in pulling off the most staggering diamond robbery. The morning after, he wakes up with a devil of a hangover and no memory. A chip in his head has erased it all. The poor man can’t remember who his girlfriend is.

Before he can decide whether this is good news or bad news, three young ladies turn up to fill the void, each one saying she is Maya. Prince decides that it is better to be safe than sorry, and plays the field—Sen, Singh and Shields—until he discovers that his memory chip has been slipped inside an antique coin. But he has been having such a ball without the encumbrance of recollection, he doesn’t let any of this on, at least not to the audience.

The girls are part of the art direction of the film. They are placed at strategic positions, in costumes that are designed to highlight their best assets; and with utter and absolute objectivity it may be stated, let there be no argument about this, Aruna Shields is the contest winner.

The stunts and special effects are the other attractions in the film, and Oberoi puts himself through the entire gamut—a leap from a skyscraper with a parachute that opens at the last moment being the high point. Prince has all the 007 razzmatazz, the girls and the guns, but without any of the panache of the Bond films.

As for the acting in Prince, it is uniformly bad. Oberoi decides that since his character has lost his memory, the safest bet is to walk around with a ‘Who am I? Where am I?’ expression through the film. The rest of the cast picks up on this cue, and the gravedigger look is the theme of the party.

The filmmaker must live in hope and prayer that the speed of the action and volume of the background score will sandpaper all imperfections in acting and dialogue. It doesn’t, of course, and what we have in the end is an impossible and unwatchable movie.

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Ajit Duara