Getting corny with ‘Mr Joe B Carvalho’

Don’t be dissuaded by the 007-style poster of a gun-toting bikini-clad hottie against a suave vest-wearing hero. Notice the colourful lollipop in his hand or her flip-flops instead. Mr Joe B Carvalho, which releases on Thursday in the UAE, is no Bond-style slick flick but a mad-cap story of a bumbling detective a la Inspector Jacques Clouseau of Pink Panther fame, who becomes the victim of mistaken identity.

And hopefully that’s where the similarities end.

Joe B Carvalho, when read in Hindi translates to “you can make me do anything”, is played by Arshad Warsi, who has only recently graduated to ‘complicated’ cases from finding the cable TV-stealing neighbours to looking for a young woman who elopes with an ageing servant. His search takes him to the hotel room of Carlos, a vicious villain with a personality disorder, played by Jaaved Jaffrey. Here he also comes face to face with an ex-flame, Inspector Shantipriya (Soha Ali Khan), who believes him to be Carlos.

“People should go watch the film with an open mind,” director Samir Tiwari told tabloid!. “This is not a film with a definite plot. It’s a pretty simple, corny plot. There’s no one in the film who’s got an iota of intelligence. But that’s the fun because they are all doing their job with utmost sincerity and total belief in the script, and in a completely inane situation. In fact one of the taglines to the movie is ‘Leave your brain at home. We’ve done the same’. That’s basically the film. It is a brainless story of a brainless character on a rollercoaster ride”.

“It’s a damn cute film,” said Warsi, who is also responsible for the title of the film. “Rocky Mera Naam [My name is Rocky] seemed too cool a title for this simple guy. He’s such a mama’s boy. I had registered Joe B Carvalho under my company a long time back. I go to Goa all the time and stay at the Taj. And there is this gentleman working there whose name is Mr Carvalho. One day I was joking around and said I hope your name is not Joe B Carvalho and he said yes his name was ‘Joe’,” laughed Warsi.

“We had the name entirely due to Arshad’s mad sense of humour. He should have been a stand-up comedian,” said Tiwari, who has an advertising background. Mr Joe B Carvalho is his first foray into the world of feature films.

Both the actor and director claim Joe B Carvalho is a clean, comic entertainer that one can watch with children, parents, grandparents and in-laws.

“Last few years we’ve seen even normal comedies loaded with sexual jokes that get cringe-worthy. We wanted to bring back clean comedy of the Hrishikesh Mukherjee genre, stuff like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron,” explained Tiwari. “Arshad wanted to make one which he can watch with his kids. There were incidents in the film but we’ve toned them down”.

But the fun seems to have spilled from the screen on to the sets.

“Making the movie was a laughathon,” laughed Tiwari. “We were working on a very tight budget and there were several funny situations on the sets. There’s one scene where Arshad was driving in the Ghats and a rabbit randomly comes in front of the car while shooting and Arshad braked. We retained it and created a gag around it. Another time Kunal Khemu was on the sets and Arshad suggested we include him in a scene and he gladly did it. We had a blast”.

“When you are doing a comedy like this, the pain is keeping a straight face and ignoring the stupidity you are doing,” said Warsi, who is known for award-winning comic performances such as Circuit from Munnabhai MBBS and Lage Raho Munnabhai, and Babban from Ishqiya. “You have to do it with full belief. And the moment Samir would say ‘cut’ Soha and I would be in splits because then we were the audience, not the players. The film is very intelligent and very funny”.

Well that’s something we’d need to see. Khan, who plays Shantipriya the angry young cop, feels the same.

“I hope the film is just as much fun. If not it will be sad because we will not be able to do another one. And we want to do another one because it was so much fun,” she said.

The role of Shantipriya was tailor-made for Khan, said Tiwari.

“Soha is extremely good with intense work. She’s always done intense stuff. This role required Soha to be very angry,” said Tiwari. “Yet the whole visual is inherently funny. Imagine this petite little thing that is so tough she beats up these big goons”.

“Samir and Bholaram [Malviya, the producer of the film] came home and while they were narrating the script I was wondering how they had imagined me in the role,” laughed Khan. “I was like ‘Really, you thought of me for that role?’ There’s a cabaret sequence and all sorts of attempts at seduction happening. I’ve done very demure kind of roles till now so I was excited about this role because I’m not a very demure person.

“What’s wonderful about the film is it may be called Mr Joe B Carvalho but I’m doing everything in the film that traditionally the hero does. I’m doing the fighting, I’m doing the dancing, I’m doing the comedy, I’m running after the bad guys. So there’s a lot of meat in the role. I wasn’t just supposed to look glamorous. If it was that, I probably would have said no. As it is Samir and Arshad would keep making fun that I have biceps and triceps so in fact I was trying to tone it down rather than muscle it up. It was both a meaty role as well as slightly different. I think it’s always nice when people sit up and take notice of you. I feel every actor fights against being typecast to some extent”.

Incidentally, the film will face a big opposition in India with the cult film Sholay releasing in 3D the same day.

“Yes, that’s another big worry because what do you do with Sholay?,” said Tiwari. “Right now, the butterflies in my stomach have turned into sharks and alligators. I wake up at night and break out in a cold sweat. Last time I felt like this was when I was in standard 10 and 12. How do you fight Mr Bachchan and Dharmendra and Hema Malini and Jaya Bhaduri — and all together? But we are huge fans of Sholay and hope it works out for both of us”.

*Mr Joe B Carvalho releases in the UAE on January 2.

DID YOU KNOW?

- Mr Joe B Carvalho was shot in all of 58 days. Initially set in Goa, it was moved to Bengaluru because all production support in Goa was caught up with Chennai Express. Shooting also took place in Mumbai and Coorg in Karnataka, too.

- Jaaved Jaffrey plays the character Carlos who has multiple personality disorder. He’s so dangerous that no one can survive him. There’s a running gag in the film that whoever says his name dies. He’s so much bad luck that it’s bad luck seven times over.

- The film happened because Arshad Warsi and Samir Tiwari planned to do a dark thriller, which has been scripted by Tiwari. But it’s difficult to imagine a first time director with Warsi in anything but a comedy, they decided to do Mr Joe B Carvalho.