OM SHAH-RUKH OM and SNOOREWARIYA

This blog has always been about posting anything randomly interesting. As the head-line and tag-line says, this page is just about being a comma in our hectic lives, a pause before we get back to the rat race. Nothing profound… (not that you’d know it with some of the topics).

Anyway the point is that it is not ONLY about me and my views (though that too does sometimes seem like the case). I just try to be a medium for interesting (hopefully) bits of random articles.

If anyone of you follow news from Bollywood (and in this case even if you don’t) then you must have been swamped recently with the over hype of Saawariya and Om Shanti Om in the media. I haven’t managed to watch Saawariya as yet so I can't personally compare the two.

Shyam Upadhyay, a very good friend of mine from College and a cine-buff & writer himself however sent me his views on them. With his permission (as I don’t want to be sued for plagiarism) I am reprinting his email here with my own inputs marked in red.

Enjoy and if any of you have other views on them then do feel free to write in to me at vishalsubba@hotmail.com . We will try and include your views too.

Ciao & Enjoy.

On Saawariya…..

“I have been very cagey about SL Bhansali and his grandeur, opulence what have you. The last film I liked from him was Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam- it had a soul - everything after that was mere perfection in execution- no soul. I walked into Sawariya with a lot of trepidation expecting to be assaulted by perfection, more perfection, rich colors, la-la land if you will. I did get all of that for sure- but to be fair to Bhansali- his opulence this time around was warranted. It is a dream-like setting for almost a fable of unrequited love. To me the beauty in the settings cancelled out the fundamental sadness of the story- and that is always a good thing. It did not happen with Black for me- it did with Sawariya….I actually liked the movie. The 2 star kids- are clearly better than lots of the star kid debuts we have seen in a long time….Ranbir has a boyish charm that I liked and Sonam has wonderfully expressive eyes. Do they act well?? Its too early to judge….but it did not feel like they will turn out very badly in the long run….Sonam though can do a little better by giggling lesser. Zohra Sehgal was an absolute delight…there are moments in the film that stand out- the scene when they meet for the first time; jump around water puddles and talk inane stuff, the last sequence when Ranbir walks away, Zohra’s singing, the Mughal- e- Azam encounter….it does not compare to the magic of HDCC; but this was definitely a better effort. The film is almost poetic- but is uneven as one of the reviewers put it so well. Salman Khan was a total let down- and amidst all the perfection – he could have done with a shave and lesser facial hair in his brief appearances. Rani in the role of the narrator was adequate. The music for such films needs to be memorable- and in my mind except for the title song everything else was very pedestrian and that is my big grouse with Sawariya……

I will write about Saawariya soon but even before I have watched it I am getting pissed off at SLB for acting like a petulant child and lashing out at all critics for having an ulterior motive. Khalid Mohammed (a flop director of movies like Tezheeb and Silsilay (not Silsila) who now writes 'personally motivated' reviews for the Hindustan Times in puns which he thinks are fun.) and Taran Adarsh (a wannabe intellectual writer who reviews for IndiaFM and who incidentally was deported from Dubai 2 yrs back during one of the Award ceremonies for trying to ‘rub himself against’ a Filipino maid in his hotel) are critics who are not worth taking seriously or even paying attention to but when almost every other critic (even respected ones like Raja Sen) slams your movie then it does help to turn inwards and analyze if something did go wrong. Instead SLB is so shrouded in his self perpetuated aura of perfection that he cannot stomach anyone else challenging it. Grow up already.

Om Shanti Om…….

The tribute to the 70s era seems more like an MTV spoof….I was not born during the Rajesh Khanna period- but I cant remember people wearing sideburns and garish clothes so uniformly in films from that era. Yes- the stars did- but not everyone else. Farah Khan has her own sensibilities- and she pulls off Round 1, pre intermission with a lot of panache- the jokes, the styling, tributes to some of our stars et al. My problem really started with Round II which is post interval- where the film looses its semblance of being a spoof and takes on a Subhash Ghai kind of feel. If you watch closely- Mr Ghai always made films that progressively got terrible after intermission. While Farah may want to believe that this is very much in line with her tribute approach with OSO- my sense is that she is plagued with the same problem as Mr Ghai. Deepika was eye candy- very confident for her first film- but so were the star kids in Sawariya. Quite honestly- I don’t know what to make of SRK- he was good in Chak De- here he was who he is – SRK the star- he looked so comfortable in the second half because it was probably him……and you know I have always had a problem with that. Shreyas as always was consistent. The music of OSO though has the right mood and every song does justice to the plot.
Overall though- OSO did not work for me. If the second half carried on in the same vein- maybe it would have- the first true Hindi cinema spoof- alas it did not. Khalid Mohammed saying Arjun Rampal was first rate as the devious villain….was a rude joke on our sensibilities. For a non-starter like Arjun; even a tolerable performance seems to warrant a first rate review.

For me OSO was just about average. There are just 3 reasons to watch OSO.

1. Subash Ghai in an (unintentionally) hilarious cameo as himself, where the poor man seems to be oblivious to the fact that he is being mocked not celebrated.

2) SRK in a side splitting scene, dressed as a south Indian cowboy, Quick Gun Murugan, spouting “Mind It I Say” and fighting a stuffed tiger doll even as he puns every possible pun on the word pussy & cat.

3. Akshay Kumar as himself in an imagined future flick called Return to Khiladi firing a gun from and with (there is no other way that trigger could have been squeezed) his genitals.

Over to you readers now.

To read Raja Sen’s incisive review of OSO click here http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/nov/09oso.htm
To read Raja Sen’s brilliant review of Saawariya click here http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/nov/08saawariya.htm
To read Taran Adarsh’s hyper-bole review of OSO click here http://www.indiafm.com/movies/review/12950/index.html
To read Taran Adarsh’s confused review of Saawariya click here http://www.indiafm.com/movies/review/12780/index.html
To read Khalid Mohammed’s punny review of OSO click here http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=4c53bac6-5c3d-4821-baa2-230c15d5569b&&Headline=Review%3a+EMOm+Shanti+Om%2fEM
To read Khalid Mohammed’s jealous review of Saawariya click here http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=fef9bb56-b22b-4bb9-96da-6f99322ec9a5&&Headline=Review%3a+EMSaawariya%2fEM