om shanti om

and for the second installment of my two bits on the battle of the superfilms. so saawariya might have been all self indulgent pretension, but at least it did not become so ingratiatingly eager to entertain that it destroyed any sense of story or character. basically, the film has one thing to say – ‘farah is so clever, no? she knows bollywood trivia so well!’ a homage that actually spends more time and energy insulting the audience and the film makers of the films it claims to be honoring.

maybe i have no sense of humor but there was not a single thing in the film that did not take its cue from caricaturing a 70s icon or theme by shrill overacting. and that was meant to be cause of great jocularity. like one long grating cyrus broacha mtv 70’s skit, which, for me, is all right for exactly 30 seconds, but the joke runs thin very fast and then you are left with a mess of bad hairdos, overstyled clothes, recycled dialogue, plot lines and characters reduced to cardboard.

shah rukh hams more than usual, kiron kher beats him at his game, shreyas talpade wears bad wigs. in the mess the only thing worth watching is deepika padukone who is glorious on screen, stunningly beautiful, a good dancer and a reasonable actress. at least she does not have the extreme woodenness of an average model-turned- heroine. she is the only real human being in this terrible film.

i was not fond of the music with it’s a ‘one syllable a note’ nursery rhymishness, but in the film it manages to give us a break from the incessant loud screech that begins with the karz joke and ends with the madhumati reference in the climax. as for the highly promoted song with 31 stars. with the overdose of filminess in all media who cares to flip through a filmfare magazine set to a beat?

i hated the film; and i had really liked ‘main hoon na’. so surprisingly for me in the battle of the superfilms the winner is ‘saawariya’. at least it wanted to do something and was not so default.