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Review: We open somewhere in New York, where zillionaire
Sam Talwar's (Amitabh Bachchan) son Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan) is
getting married to his ward Maya(Rani Mukherji). Now, while Rishi
is in love, Maya isn't, and while she's contemplating her fate,
she meets oneDev Saran(Shah Rukh Khan), a soccer star and son of
the Kamaljit (Kirron Kher) the caterer, who he was going to pick
up after the wedding was over. They have a conversation and he
convinces her to go forward with the nuptials.
She goes back in the house to wed, He goes onto the street,
where he gets hit by a limousine, thereby losing his career as a
footballer.
Cut to four years later. Dev is married to Rhea(Preity Zinta),
the editor in chief of the number two fashion magazine in the
world, and they have a kid named son Arjun (child artist Ahsaas),
who despite that his dad is a soccer coach, doesn't have a
compeditive bone in his body. Maya, meanwhile, is stuck in a
loveless marriage. They meet in ridiculous circumstances, and soon
become friends, advising each other on how to repair their
crumbling marriages. This turns into love and love turns into
adultery.
This being a Bollywood production, there's lots of dancing and
singing [I remember all-singing all-dancing gangster shoot'em'up
war movies from there], and lots of comic relief by Sam, who's an
old school letch. There are also seem to have hired every out of
work blonde in New York as an extra, which isn't actually a bad
thing at all. The music is actually rather good, and the
production numbers are excellent, although as the film gets more
serious, they seem less and less appropriate.
The reason companies outsource to India is that the prices are
far cheaper than they are here in North America or Europe. So it's
obvious that when Karan Johar decided to film his latest opus in
New York, Philadelphia and some suburbs in between that this would
be one of the most expensive “Bollywood” movies ever made.
It is also very long at three hours and fifteen minutes, and
feels it. This is an epic, even though there are only six
characters with more than a few lines. The acting is excellent,
[the cast are all major stars in India], especially the kid, but
as the film grinds on the audience begins to grind down, and by
the end we're trying to figure out all those places which could
have been easy to edit out.
If you like this sort of thing, bring a pillow for your butt,
you will need it.
Eric Lurio
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