Sandgroper's movie moments: Salaam Namaste

One job that I have always envied is that of a critic. They obviously enjoy what they do, get to the best movies/music/books, (that more often than not, they do not pay for), get to express their frank opinions about it and what is better get paid for writing trash. Therefore, I have now decided to play a critic at this blog. Every movie / album / book that I see / hear / read, I shall post an immediate critique of it. I may not get paid for it, but at least I would have the satisfaction of making sure that my opinion is out there in public. That way if it is something nice, it will be of assistance to someone else, and if it is bad I shall save someone the money that they would have wasted on it.

 

Anyway here goes the first review. Saw Salaam Namaste yesterday. A Hindi movie that was recommended to me by some colleagues at work and some friends in India. The movie is not as great as it is hyped up to be. I had read that it was about a radical new idea of two lovers living in. But what I saw was a desi version of the Hugh Grant movie "Nine Months". There's a lot of corny acting and corny situations created. Plus the usual need for songs creates a couple of needless situations. And of course the sight of Preity Zinta in an advanced stage of her pregnancy dancing in the streets of Melbourne made no sense at all. To top it all, she's having twins. I felt like recommending the movie to my cousin who recently had twins just so that she could break her TV in frustration.

 

Plusses:

Not too much melodrama. Surprisingly quick paced for a YashRaj movies production. Intelligent Indianisation of situations. Most of all there was no puking involved to show that she may be pregnant. They used a normal pregnancy test, which probably was the first in a Bollywood movie. The acting is believable especially the lead pair and Arshad Warsi. The mention of the words "But we always used protection, so how did this happen???" was also probably a first. Most importantly, I think for the first time in the history of Yash Chopra movies, there was no Karva Chauth, pheras, sangeet music or punjabi songs (I don't know about the last item. I forwarded all the songs.) Jaaved Jaaffery steals the show in the few scenes that he is around.

 

Minuses:

Quite a few. Not a great ad for the proponents of the "living in" concept. Nor for the family planning guys. Turns out that protection may not work. ( I can hear so many men saying "Hey it may not work, so why bother??"). Tonnes of corny scenes. The usual faaltu scenes where someone tries their hand at a mallu accent. Not too much logic involved. More importantly the sense of what could have been. They had a chance at making an intelligent, thought provoking movie about the "coming of age" that parenthood brings. But they made a movie more appealing to college kids with an "oh by the way, she's also pregnant" viewpoint. Jaaved Jaaffery is funny if you know that he is actually doing his Feroz Khan impression with an Aussie accent. There's no way he is doing a bihari accent which is what I read in rediff.

 

My feeling at the end of the movie was if you want a good movie go watch Sehar. It's a nice, serious movie (minus the songs) with totally believable scenes. No faaltu attempts at comedy. If you want to watch a crappy movie there's a whole bunch of movies you can choose from. Basically I can't see the point in going to watch this movie.

 

Signing off, until next time.

 

Cheers,

SG