A director does an excellent job recreating the kaliedoscope of colours of a small town with excellent art direction and supplanting the landscape with believable characters. He loves Kanpur Lucknow and other small UP towns where the people are beautiful in their own cute ways. He is a simple man but with a Midas touch. He has managed a couple of small budget movies that have become money spinners. He is picked up by the big boys. Given a story line, big names who will keep their acting acting intact and he needs to apply his magic touch. He is obviously befuddled moving from a Texan town in India to NASA territory in the USA and a dwarf wastrel who befriends a Female Stephen Hawking character gets sufficient attention from a depressed film actress and then to keep it contemporary has to ensure the wastrel lands on a undiscovered territory. Baffled? The poor man to was. Because he seems to have been shoved aside partly into the picture as there are none of his flourishes visible.
Cut to a dusty town where the main protagonist faces unto his opponent who we later find post the dream , is his father. The following scenes are the only ones where the poor small scale director is allowed to indulge in his small town screenplay and then it appears the screen play moved onto areas where no screen writer has dared to go before . To the land of difficult to understand story line. There is a dwarf who is cocky and before you start feeling empathetic about the challenged physique SRK imbues him with all the necessary heroic antics that he is associated with . So don’t cringe if he does everything from being a wastrel to falling in love with a female Stephen Hawking to a depressed actress who kisses strangers on the road with fluid mascara all over her face. Somehow the challenges of being vertically challenged compensates for the beautiful scientist who suffers from cerebral palsy and hence it is ok for her to fall in love with a uneducated wastrel who wears three piece suits on occasions and spouts wise lines.
The dusty town scenario where Anand seemed at ease moves to five star hotels which are converted to Sanjay Leela Bhansali sets with tons of colours flying around. The cinematographer forgets the director and becomes obsessed with capturing snow flake and water drops illusions . Probably worked on Black and Guzaarish.
The only semblance of real life seems to come from Katrina who is a film actress dumped by her beau and depends a lot on 500gms mascara to cover up her facial landscape and convey the depression. This angle is soon forgotten and then in between winks I saw a baby emerge again soon to be forgotten, quick shift to NASA territory and the wastrel is now headed to places where no man has ventured before.
If this written view confuses you spare a thought for us who saw this confused mess that heads nowhere.
Special effects cannot be a story by themselves. The problem with us is that we become so overawed with small achievements in special effects . We can clearly see that the producers and the cast must have been beside themselves at appreciating this than the story that was being conveyed.
A famous movie maker famously told me almost ticking me off, to first learn the art of film direction before commenting on it. Sorry sir/madam I am a paying viewer and this is from that point of view after having paid hard earned money. So there will be an opinion. If it is bad then it has to be taken in the same stride that good appreciation is taken.
It is sad when movies like this destroy the equity of talented actors and make them look silly. The decision makers need to take responsibility and in this case it does not look like the director alone.
To see it or not Is your Christmas holiday choice. For me I found a challenger to the throne of the most baffling boring movie that was till now being held by Saawariya. Move over Saawariya. Someone else has Zero'ed in on your seat !
* ( one star)
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