Sunday, November 11, 2007

Movie Review: Saawariya

After an awesome OSO, one could have been forgiven for expecting too much from Saawariya. I went with no such illusions, and even then, came back terribly disappointed at the complete waste of a beautiful Sunday evening in Goa.

I have never liked SLB's over-hyped movies - because I always found them unrealistic, too loud, in-your-face sentimental cry opuses. However, Saawariya really sets new landmarks in perfectly senseless, expensive cinema.

First the story. Boy (Ranbir Kapoor) meets girl (Sonam Kapoor), boy loves girl, girl has already met another boy (Salman), girl has already loved another boy, another boy has gone away for a year, girl waits for the other boy, boy wants girl, other boy comes late, boy almost gets girl, other boy comes, girl goes to other boy, boy carries on with life. The story makes a joke of love and romance. One dialogue will drive home the point - kiss her on her lips, and she will be yours for life!

The entire movie is shot in one hell-of-an-expensive set, where lotuses float in the river in the middle of the town square, and up from the clock tower, you see the entire town laid out below with smoking chimneys and fog, a la Harry Potter. And oh yes, SLB doesn't let go of his fetish for blue and black - everything is shaded in those colors, and juxtaposed with blinking signages, like some giant dance bar. To add to that, the town square is full of prostitutes in gaudy sarees, with faces beaten black and blue, prancing around with the hero in the opening song! Well, if SLB thought that would set the mood for the rest of the movie, he was damn right! By the time you get out of the movie, you do feel your senses and sensibilities have been pounded black and blue!

There are too many songs, and you wonder if SLB fitted in some story in the middle of his songs, or the other way around! The songs are wonderful to hear, and some of them make for good viewing - but the ones with black and blue prostitutes, well, if you enjoy them you need to get yourself checked for a twisted mind!

And a first in Indian cinema - Ranbir actually bares his butt. Yes, you read right. He actually drops his towel, and while I am sure the censors cut off the most digusting parts, there's still enough to give you the creeps - I mean, hello, do we really need men dropping their towels???

Coming to the cast... Ranbir would have made a great heroine, with his red lips, bare midriff (yes, he wears his shirts with the all but the collar buttons off), bare bum (now how can we forget the sight of that???) and his girlish mannerisms and behaviour. Come on, there's only so much cuteness one can tolerate in a grown up man! Sonam looks beautiful most of the times, especially in black. She has beautiful, large eyes, an amazing smile with upturned lip corners, beautiful dark locks of hair, and is the only reason I could actually sit through the torture dished out by SLB. She looks a lot like Sonali Bendre, by the way, and SB used to be one of my most favourite faces! But she really needs to start doing some serious cinema and some normal roles. Acting crazy in love, running around like your saree was on fire, and shaking head like only SLB's heroines and heroes can, is not going to add much to your resume, baby! And Rani - what were doing in the movie playing that silly prostitute and prancing around in garish make up and bared midriffs? Do you really need to do these movies at this stage in your career? And oh yes, Salman Khan with his silly headgear and "I am a devout man" act - we can forgive you for you probably knew not what you were getting into!

Ok, I think I have now managed to get rid of most of the pent up feelings inside me - and can go back to living a normal non-SLB life now! As for you, if you still go and check out the movie, consider yourself to be one of the lucky few who can actually afford to pay to watch it, even when you know what it is going to be! And yes, enjoy the bum!

1 comment:

Siddhesh said...

A friend forwarded this to me... couldn't resist posting it here! It's the best thing that's happened to Saawariya :)

To say Saawariya is a crappy movie would not be correct. Horrendously Ridiculous comes close, but it doesn't really capture the essence of the absurdity that this movie is. After watching this movie I felt like tying up Sanjay Leela Bansali alone in a room, forcing him to watch a cockroach chase a spider round-and-round a water fountain for 3 hours. That too in blue light. Because seriously, that's what this entire movie is. It's two grossly untalented kids, who probably got kicked out of college for lack of attendance and ended up on this set to spend the rest of the day. And for the love of God, I can't figure out why the whole movie is in blue! Maybe the director was trying to get every frame half-black half-blue so that the WinZip compression would work better to save some electrons, what with all the global warming and all. That's the best explanation I could come up with, because nothing else can explain the lack of daylight (or plain light, for that matter) in this movie.

Sawaariya is one long song with some breaks for dialog. And by dialog I mean girly giggling by the chic and some punch-me-in-the-face expressions accompanied by pig-like grunting by the hero. One wonders if all the actors are the props and the set is the real star in this movie. I came really close to concluding that the bridge-over-the-fake-river is the central star of the movie, because everyone of the other actors looks like they were made of rock. And the rocks had moss growing over them. And the rocks were painted blue.