Sunday, November 11, 2007

Saawariya versus 'Om Shanti Om'

Watched the two big Hindi movies of the year this weekend, back to back. We couldn't get the tickets for OSO so had to watch Saawariya. In fact, my wife was pretty keen on Saawariya.

I was pretty disappointed with Sanjay Leela Bhansali. If lavish, eye soothing sets is what cinema is all about then it's a great movie. Unfortunately, that's not true. The movie is a fairytale without a soul. Among the cast the only weak link is Sonam Kapoor. If Bhansali couldn't make her act nobody could. Ranbir Kapoor is charming and has put in a lot of effort to make his character look real. Bhansali tried a desi adaptation of 'Moulin Rouge' but couldn't translate it on screen.

The very next day I saw OSM, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It's 3 hours of pure entertainment. Deepika Padukone is the girl to watch out for. She looked completely at ease with her characters in the movie. And to top it, she looked quite pretty! But, the real surprise of the movie is Arjun Rampal. Farah Khan couldn't have given a better tribute to the villian of the 70s. Rampal looks an icy cool villian. As for Shahrukh, he can sleep walk through such roles.

A word of caution for Farah Khan, she needs to bring in a little more substance to her movies.

2 comments:

heenad said...

I agree Farah Khans movies are very of lack of better word, timepass types. But I dont think it pretends to be otherwise, like they spoof themselves. Whereas Bhansalis movies are pretentious and pretend to have a deeper, artistic meaning which most pple dont care about, honestly. Karan Johar movies again are all on glam, and barring his first movie the others are boring and full on drama. id rather watch a khosla kha ghosla anyday

Inam said...

Ditto here! Even a die-hard Shahrukh fan like me was mentally tourtured by KANK.