Even the usually infallible AR Rahman sounds like he's channeling Viju Shah's
greatest hits, and while Ghai's always managed to create enchanting
soundtracks, this one is forgettable and staid. Plus, the songs are far too
long to captivate. Despite the bright colours and choreography, we're not
falling for this Moulin ruse.
(LOL, does this guy has his brains at the top or what? )
-----------------------
Yuuvraaj, 20 years too late
Raja Sen
Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif
November 21, 2008 16:23 IST
The very name of the film inspires images of a defiant young superstar known
for his irreverence and his inconsistency. And for whacking a bowler for six
massive sixes, on the trot.
Subhash Ghai's [Images] peculiarly spelt Yuvvraaj [Images] does quite the same
thing as young Mr Singh, in the sense that it indeed sets six shots sailing
past the boundary.
However, there is a crucial difference between the two whack-jobs: whereas
Yuvraj dispatched Stuart Broad [Images] to the boundary successively, ball
after ball packed into a high-intensity over, Subhash Ghai's film stretches it.
A lot. Just picture a 50-over innings with six sixes. Not quite the same thing,
It's sad and somewhat embarrassing to watch Ghai try valiantly to sculpt a
magnificent innings -- and miss his target rather spectacularly. The man is
batting the only way he knows how, sticking to his basic formula of melodrama
and emotional overdose, but times, Mr Showman, have changed. Your game needs to
be severely adapted, because currently, it's very outdated. Even hardcore
masala now needs to be served up instantly, sizzling hot; there's no time for
dot balls.
Even the sixes, unfortunately, seem mostly inadvertent. There's Salman Khan
[Images], who occasionally adlibs his way through the script and does just
enough to make you smirk, decidedly despite yourself. There's Katrina Kaif
[Images], who breaks into a smile that momentarily saves you from thinking
about the people and the script surrounding her. There's Anil Kapoor [Images],
the only real actor among the lot, struggling manfully enough to ensure
sympathy -- for the performer, if not the character.
And then there are the absolute gems, like a scene where Anil Kapoor takes the
rap for a Salman Khan hit-and-run (some subversiveness there, Ghaisaab?). A
chastened Khan bails out his brother while explaining the situation to the
Prague policeman, who can't comprehend just why Kapoor would voluntarily lay
his neck on the line.
'He's my brother,' says Khan, tersely. 'So?' asks the copper. 'He's an Indian
brother,' Khan explains, eyes moistening.
'Aah!' says the policeman after this revelation, nodding his head with
enlightened awareness. In a Subhash Ghai film, that obviously explains
everything.
Yet if you were planning to head to the theatres to pick out just such scenes
of a classic Ghai vintage, there aren't enough. The film takes itself too
seriously, and plods through a plot forcefed to our audiences throughout the
1980s, the kind with brothers quarrelling over an inheritance and scheming
uncles hatching nefarious plots, even as pretty girls have harebrained fathers
who sign contracts about their marriage plans.
Even the usually infallible AR Rahman sounds like he's channeling Viju Shah's
greatest hits, and while Ghai's always managed to create enchanting
soundtracks, this one is forgettable and staid. Plus, the songs are far too
long to captivate. Despite the bright colours and choreography, we're not
falling for this Moulin ruse.
To be fair, though, Austria looks good and the colour-palette is tremendously
detailed: the scheming Mamaji, for instance, wears a kurta the exact same
purple hue as his wife's frightful hair. Clearly, nothing is left to chance.
Salman Khan plays Deven, an impetuous 'young' man with a manifestly disturbed
past. He sobbingly tells us -- mercifully minus full-blown flashback -- about
his cruel father, one who first hit him and then sent him off to boarding
school for beating up his autistic brother. 'He left me out of his life, his
heart and his will,' Salman weeps copiously, going on to speak about how his
father is a billionaire and he himself has to live in a rented flat and has to
rent a bike.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is as demented a character as possible. This
repeated 'beating up' of his mentally-challenged elder brother was unmistakably
not as mild as Salman casually whimpers, and the father was forced into
corrective action. If it was an offense bad enough to cause the father -- not
stepfather, you note, an important distinction in this constantly-cliched genre
-- to disown the lad, we can only shudder and imagine why.
Having set himself up with the urgent need to become a billionaire in a limited
time, Deven now heads to his late father's estate to claim what he asserts is
his. There is then much skullduggery and scheming, which, albeit simple-minded
and often moronic, paint the character as an absolute villain. Deven Yuvvraaj
isn't lying when he rebukes poor Beethoven at the film's start: indeed, he is
'a bad boy.'
If this is deliberate, then we could have been in for one of those rare films
struggling with truly flawed heroes, heroes who are beyond redemption and have
been dastardly throughout their lives, heroes who don't deserve our sympathy.
Yet, like the other sixes, it seems very accidental indeed, a lazy screenwriter
miscuing a shot straight past the boundary because -- like everyone else
involved in the making of this film -- he took his eyes off the ball.
Meanwhile, out in the real world, the other Yuvraj has hit two back-to-back
centuries and is hungry for more. Watch him instead.
