After seeing him in a couple of Pakistani TV serial movies 'Humsafar' and 'Zindagi Gulzar Hai'on Zindagi Channel I went to see Fawad Khan in his debut movie, Khoobsurat. Frankly, one was highly disappointed, not with Fawad Khan but the movie as a whole. You cannot expect much from a talented actor if none of the other actors seem to fit in their roles. The plot is half-baked, half taken from 1963 B/W movie 'Aaj aur Kal' where Sunil Dutt is physiotherapist come to cure the wheel chair princess Nanda and Ashok Kumar playing the Maharaja, and half taken from the movie of the same name in the '80s. So Sonam Kapoor has to fill into the shoes of the main character of not one but two movies from the classical era. The screenplay is weak and with that everything seems contrived from the very first scene. Perhaps the physiotherapists of the cricketing fraternity need a lesson or two from Sonam on how to send hurt players back into the game and win matches. And within this framework where does Fawad Khan fit in? With only 15 minutes to spend with the wheelchair maharajah Sonam needs some form of distraction and Fawad provides as the reticent prince almost like an extra. The lack of chemistry between the lead players at no stage stirs any emotion in the viewer. Shashank Ghosh as a director needs to understand that a movie is not an ad where the models are plastic images but needs a lot more to capture the viewer's imagination. In the end, one is almost left to feel that Fawad is there to attract people to the movie hall to see the real protagonist, Sonam Kapoor. Not once is he truly asked to display the brilliance he showed in the Zindagi channel serials. The only redeeming factor of the movie is that the palace looks like a place. As far as the music is concerned, thankfully the background music remains in the background and the dialogues and lyrics of the songs are clearly audible. Overall, the movie fails to rise above average at any point.
Review of Khoobsurat
