Reviews

The much-awaited finale of the trilogy has finally arrived and what a feast for the eyes!!! The film is truly grandiose, it's got great special effects and it'll leave u in awe when you leave the cinema...

Peter Jackson has definitely done a job for which he'll be remembered forever. The sole task of shooting these three films must have been huge and all credits to the man who had the courage to go for it. And he can be proud of the end result.

The special effects, of course, is the great winner. The epic battle scenes, full of so much colour and action, and detail, was magnificent. The scenery is also great. Really makes you wanna go see New Zealand, even if only for the great mountains....Breathtaking is the word I was looking for...

The acting is also great. Elijah Woods is great with his expressions of fear, tiredness, weakness, sadness, obsession, etc, etc...He does a great job, but then, so do Sean Astin, Ian Mckellan and Andy Serkis....

But then we come to what destroys the film....especially if you are a fan of the book....However much the film does justice to the book in terms of its grandeur, it doesn't in terms of the story...

Cutting out the whole of the battle for the Shire at the end was a rather disappointing idea. That whole bit in the book makes the story more relevant for these 4 Hobbits who have risked their lives to destroy a ring (and it explains Wormtongue and Saruman away...). Okay, the film was going to be too long, but it could still be done. Firstly, it didn't need to be too long a battle scene at the end. And then, they could have cut out on the hyper-extended farewell scenes AND all the unneeded additions made to the story line throughout the 2nd and 3rd book!!!

My other problem with the changes in the story line was that Peter Jackson had apparently set out to make a film based on the book. Changing storylines and characters of commercial modern books is semi-okay, but you cannot go around changing characters in a classic!! How would it look if I made an adaptation of Romeo and Juliette tomorrow and showed Juliette as a tomboy?? A definite no-no... And LOTR is as much of a classic as R&J...

So why not scrap the long-windedness of Faramir's and Aragorn's stories (and they managed to almost totally change Faramir's character...) in the 2nd film and that of Gollum in the 3rd one, and that would have left you enough time to show us the battle for the Shire and maybe a quicker farewell at the end...

But I guess I'm rambling on. So, while I'm talking about the end, I'll end here. But let me just say that however slow the ending was, I didn't want it to end....No more waiting for the next LOTR...Sniff...So, overall, it was a great experience. Not true to the book, but still great and grandiose and worth a watch over and over agan...

Okay I will not give a summary of the film. Enough of that already. Straight to the point: Kal Ho Naa Ho is a fantastic film....definitely worth seeing, and worth seeing over again.

Shah Rukh Khan does a great job...as usual. I guess nobody else does emotional scenes AND comedy as well as he does. Saif Ali Khan is great. Again as usual, since he plays that role in many of his films, but he holds the story together....!! And Preity...well, it's her year. She rules Bollywood this year. After Koi mil gaya, she comes back in KHNH, with a much stronger role, probably her strongest role since Kya Kehna....and she excels in it. Yes, why was Kareena Kapoor even considered for this role??? Jaya Bacchan is also worth a mention. Nobody else could have played this role. She is fantastic!!! The special appearances make the film...well...special!!!Some of us would go see any film for 5 seconds of Kajol....especially next to Shah Rukh!!! And all credits to Karan Johar and Nikhil Advani. To Karan for coming up with the film, trusting Nikhil and making it happen, and to Nikhil for a first-class job in his first direction... And the music is wonderful...Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy definitely establishing themselves further in Bollywoodland. And Farah Khan plays her usual magic with the choreography, especially for the song Kuch to Hua Hai, which will keep you giggling in your seat...

Now the loopholes: Why do all Caucasian looking people in America speak Hindi (with an awful accent as well), especially when some of the Indians sometimes afford to speak English!!??!! Why could they not spend some more time and effort to make Shah Rukh mime his rap words well in the Pretty Woman song?? Why, when Saif and Preity find out about Shah Rukh, they both seem more worried about their love lives than their friend's....well...LIFE!!! Why did I leave the cinema feeling that if Shah Rukh was given a dialogue full of hope before then end of the film, I'd have felt better...coz surely that was the point of the film: hope. I felt that the last 20 minutes were not well-explored enough...and too sketchy. One second SRK and Preity love each other, and the next she's still getting married...Why are we not shown the process that goes in between. It would have been good, emotional, and more realistic...

But maybe I'm just moaning about details. Maybe I am being a bit of a Naina Catherine Kapoor....So, I'll end on this note rather...

Seen in the broader context of Indian Cinema, this film is a proper landmark....It's a perfect blend of the East and the West. After rather unsuccessful attempts at copying American Pie-style comedy in Indian films, SOMEBODY finally showed us what it takes to make a success of this kind: A modern comedy (hilarious jokes) with modern direction (cool style of story-telling, I thought) in a true Indian setting. Modern music, but perfectly blended with Indian melody and lyrics. This film will take Indian comedy to new heights. And takes the East-West blend to new heights. And it takes a great film to do that...

And it will leave u, not just proud of being Indian, but of being a Western Indian. Perfect blend....

Don't get me wrong...I love this film. It was a great job, and Hrithik shows some excellent acting skills... But there's where my problem with the film starts...was this meant to be a Sci-fi or just a film about Hrithik's character???

This could have been a film with much more and better special effects, and much much more concentration on the ET itself rather than just on Hrithik....

I lived through the 1st half of setting the scene, expecting the second half to be so much better once the alien is on screen, coz I thought we would be seeing the tackling of a subject not usually dealt with in Bollywood: aliens....

And then once the alien does appear, all we are shown is Hrithik being so great, bla, bla, bla.... No mention of the alien's feelings, or how the relationship between it and Hrithik grows...The only times we see the alien is when it's helping Hrithik...

I mean, maybe that is just because it's a Bollywood production, and a Bollywood production cannot NOT have a love story implying a super hero...Okay, hats off to Rakesh Roshan for having been able therefore to adapt his so called "sci-fi" to the Bollywood audience.

But it's just sad that that is what the Indian audience is perceived as expecting from a film....Surely, we are ready for a film without the usual super hero and love story....or are we??

To provide the other perspective on the film, it was still a hit. Probably the 1st good hit of Dreamz Unlimited, but definitely not Aziz Mirza's first with Shah Rukh Khan. The film is a feel-good film, that tried to tackle the usual problems of married life, but in a light manner. Yes, at the end of it, you kind of feel cheated, because you feel the problems have not been addressed properly, let alone been solved in the story, but you also leave with the feeling that you've laughed at the stupid jokes for the last 2-3 hrs... You remember Shah Rukh stupidly trying to persuade Rani to accept him, or stupidly trying to butter her up when she is angry after the wedding. And most of all, it's appealing because, as SRK himself says, it's him a role that's not larger than life. It's not superhuman Devdas or Asoka. It's stupid Shah Rukh as we've seen him in down-to-earth films like Raju Ban gaga gentleman, Yes Boss, or even Dilwale dulhanya, kuch kuch, and dil to pagal. It's a character that could be us...

Very simple love story, but shown in an angle that makes it interesting and definitely worth watching. And it has great music. The singers and musci director, AR Rehman, all do a great job. The choreography is also great. Most of the songs are well-placed in the film...probably apart from the Chori Pe chori one. It's got the high quality you would expect from Yash Raj, and the sweet simplicity of Mani Ratnam... Definitely worth a watch.