As a movie that compares love in the past to love today, this movie had the potential to be one of the greatest, most important movies ever made. While it's a far cry from being perfect, the subject will hit home to many people, and its treatment is not to be underestimated.
The film serves as a direct contrast between love in the golden era, a time when people worked to love, to modern society, where people love to work, and where finding a life partner takes a backseat to this primary objective.
the film attacks this directly, drawing out the differences in attitude towards love, and the goals that each of them had in life. The plot moves fast, not so fast to make you uncomfortable, but carries little of the slow moments that remove you from feeling what Jai feels.
And boy, does Jay make you feel. Saif Ali Khan's acting is brilliant, keeping audiences sympathetic to his behaviors, his rants (as they number quite a few), and his motivations. His role as a protagonist is well-done, and keeps the audience in the movie.
Deepika Padukone's reading is not as good as Saif's though, often coming off as plasticky, but she is mostly adequate. The script holds her up, making her much of a foil to some of Saif's antics, but when she's not playing this role, she comes off as bat***t nuts, where it is doubtful that was the director's intention. The script itself is really well done - for the most part - but this is where my true complaints come in.
Make no mistake - this script is excellent. It is quite possibly one of the best scripts to come from Bollywood in quite a while. It, in combination with the cinematography, makes this one of the most subtle movies I've seen in a while. It takes a sharp eye to catch some of the details, a not-so-sharp one to catch others. In combination with the audio, it provides one of the most engrossing stories I've seen/heard/felt. in fact, a scene from the beginning of the movie (spoiler alert, since I've gotten till here without much), where Meera leaves Jai at the airport, and Veer Singh is reminiscing about his own story, is the most stunning sequence I have seen in Indian film, period. So you must be wondering, where is the problem?
I answer: It's less of a problem really, and more of a nuisance. The issue is inconsistency: When the script is good (and it mostly is) it flows very well, like water. But in the few moments where it isn't good, it's terrible, it's jarring, show-stopping, and immediately reminiscent cheaper films of the masala variety. The plot is totally understandable - the motivations are clear - but the fact that some of these inconsistencies occur in key points in the plot detract from the overall product in a big way.
The subtlety in conversation, the subtlety in story, takes a dive, and here's the worst part of it: very little of it is necessary. It will make some moviegoers scream for the director: "Now why did you have to do that? You used an axe where a butter-knife would have sufficed!" This is the film's largest detractor.
In it's defense, as it's likely to be brought up, the film likely needs these more hard-hitting moments to really make a mark on its target. And given it's target, it does very well for itself. If I could have rated it based on how much other people would like it, I would give it a 8.5 to a 9 out of 10, but there's no option for that, so I won't.
On other information, the sound score suffers from the same detraction as the script - mostly brilliant, but jarring when not. The music, on the other hand, is sure to be a hit, and Saif's unique dance is likely already very popular. A solid supporting cast with brilliant cinematography makes it a pretty one to look at, and there's no lack of content. This movie is one of those movies that knows what everybody is thinking, and in its job to make their feelings a bit more conscious, it succeeds with flying colors.
The film serves as a direct contrast between love in the golden era, a time when people worked to love, to modern society, where people love to work, and where finding a life partner takes a backseat to this primary objective.
the film attacks this directly, drawing out the differences in attitude towards love, and the goals that each of them had in life. The plot moves fast, not so fast to make you uncomfortable, but carries little of the slow moments that remove you from feeling what Jai feels.
And boy, does Jay make you feel. Saif Ali Khan's acting is brilliant, keeping audiences sympathetic to his behaviors, his rants (as they number quite a few), and his motivations. His role as a protagonist is well-done, and keeps the audience in the movie.
Deepika Padukone's reading is not as good as Saif's though, often coming off as plasticky, but she is mostly adequate. The script holds her up, making her much of a foil to some of Saif's antics, but when she's not playing this role, she comes off as bat***t nuts, where it is doubtful that was the director's intention. The script itself is really well done - for the most part - but this is where my true complaints come in.
Make no mistake - this script is excellent. It is quite possibly one of the best scripts to come from Bollywood in quite a while. It, in combination with the cinematography, makes this one of the most subtle movies I've seen in a while. It takes a sharp eye to catch some of the details, a not-so-sharp one to catch others. In combination with the audio, it provides one of the most engrossing stories I've seen/heard/felt. in fact, a scene from the beginning of the movie (spoiler alert, since I've gotten till here without much), where Meera leaves Jai at the airport, and Veer Singh is reminiscing about his own story, is the most stunning sequence I have seen in Indian film, period. So you must be wondering, where is the problem?
I answer: It's less of a problem really, and more of a nuisance. The issue is inconsistency: When the script is good (and it mostly is) it flows very well, like water. But in the few moments where it isn't good, it's terrible, it's jarring, show-stopping, and immediately reminiscent cheaper films of the masala variety. The plot is totally understandable - the motivations are clear - but the fact that some of these inconsistencies occur in key points in the plot detract from the overall product in a big way.
The subtlety in conversation, the subtlety in story, takes a dive, and here's the worst part of it: very little of it is necessary. It will make some moviegoers scream for the director: "Now why did you have to do that? You used an axe where a butter-knife would have sufficed!" This is the film's largest detractor.
In it's defense, as it's likely to be brought up, the film likely needs these more hard-hitting moments to really make a mark on its target. And given it's target, it does very well for itself. If I could have rated it based on how much other people would like it, I would give it a 8.5 to a 9 out of 10, but there's no option for that, so I won't.
On other information, the sound score suffers from the same detraction as the script - mostly brilliant, but jarring when not. The music, on the other hand, is sure to be a hit, and Saif's unique dance is likely already very popular. A solid supporting cast with brilliant cinematography makes it a pretty one to look at, and there's no lack of content. This movie is one of those movies that knows what everybody is thinking, and in its job to make their feelings a bit more conscious, it succeeds with flying colors.