Saturday 30 July 2011

Zindagi na milegi do bara

2011 by Zoya Akhtar

I would not have watched this movie if not for Abhay Deol. He impressed me a lot in Dev D and in a couple of other movies too he proved, he is a different person from the Bollywood family.

Three friends decides to go on a vacation trip to Spain, a kind of bachelors party as one of them is engaged and will get married very soon. The movie goes through their brief 'adventure' in Spain and how this trip changes their attitudes to life. 

Honestly, ZNMDobara is a good entertainer. There are some nice funny moments, some silly moments but all together it is a different kind of entertainment from Bollywood, without the horrible love songs or item numbers or action scenes. If we wont worry about any questions, we can just sit back and enjoy some good fun which pops out occassionally.

But I would say, this is yet another example that Bollywood cannot make Indian movies. ZNMD has a plot which can be pieced together from umpteen number of Hollywood romantic comedies. In fact, it really looks like a Bollywood attempt to make a Hollywood kind of romantic movie.

The characters are all from Elite India, as always, who could easily identify with this way of living which can match Hollywood movies. 99.99% of the movie is in the West, except for a few frames in London, all in Spain, there are only a few indoor shots which are supposed to be in India, so that the settings can be exactly like how it will be in a Hollywood comedy. And what else, even the plot development is exactly like how you would expect from a Hollywood comedy. The difference is just that, we have Indian names on the characters.

Performance wise, I thought it was good from both Farhan Akhtar and Hrithik Roshan. The first time I felt Mr. Roshan can really act and I would give the credit to the director here. My favourite, Abhay Deol, was ok but I thought he was a little bit feminine in many moments. Since the character didn't require it, may be I am wrong, I think that could have been avoided. So here, the director got it wrong.

I am wondering, when will Bollywood realise that they will not get any world wide acclaim, that they crave for, if they try to match western movies. Why cant they think Indian, develop Indian stories which Bollywood have not tried yet, and use their new found production values and technical abilities to make a technically brilliant movie which is genuinely Indian.