HR's Surroor reaches everywhere!. Review on Aap Ka Surroor

When a music director, a successful one too, decides to experiment with his singing, people wait to see how he does. If he fails, they encourage him and tell him to come back to what he does best, compose. But when that music composer succeeds, and that too BIG TIME, the same people either become a fan of his work, or with shocking jealousy and insecurity against the multi-talented guy, they bash him for every useless reason they can think of.

With Himesh Reshammiya, the latter scenario is true and the former is extremely false. Now, moving ahead, If the same musician-singer turns a pop-icon and a Rock-star who manages to sell out the Wembley Arena, creating records in the process, his fans feel prouder, while the haters (now very few) try to take out their frustration by using all sorts of cheap tricks to write him off. When the same all-rounder turns actor, you can imagine!

With such an opening paragraph, I feel I have made it clear how AAP KA SURROOR - The Real Luv Story works and who exactly it works for. If you are a Himesh fan, join the club and celebrate because your idol's movie has taken a historic start to become a superhit within its first four days. If you are a hater, you can take pride in being a majority on MouthShut, but remember you are a minority on the whole, or else AAP KA SURROOR, which I agree is no special product, would not have been such a grand hit.

While it currently holds a 35% rating on MS, the biggest of critics world-over have given it a thumbs up not because AKS is a great movie, but because it never promised revolutionary content. It was made for the masses who are there for "stress-free" entertainment, to directly quote Himesh. These masses don't have computers to come back home and bash a man who works 24-7 to entertain the world and make his industry proud. They take note of what this man is doing for them at the basic level, and they pay money to pay him back for his tremendous faithful hardwork.

Now that the general feelings regarding AKS and Himesh have been discussed, let's discuss the movie's content. The story is pointless to discuss as it has been discussed so many times. Also, the movie does not rest on its story, it rests on its presentation. To summarize though, HR (Himesh) is an Indian Rock-Star giving rocking shows in Germany, where he is stuck in a sting-operation and eventually accused of murdering a journalist. He has to battle all odds to prove his innocence and achieve the love of his live, Riaa (Hansika).

While the story lacks novelty, it is presented in a very entertaining manner. As Taran Adarsh put it, the great pace of the proceedings makes the movie very watchable and entertaining at the same time. Sure the story has some other flaws to partner up with. For instance the placement of Mehbooba and Tera Mera Milna (Remix) at the end seems forced. Also, Prashant Chaddha's direction lacks maturity as the romance between HR and Riaa seems to be developing too rapidly. Sure, the pace of the movie is helped by this, but some unwanted sequences such as Himesh getting drunk as well as Shekhar flirting with Nadia should have been edited to accomodate the more important romantic scenes between HR and Riaa.

Also, the Auto-rickshaw scene does appear very unrealistic, especially when pitched against the disciplined German police, but as Prashant defended himself, this was done with cinematic liberty to pay tribute to Himesh fans. Besides, if you hear carefully, the autorickshaw drivers claimed they were in Germany for a shooting, which means they came with government approval rather than coming randomly out of nowhere. But please, for those of you who think Germans speaking English is unrealistic, you don't know Germany. I am a great fan of the nation and know for a fact people know very good English there, it is just that they prefer German. But with Indians all around them, it is only natural that they are speaking English with them instead of German.

While the cons above do make the movie sound like very ordinarly, the pros more than make up for it. The cinematography is THRILLING. It is a delight to watch Germany filmed so well because recently in JBJ, London was not done justice to. Also, the editing is crisp as the movie moves at a great pace. Himesh Reshammiya the musician and singer does wonderfully to come up with an album that has had historical sales since its launch back in April. He gets adequate support from the lyricist and choreographer but two songs are wasted in the end. Also, while Prashant Chaddha the narrator is not in form, Prashant Chaddha the instructor does quite well in getting great performances out of the great cast.

Himesh Reshammiya as HR is a complete natural. While I am a Himesh fan, I remained as neutral as I can to judge his performance unbiasedly. While I realize he can improve further in order to create histrionics, as a debutant it is only fair to say that Himesh stole the show with a performance that was very heartfelt. He is no trained actor who has focused on only the field of acting. So keeping in mind that he has had multiple tasks on hand in this movie, he manages to do justice to his role with flying colors. Watch out for him in the emotional scenes, where his rawness brings great realism into his performance and raises the spirits of the movie to a great extent.

Overall, it is a performance that has reached out to those great amount of Himesh fans in a big way but I realize Himesh haters are not willing to give him time to improve further and will unfairly jump on every chance to criticize him without realizing that he is making his debut as an actor. Try telling some big actors to compose a great musical album and beat top-notch competition (APNE, AWARAPAN) at it, and we'll see how well they do.

Hansika is alright, but has scope for improvement. The actor playing Shravan is good in emotional scenes but goes over the top in comic sequences. Mallika Sherawant looks gorgeous and gives a very controlled performance by her standards. Someone should learn from AKS makers on at least how to present Mallika this well. The remaining supporting cast is passable as well.

On the whole, AAP KA SURROOR is a movie that like all Himesh ventures (albums, videos, concerts) has taken the HR brand to great heights. Within its first four days the movie was declared superhit and distributors were already waiting to buy the distribution rights to the movie's sequel. Afterall, Himesh will tell the secret about the cap in that movie.

While those small amount of Himesh haters will hate him for cashing in on his popularity, it is ridiculous to blame him for being sensible and cashing in on his popularity. And no, don't accuse him of being opportunistic because you think his Surroor is temporary, because his haters claimed he is a temporary craze right from the time of AASHIQ BANAYA AAPNE. But the fact is that he is here to stay and is still rocking big time and the great amount of Himesh fans can understand the guy's level of talent and hardwork. So while it is not ground-breaking or revolutionary, AAP KA SURROOR is an effective product that lives up to what it guaranteed: entertainment!