Great potential turns into Bollywood Bakwaas. Review on Baabul

I was hoping I would get to write a positive review before heading for Baabul, well with Amitabh, Hema , Rani ,John (was trying to ignore the fact that salmaan was in the movie) and the Bhagban team I would have thought the odds were in my favour. In the first half hour of the movie I started to look at my watch and it went downhill from there.

Serious Flaws (in order of importance):

The Story :They had the potential to make this movie a strong emotional family drama with a very important social message. With amitabh and rani the director should have focused in on the issues that widows face and how it effects them and theie families . All of that was lost. In the first two hours we were shown a typical bollywood love story with lost of dance and romance (salmaan ishtyle). the next half hour was based on amitabh's plans to fix up rani's life , however the director didn't even show the depths to which rani's life had become miserable, the plight of widows was trivialised and focus was yet again on romance (this time with John). Amitabh didn't encourage rani to work again to live again to take care of her son and first find herself again. And maybe after her pain was less and she had dealt with the loss John could help her heal further.. this was quite insensitive treatment. A lady becomes a widow and then the only way she can deal with it is to remarry quickly. No thought or research had been put into the story and screenplay the theme had potential but most of the movie had salman acting childish and took the focus away from reality.

Characters :The characters were there but the screen time was wrong, om puri who should have played a important role showing society's prejudice only came in every now and then to do two minutes.Hema malini suddenly changed from being a progressive mother-in-law to the typical filmi mother -in-law just for one scene. Sarika who should have played a pivotal role in show casing how society and unfair rituals can lead to a life less existance yet she only showed up twice in the movie. and Salmaan (well don't get me started on that one.. needs to get acting classes and grow up in general) got too much screen time.

Other little things:Too much emphasis on product placement. Some scenes were just created because certain products needed to be so obviously advertised (please give the audience some credit). Too many silly words used like 'Buddy' which was so out of place. John Looked really tired and run down. Hema malini too was tired and lacked her usual performance.... Movie's length was too long .. we didn't even get an intermission so that I could have some coke and get my spirits high again :(

Okay now the Silver lining ..

Rani's Costumes by Sabyasachi: I usually don't like to comment on costumes but since in the first half of the movie had no plot and bad acting I thought I would focus on the costumes by sabya sachi, each sceen I was looking forward to seeing what rani would wear next. It was refreshing change from the usual overdone bollywood costumes.

Songs : Some of the songs were nice I would say 50% of them were good to watch (although I still don't understand the role of western girls dressed in micro-minis at a family gathering, are we outsourcing our dance industry)

gees let me think what else.. nothing much really

Overall verdict:Don't bother to go and watch this movie, its truely a waste of time and effort. They have really trivialised such an important issue... the director should have made up his mind on whether he wanted to make a movie about the issues that widows face or a bollywood love story... I was confused....

cheers

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