A complete no-show. Review on Saawariya

While viewing OSO the other day, I had a feeling that the movie offered the viewer nothing to take home at all. After viewing SAAWARIYA, the same reaction was felt despite the vast difference between the theme and genre of both movies. OSO was a hardcore commercial nonsense, which was always going to do better than SAAWARIYA, which is a meaningless, abstract nonsense. The better of the two evils won, quite clearly.

Let's get to the point without wasting any time here: SAAWARIYA is by far genius movie-maker Sanjay Leela Bhansali's worst outing. In fact why he made this film remains a question. Therefore it is important for SLB fans to forgive him, associate him with all his past great work and just imagine as if this never happened. But now that it has happened, let's just analyse where it went wrong. Sanjay Leela Bhansali had noble intentions of once again taking the viewer through an artistic journey with a unique ending. HUM DIL DE CHUKE SANAM allowed him to do this, as he took the viewer on an artistic roller-coaster ride while eventually delivering the great punch with a brilliant and unique ending, which witnessed the heroine choosing to stay with her selflessly loving husband rather than returning to her past lover.

In SAAWARIYA, SLB decides to take the viewer back to those two achievements:(1) The same artistic experience, although the plan backfires miserably because despite the very artistic sets, the general feeling about the movie's presentation is not nearly as bright and alive as that of HDDCS;(2) A unique ending.albeit this time it is not an agreeable one as it was in case of HDDCS, but a very abstract one which generates little or no sympathy from the viewer. Basically, these two factors mean SLB lost half the battle as he had a poor presentation teamed up with an undesirable climax. He had to fight the battle hoping a few other aces up his sleeve would at least take him to the safety zone.aces such as the much talked about new pair, the melodious music, as well as most importantly the whole concept. Sadly, while the battle still continues, SLB's aces have so far failed to outdo the cons his movie is host to.

The concept is nothing to talk about.a young musician experiences love-at-first-sight and falls in love with an attractive muslim girl. However, she already loves someone else and takes the boy as her friend. Little does she know that he will develop strong feelings for her and give everything to persuade her to forget her lover, who has apparently disappeared from the scene for an indefinite amount of time. Actually, not only is the concept virtually non-existent, whatever does exist is quite hard to keep the viewer involved. On paper it seems a hard-to-believe love story where the male protagonist refuses to leave alone the female protagonist despite knowing she is madly in love with someone. What more, he refuses to understand that she only intends to be his friend. The whole idea is just crazy.and at times the viewer's sanity is terribly taken for granted as the viewer is torn between concluding who is crazier: the male protagonist who is killing himself over a girl who is committed elsewhere, or the girl who has committed herself to a man who she hardly knows. Unbelievable!

While SLB the director suffers a massive blow with this movie, SLB the composer(along with Monty Sharma) makes a great statement with his melodious tunes. The title song is the only thing, if any, that the viewer can take back home. "Jab se tere naina" is another great tune while other songs also sound different and gel well with the mood of the film. However, the random and unwanted placement of so many songs just spoils the narrative further and makes no sense at all. At least a couple of songs should have been edited and just kept for promotion. Sets seem to have involved a lot of effort but could have been brighter.  Cinematography could thus have been better and editing too needs improvement. Performances are good, but certainly not without flaws.

Ranbir Kapoor manages to become the star of the show with a good screen-presence and a visible acting talent. However, his crazy characterization does not allow much sympathy for him from the viewer and his efforts thus seem futile for the most part. One thing that SLB has done, though, that makes for a great launch is giving him a chance to perform in all areas - from dance to comedy to romance to action as well in one scene. And while you can accuse Bhansali of not delivering on Ranbir's debut, you cannot deny that any actor would simply LOVE to be launched by Bhansali as this is a period where the lead actors of Bollywood have to crave just working with him.

Sonam Kapoor makes a positive impression. However, her characterization as well as strange pairing with a much much much older Salman Khan(and yes, he is quite easily showing his age at this point) dilutes the impression too. To think that just recently Salman was seen playing a friend to Sonam's father Anil in the hit comedy NO ENTRY gives the viewer a strange, uncomfortable feeling about this casting. Why such a poor casting Sanjay? You could have done with someone a little younger, such as Akshaye Khanna, or Arjun Rampal. While Salman is obviously a miscast, Rani Mukherjee does a great job of making her presence felt in a tricky role. She uses her experience to deliver a lively and entertaining performance in an otherwise dark and meaningless movie. The rest of the cast is passable.

On the whole, SAAWARIYA is a stroke Sanjay Leela Bhansali has played wrong from the word go. Good promotion, melodious music, and impresssive newcomers have all been outdone by a non-existent script, poor screenplay, dark cinematography, and not to mention, an overly abstract climax. Sorry, but this is a COMPLETE NO-SHOW!