Garbage Recycled. Review on Veer-Zara

Yash Chopra has tried to be different in presenting a standard hit formula movie. He has roped in a galaxy of stars, filled in some romance, extended the time of the movie with some songs and followed the latest fashion of bollywood ? being Pakistan friendly. Never mind if the audience has seen it all before ? Veer Zara tortures the audience for a longer time than the standard bollywood superhit formula movies . It is different that way. The movie with a difference ends up with too many differences in the performance of the stars.

It pains to know that the maker of the movies like Silsila and Kabhi Kabhi should stoop to such desperate standards just to give a ? superhit ?. While it is common knowledge that creativity is common as finding a clean and uncorrupt politician, Yash chopra makes tremendous effort ( and unfortunately, your time, too !! ) to kill any little hope of expecting some original and genuine performance.

The story is an oft repeated romance between a Punjabi (Shah Rukh) and Pakistani (Preity Zinta) ,running up an opposition due to religious, political and personal differences. The opposition gets better of the central character s stardom and forces him to be jailed for ? oh, not for violating the law. How could our superheroes ever do that !! Our heroes always end up jail for ? sacrifice ? !!

Either they are bearing the sentence because the villain manipulated the legal process or they are in jail so that someone( usually it is the mother or the father, this time it is the heroine) out of jail will be happy.

23 years later, thanks to a young and ?smart ? lawyer ( she claims so !! - Rani Mukherjee) s efforts, the judges and lawyers realize the injustice done to the holy couple and reunite them, despite the opposition employing a ?smart? and experienced lawyer (Anupham Kher) too !!. Can smartness alone get the better of intelligence and experience? It can, if the script writer is one of our bollywood directors. Of course, the only criterion is that it must have been done by some other director in some other movie.

By the way, never be under the impression that the heroine is any less sacrificing!! She spent 23 precious years in India , hoping that her loverboy would return some day. Unfortunately, the Shah Rukh s parents ( Amitabh and Hemamalini) did not tie a rope around her waist ( err ? wrist) and she could not preserve it like Shah Rukh did . Otherwise she matches the hero in every aspect of her (in)effective performance.

The moments when Amitabh appears on the screen are perhaps the best moments of the movie. Still, Yash Chopra has succeeded in his attempt to torture the audience by keeping the length of the movie long that the best moments become too short in comparison and fade away from your memory.

For music, Yash has deviated from the familiar ? size matters ? logic to ? length( of songs !!) matters and the more, the merrier !!. The result is more wastage of the audience ? time. Almost all the songs are irrelevant and fail to make an impact in your memory. There are simply too many of them ( all of equally pathetic quality) to please any sensible music lover.

Manoj Bajpai makes an impact with a stellar performance in a short, yet crucial role. Shah Rukh and Preity have relied on their past glory to bail them out. They have banked on the sympathy factor a lot in their roles.

The viewer can go a step ahead and pity them in fact for signing up such movies. There is hardly anything impressive about both of them in this movie. Amitabh brings in a bit of fresh air in a short role again. Anupam Kher does well. Kiron Kher screams and attempts (unsuccessfully) to emote. In fact, there is nothing really impressive ( except that it lightens your purse and wastes your time amazingly) about the movie.

Of course, Veer Zara may perhaps go on to become a ?superhit? or a ?box-office hit?. More than anything else, the movie brings into limelight the dearth of originality in movies. It reminds everyone that a legend like Yash Chopra can sometimes make a movie like a fool and the audience validate it with a greater amount of foolishness by wasting their time and money in watching such movies.

I am one of them, no doubt, but I still have hope that one day, our directors will learn to use the grey matter nature has gifted them. Meanwhile, Kudos Yash Chopra , for producing another superhit by assembling bits and (too many ) pieces of what you and other directors have done before. We all knew you are one of the talented ones, but Veer-Zara has way too much of your talent for us to handle !!!