ACTING SAVED THE DAY
Director Yash Chopra’s last film is a romance but it doesn’t hang together as a plot. Meera says that she is going to marry Roger but she goes everywhere with Samar on his motorbike and the couple even sleep together. So where is Roger? And what of Meera’s dreams to marry a white man even as she scorns Indian boys? Meera makes deals with God and Samar is skeptical but he goes along with her wishes and goes back to India where he devotes his life to defusing bombs and is called“The man who cannot die”.
I am a fan of Yash Chopra and Shah Rukh Khan but I was disappointed in this story. However, the acting was good and it saved the day with Katrina and Shah Rukh while Anusha Sharma, the girl who acted as Akira the intrepid journalist gave a superb performance. The audience empathized with her unrequited love for the “soldier.” She reads his diary and is captivated by his story and one wonders if it is calf love! But she matures as Samar recovers from his accident and her love for him grows even as she persuades Meera to come back into his life.The meeting between Meera and her estranged mother is a pleasant and heartwarming interlude.“You must be happy inside if you want to make others happy”were Meera’s mum’s immortal words.
The scenes where bombs were detonated and how Akira escaped by the skin of her teeth are dramatic and topical in the world of today where terrorism is rife. As usual, Shah Rukh Khan gives an impeccable performance as the battle-hardened soldier who still finds time to sing and dance after defusing a bomb.
The scenes of London and parts of India are captivating. The scene shifts from the poor of London to the restaurants haunted by the super rich where Samar is a handsome waiter complete with full suit and tie. He falls in love with the fun-loving and iconoclastic girl behind the dignified front of the rich Meera. The couple sing and dance and her scanty attire in black is a sop to the modernization of the Hindi cinema of Bollywood along with Akira as a thoroughly modern girl complete with Ipod. She also has no qualms about declaring her love for the Major even though he rebuffs her.
The film ends happily in trueYash Chopra style and they also show excerpts of the director while shooting the film. But having seen and enjoyed romances like the epic“Veer Zhara”, this film falls far short of the high standards set byYash Chopra. But it is worth seeing, especially if you are a Shah Rukh Khan fan.