Cast: Salman Khan, Arbaaz Khan, Kajol, Anjala Zaveri and Dharmendra
| Direction/Production/Story: Sohail Khan
| Rating: * * * * | |
| Imitating a horse galloping way off the race course, squawking like a mad hen which has just swallowed a ball-point pen and even hissing in the manner of a starved snake, he takes the bakery and the cake. That's Salman Khan in Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya. And, ya, ya, he's finger-lickin' good fun, as oven-fresh as a hot cross bun. Letting his hair and inhibitions down, he seems to be having a blast as a campus clown. Just for his spontaneously saucy performance, you're encouraged to give this otherwise inconsistent, inefficient and infuriating love-ishtory a three-star rating. The Khan kid goes ballistic, as if he were out to prove the point that he can be as zappy and yappy as the rest of his ilk in movieville. In contrast to the hyper hen-boy, Arbaaz Khan is cool and credible, flaring up, though, when his li'l' sister Muskan (Kajol) announces her affection for Boy Hyper. The over-possessive brother's ready to kill, looking at the clown disdainfully and huffing, "Is this what you love?" Apologetically, Muskan mumbles, "Yes." Okay, the three-way conflict does disclose an iota of charm and hi-drama. Now for the awful news. The super-snag is that this retread of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (instead of despotic dad Amrish Puri, the stiff-upper-lip brother Arbaaz Khan must be won over) just doesn't work in its entirety. The direction by Sohail Khan keeps slaloming from the barely serviceable to the asinine and the chaotic. A slight improvement on his dithering debut effort, Auzaar, but that's not saying much. The first-half crammed with those mandatory college eve-teasing sessions is a pain. Ditto a hopelessly unedited cricket match and a silly stage show with seedy lookalikes of popular movie stars. Especially objectionable are the caricatures of a college principal as yet another beefy buffoon, a retired armyman as a weirdo and an eye-fluttering laloo as a gay stereotype. Spare us the usual infantile suspects, please. In fact, the papyrus-thin story is as predictable as the April heat, swerving feverishly from the boy-meets-girl routine in the big city college to the woo-the-girl's-guardians rigmarole located in a nameless rustic hillbilly town. As for the sub-plot involving a family feud over a farmland, it's about as believable as a three-rupee note. For more drivel, cut to the villains led by a pair of wicked wannabe Thakurs and a diabolical dinosaur (Nirmal Pandey) whose chief claim to fame appears to be his Jim Morrison-style hair-do-duh. Sorrily, too, the bright and lively Kajol is merely employed as an obscure object of desire. Whatever she's required to do - dance, sing, look pretty and distraught - she does with professional elan. Dharmendra, returning after a longish break, is also wasted in the thankless role of an avuncular good guy. On the technical front, cameraman Rasool Ellore needs a little refresher course and fast. He does little or no justice to some of the most photogenic faces on the scene today. And that fireside dance, performed by a rather self-conscious Anjala Zaveri, is a strain on the eyes as well as the nerves. Mercifully, the music - in particular, Oh oh jaane jaana by Kamaal Khan - is easy on the eardrums. Clearly, the inspired performances by Salman and Arbaaz Khan, as the adversaries-turned-brothers-in-law, are the saving grace. For the rest of the way, this one's a Bore Kiya To Darna Kya. |
