Cast: Kajol, Ajay Devgan, Bijay Anand & Kashmira Shah
| Direction: Anees Bazmee
| Rating: * * * | |
|
QUICK, the heart goes tick-tick. Be it Saturday or Sunday, airflights
make her sick. But she must flash-dash from Paris to Mumbai, even at the risk of feeling as
lifeless as a brick, besides developing a neck crick.
Treat or smart trick? Pyaar To Hona Hi Tha, directed by Anees
Bazmee, is neither actually. A virtual frame-to-frame rehash of the
Hollywood flick, French Kiss, it's more than likely to make you
hiss. To be sure there are subtractions and Indianised additions galore to the original bon bon featuring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline. Fine. Can't fight the fact that practically everyone on these shores is into rip-offs. But sad to say, the outcome is hardly a laugh-inducing tickle. Instead, it's as sour as a rancid mango pickle. Burdened with a sluggish pace and mind-spinning hops between the Seychelles and Switzerland (never mind if the setting is supposed to be a desi beach called Palam!), this romance between an unalike pair is about as comfortable as sitting on a broken chair. Despair. You never know when you'll fall flat on your face. So, sweet Sanjana (Kajol) is on the edge. A working girl in a bizarre business office in the city of the Eiffel Tower, she's about to glower. Her fiance (played by a shampooed newcomer) has taken off to India and hitched up with a leggy bimbette (Kashmira Shah). Fret. Forget that fear of flying, 'coz Sanjana wants him back. So what if he's not worth the price of a potato sack? More grief. On a flight packed with weirdos, Sanju meets up with jewel thief Shekhar (Ajay Devgan). Before you can fasten your seat-belt, he hides a purloined necklace in her bag and spends the rest of the footage trying to get the sparklers back. Needless to natter, in the ensuing hurly-burly, the two fall head over high-heels in love. QED. Incidentally, the pyaar-vyaar rigmarole bristles with some far-out hair-raising scenes like a barber shaving off the thief's luxuriant moustache, a kindly Muslim investigative cop (Om Puri) dropping in occasionally for a chit-chat, and, of course, taunting meetings with that foolish fiance and his swimsuited consort at a boogaloo beach. Worse, the usual hokum apologies are made for the hero's thieving tactics. Or he wouldn't be a hero, right? Ergo, in an elongated sequence hobbling around a sarson da farm (a la Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge), you're introduced to Shekhar's family which has lost acres of land to money- lenders. Oh oh, they must be retrieved pronto. And for additional justification, the thief must also raise oodles of cash for his l'il nephew suffering from a chronic ailment. Only the cough-coughing Leela Chitnis-like mum is missing. The story just doesn't ring true. The comedy is half-witted, particularly that infuriating group dance on board a turbulent airflight. About the only likeable moments are the stray intimate exchanges between the sprightly heroine and the thief who discovers that he has a heart after all. How you wish there were more tender moments. But with the exception of the catchy title song, Jatin-Lalit's music makes sure that you're either subjected to a sonic blast or morose ballads that have you scurrying out for your hundredth pack of popcorn. Of the cast, Ajay Devgan is okay. Expectedly, Kajol is the show's super-saving grace. Bubbly and spontaneous as ever, hers is a perfectly balanced performance, rescuing even the loudest scenes from going over the top. For the rest of the way, you feel like shedding tears of disappointment over this flight of fantasy which could have well been titled Pyaar To Rona Hi Tha. |
