Gloom Barabar Doom

That's how I would describe the latest Amitabh-Abhishek-Preity-Bobby-Lara Dutta starrer that released about 5 days back. I actually did advance-booking to catch a late-night show of this joke of a movie. There were about 50 other sufferers with me in the theater that fateful night.

130 minutes was the total length of the misery, of which 40 minutes were spent in reiterating the title song in different forms, with all the main characters trying their best to out-dance the others. Big B definitely took the cake, with an outlandish hairstyle and some of the absurdest costumes I've seen him wear. As the credits rolled at the end of the movie, I distinctly spotted the 'story development' credits right at the top, for a movie that really had as much story as the bedtime story my two-year old niece hears. The only commendable aspect of the movie was the music by Shankar-Loy-Ehsaan, that is first-rate both in quality and popularity.

It disappoints me to see Amitabh Bachchan wasted literally as an 'item boy' in this Yash Chopra production, even as he delivered a performance par excellence in the other movie I saw last week. Cheeni Kum (directed by R. Balki, and easily one of the best movies I've seen in the past year) saw the Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu in beautifully etched out roles, ably supported by veterans Zohra Sehgal and Paresh Rawal, not to forget the child artiste who played the cancer patient.

It was disheartening to see movies like Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna rake in money for its producers. Gauging the crowd at the theater that evening, I am hopeful Yashraj learn their lesson this time around, and not take their audiences for granted.