Salaam Namaste

My suggestion to all - Salaam Namaste magar door se! A pain to watch it in a theater with dolby digital effects - all you can manage to notice is the painfully loud shoutings of Preity Zinta and the funny coughs of Saif Ali Khan ( I sometimes feel, his voice is very similar to Rani Mukharjee)

Ok, the concept of living in without marriage is sort of bold for Indian audiences, but what I fail to understand is, why such a sensitive and commercially viable topic needs to be manhandled so badly? I mean, throughout the movie you see females shedding clothes and jumping on beaches pointlessly, the guys doing Salaman Khan patented Shirtless Arnold-kind-gross-body showoffs, and third rate shallow dialogs trying uselessly to make it all seem convincing.

Fine, if your intension is to grab a feast for your eyes(there is plenty of it for both the sexes), go ahead - this is the movie for you. But if you have been fooled by the pre-release promotional stunts claiming that the movie is one from a totally different genre, you would be disappointed.

No doubt, the topic is fresh - a tad different from the regular pyar-ishq-mohabbat and the duniya-against-the-couple kind, but even by the most liberal viewpoints, keeping in mind the directorial debut of Siddharth Raj Anand, the movie fails to live up the image it's promotions created. The director seems to have potential, but I am sad to predict so, he is one of the many apirants joining the Karan Johar genre.

The storyline is convincing to some extent - finally we have Indian heros doing something other than being the business tycoons - but still, the directors must sometimes try to be realistic - come on - a chef and a radio jockey wont have enough cash to live such a lavish and posh life! But considering it's a masala movie, this much liberty can be granted!

Cinematography is mediocre. Actors are all ordinary. Saif must realise, he can't go on acting the same dumb cool dude all the time. After DCH, Kal Ho Na Ho, and Hum Tum, this is the fourth similar role(barring Parinita in b/w). Preity Zinta is too loud in the movie, irritating to the core, seems snooty sometimes. Arshad Varshi is fine, has managed to do justice to his role. Not that the lead pair hasn't done anything convincing, the movie is good in parts, there are a few touching scenes, a few very funny ones too - but all this too sporadic to make it enjoyable on the whole!

The best part of the movie to me was Javed Zafery's "EXACTLY"... he is really funny, has managed to entertain viewers for a change. The way he delivers those witty and extremely funny English dialogs makes you laugh your heartout.

Abhishek Bachaan's small presence is chaotic but funny - the viewer is lost in the chaos and by the time one manages to enjoy the joke, there is some more chaos to digest.

Overall, the movie is nothing of a pathbreaker. A normal Sharukh Khan genre movie with loads of skin show, and faltu ke emotions.

As stated earlier, watch it only if you want "Nayan-Sukh", because beyond that you will only get headaches.