Sunday, July 17, 2011

First movie in Delhi and a review of 'Zindagi na milegi dobara'

We headed out to Movietime in Westgate mall, in the Rajouri Garden area. Quite easily accessible via the Delhi Metro.
Now, the first thing you will notice in malls in Delhi are kids bouncing about on bungee trampolines. Most kids are expressionless during the whole experience. I am guessing this is because it must be a weekly routine for them. Parents take them to the mall and then trampoline time for 10-15 minutes. Must happen every Saturday/Sunday, experimenting with gravity must only be so much exciting.

Any which ways, the mall we did reach and due to it being super crowded the harried looking attendants let us into the hall with us just showing the sms we'd received when we booked tickets online.

So here's what I thought about the movie...

Firstly some sweeping generalisations and gyan:
Our parents' generation was one where the middle class folks had one aim: a good job and a simple, happy family life. So most movies were about bad people trying to take this simple life away from the protagonists.
Our generation seems to have more disposable income at hand and almost all of us want to break the shackles of our seemingly boring lives and get rid of the daily monotony, by traveling the world (a lot of which we have seen and read about from a mouse's length away via the internet).
'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' is aimed at just that. Three friends enter a pact. They will do a trip where each one will choose an adventure sport -which will be revealed to the other two only at the last possible minute- and they will have to partake in the adventures that follow.
Kabir(Abhay Deol) proposes to his girlfriend (Kalki), leading to the trip materialising, in the form of a bachelor party trip to Spain. Imran(Farhan Akhtar) a seemingly happy go lucky chap "with sad eyes" and the Workaholic, serious, running behind money, London based financial broker, Arjun (Hrithik Roshan) complete the triad.

Most road movies have a script where the protagonist have some challenge to face and end with the protagonists getting to know more about themselves than they knew before. This one follows the same rules and does quite a good job of it.

Farhan Akhtar gets most of the good lines, Abhay Deol underplays his role and Hrithik fits right into the character of a serious guy who wants to make as much money as possible before he retires at 40.

Kalki has a bit part really and is average. Katrina adds a bit of freshness to the film, but then this film is not about romance and love. There is a bit of that too, but this is a film about travel and broadening your horizons. So if you love to travel, then this is a movie for you.

Will you identify with the characters à la 'Dil chahata hai?' possibly not, for the whole set-up does not seem very real.
Will you enjoy the movie? Yes you will. But be aware that there are some parts where the movie just drags along at a slow pace.

But overall, this is a movie worth the watch, who knows you may just head out for the trip that you've been postponing all this while :)

4 comments:

Ramya said...

Hmm....this was a fairly balanced review....so far, I've only heard people gushing about the movie. But I will be going in with a fair amount of skepticism, given it has Hrithik the Roshan in this movies, and because of how much it has been hyped!

Art Vandelay said...

"Our generation seems to have more disposable income at hand and almost all of us want to break the shackles of our seemingly boring lives and get rid of the daily monotony, by traveling the world (a lot of which we have seen and read about from a mouse's length away via the internet)."
But, surely in movies from our parents' generation more people dreamt of dancing in foreign parts? I have seen so much of Switzerland in movies that sometimes I wonder if it's worth "visiting again".

Saranya

Apoorv Gawde said...

@Ramya - we thought so too, but Hrithik plays his character quite well. Though like Amu says with that hairstyle he can only play a limited set of characters

@Saranya - I agree, but then the swiss bits were only by-lanes in the script. the movie's central theme wasn't about travel or a road trip. There were a few movies like that, but not as many as we see today. That was my point :)

Jeff Rivera said...

Zoya is just gorgeous! Wonderful review as well!