White noise is a random signal (or process) with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal's power spectral density has equal power in any band, at any center frequency, having a given bandwidth. White noise is considered analogous to white light which contains all frequencies.

Who am I?

Neo-hippie cinephile. Follower of the great Jim Morrison who once said "If the doors of perception are cleansed, everything would appear to man as it truly is, infinite."

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Jab We Met Review

I should have listened to my heart, as the protagonists kept telling each at various parts of the screenplay, and left the theater in the interval. Then the experience would have been nice, for now, as it turns out, the aftertaste left by the second half, reeking too strongly of the age-old funda of the generic Bollywood romantic date movie, is too strong to even loose oneself in the nicely shot peppy song with phirang women in coolie attire, accompanying the end credits.

The first half of the movie is well made. The screenplay is fast paced and manages to hold your attention. Just when you think you have it figured out and start abusing it for doing a DDLJ in 2007, you realize that it is only meant to pay a little homage to the mother of all romantic Indian movies, and nothing more, as can be seen in the subtle differences. Jab We Met shatters the perception of Romeo being the roadside loafer and Juliet the shy little maiden and reverses the roles, which is the case with a sizable portion of real-life couples today.

Kareena is undoubtedly the central character, so much so that, the film could even have been called Geet (her character) and still worked, but 'Jab We Met' is meant to represent the love story of GenX, with their sprinkling of Angreji in the local dialect. Besides, I have a fetish for women with unisex names. She does an excellent job. One of the best scenes, in terms of acting, of the entire movie is when she goes all red as her character is supposed to be embarrassed. Shahid Kapur has a difficult supporting, yet probably meatier role to play. He is very believable and sincere - a huge improvement from his previous performances. Your heart goes out to him when he talks about the broken marriage of his parents since he went through the same thing in life. Their accents sounded authentic enough to me - the Punjabi accent with a little Mumbaiya in it and the Mumbaiya accent with bouts of affected Punjabi. I believed the casting was good till the lips and tongues of the protagonists decided to take the title of the film too seriously towards the end, granted a improvement from their MMS days. I am no Shiv Sainik and have no problems with people displaying their 'laav' for each other in public, but there are few things more disgusting in this world to the bystanding observer than two people making out, especially when you are forced to watch it on a 72mm screen. The actor playing the Anshuman character (who reminded me of the W - physically and otherwise) makes most of the second half tolerable with his matter of fact yet hilarious expressions, especially during moments of personal emotional duress.

The songs are all nice, except the first one, but all of them are unnecessary. I am sure they add to the commercial appeal of the film as the almost 100% seat occupancy for a Tuesday show indicates. A special mention must be made of the diligent Julie Andrews who did the English subtitles, not letting even the 'Sa Ga Re Sa Ga Re' in one of the songs go and turning them into 'Do Mi Re Do Mi Re'. I also learned today that 'Morcha Nikalo' in Punjabi means 'Rock the Party'. Another commercial aspect was the Punjabiness of the film. The color, the loudness and 'Laav' with a capital L of the larger than life Punjabis proved to be the right tonic for my semi-depressed mind - an extension of yesterday's state and helped by a shitty day at work. I was also glad Chhotu went along so that we could take the second half of the film apart with wise-crack first row (aka the rickshaw wallah row) comments. I found myself reminiscing about those Bhangra house parties from half a year back and suddenly had a momentary impulse to join the little ABCD kid with the bling bling 80's light emitting shoes in the front of the theater doing a homosexual rendition of the folk dance.

The most important thing for me was that I left the theater is my usual high spirits, without even consuming any. So, if you aren't depressed, I suggest striking up a deal with the theater wherein you can pay half the price of the ticket and leave by the interval.

PS: 'Goal' had gotten me senti last time I saw the trailer appealing to memories such as solidarity et al with the inspirational music. Didn't happen this time.

5 comments:

ad libber said...

Was not the kiss too...glue-ey..do I mean glue-ey, but I hope you get the drift of what I mean. The first half was a very charming watch, the second half just got duller. But I admired the spiritedness of the girl in the first half. The way she behaved after her marriage in the snippets which were shown seemed a tad out of character, but its not even worth the time to delve into a Bollywood rom-com floss.
How did Julie Andrew translate the hugely English scattered Punjabi? Most Indians have been spoon fed Yash Chopra movies, where Punjab has more to do than the actress, but would be hard pressed to do that.

Mala said...

Ha...ha...this movie is definitely not on my lists to watch. I simply hate both Karina and Shahid - mostly because of their horrendous acting skills and partly because of the horse like face structure of one and the excessive hip-action by the other.

ArSENik said...

@ad libber: Yeah, I know what you mean about the kiss. Just didn't want to gross out any of the five people that read my blog, but hey, thanks for doing that for me :) Maybe it was a nod to that scene in that teen movie with Rheese Witherspoon where everyone dies.

Julie Andrews moonlights as a Beauty Contest coach and is required to know languages like English sprinkled Punjabi. I mean, c'mon don't underestimate her! If Hema Malini can do it, why can't she?

@mala: Yes, the Kapoor has an equinian face, but she started acting well since the Chameli and Dev days IMO (overlooking the strong correlation between the two of course). I forgot to mention this one comedy scene in my post where she pretends to be caught red-handed. Her facial expressions had me in splits.

The Kapur dances well IMO, but oh well, you are the dancer, not me. So you should know better. He used to piss me off eariler with his feminity and SRK-ness and I had doubts about his Pankaj Kapurian genes, but I think he has done a decent job in this movie, holding his own to the horse's strong screen presence.

Unknown said...

Dear,Friend
At the Lakme India Fashion Week actor Saif Ali Khan admitted his love for

Kareena Kapoor putting all speculations regarding them to an end. But finally due

to the exuberant pressure from media, Saif chose to reveal his ‘feelings’ for

Kareena at the Lakme Fashion Week show on wednesday.
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sushilsingh said...

Dear,Friend
Jab We Met is typical Bollywood romantic film : 5-6 songs poured in , designer clothes, one

big Punjabi family, boy – girl have fights then live happily ever after. On the story front, Jab

We Met is as predictable as it gets.Now it’s up to the actors to lift this film up. Shahid

Kapur gets into the skin of his character perfectly and does a commendable job
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http://desievite.com/blogs/Default.asp