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.