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So as you know, I stopped writing lengthy reviews on this site this year, keeping the blog as more of a film diary of sorts.  Lo and behold,...

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Movie Review - Love Aaj Kal (2009)

Starring Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone
Written by ??? (no imdb info)
Directed by Imtiaz Ali

I'm starting to wonder if the fact that I'm not Indian is hampering my enjoyment of these Bollywood flicks. Ideally, a good movie should cross cultural boundaries and appeal to all who see it. This one didn't do that at all.

Jai and Meera meet and fall in love. They've been together for well over a year living in England when Meera accepts a job in India and Jai accepts a job in San Francisco. Jai convinces Meera that long distance relationships never work and they break up only to discover that despite the fact that they've moved on to other relationships, neither is really happy and they still long to be with one another.

Sure, I'll go with the simple premise, but the execution of that premise is awful. First off, when they're first separated, Jai never goes to San Francisco, so why the hell didn't he just travel to India to be with Meera. Second, there's a ridiculous subplot about an uncle relaying his misbegotten love story to Jai, trying to convince him to return to Meera. A complete time waster and it takes up over one-third of the movie. Thirdly, I can't help but think that scenes were cut in this movie for an American release. While I don't actually think that happened, the flick didn't make sense 40% of the time.

The only nice thing I have to say about this movie is that I felt that the "dance breaks" seemed as "natural" as you can get. Meaning, I realize that no one's going to break out into song and have 100 people behind them join in a choreographed dance number, but where they placed these dance sequences in the movie worked pretty well. By far, these were my favorite "dance breaks" I've seen in a Bollywood movie to date. And that's the only reason why this flick is getting the grade it's getting.

I was bored out of my mind during this movie. Granted, it came at the end of a long day of marathon movie-watching (five movies within 13 hours, six within 22 hours...all in theaters), but I'm certain that I had I watched this flick first, it wouldn't have made any difference.

The RyMickey Rating: D-

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