Bachna Ae Haseeno: Review
iView Author: Abhishek Asthana (Hyderabad, India)
Email: Witheld
Here comes a ‘Yash Raj Film’
Now this is a quintessential Yashraj Film. Because even though most of the story may unfold in Switzerland (Yash Chopra discovered it for Indian cinema), Italy and Australia, the film is not complete without a bhangra in saada Punjab. There are three beautiful women and there is plenty of talk about love. OK, if all that doesn’t convince you then there is plenty of DDLJ too! Now if THAT doesn’t make a film a ‘Yashraj Film’, then what on earth will?
Let’s get one fact very clear in the beginning itself. This is not the greatest YRF movie, but it may be sufficient to get them their first hit of this year. The premise of this story is remarkably interesting: commitment-shy guy meets three different girls in different stages of life, dumps two of them, gets dumped by the third and then sets the things right for the first two. (Yeah, someone was watching ‘Devil Wears Prada’ too!)
It really could have been cracker of a movie. The story has brains (In the age of ‘Singh is Kinng’ this factor sure comes as a relief!), director Siddharth Anand has got a trademark wit and style,screenplay (Devika Bhagat) almost consistently maintains a standard, dialogues (Anvita Dutt Guptan) retain their humor till the very end and acting too is certainly good.
The problem is “out of sight out of mind”. The film doesn’t stay with you when you walk out of the hall. There are no moments that you will recount with friends and laugh. There are good moments when you feel good for the characters but only for that pearticular moment. No, you are not planning to watch it again!
But that’s not bad as it is two and a half hours of entertaining cinema. If you can’t afford to go on a world tour, watch hindi films. Last week ‘Singh is Kinng’ gave us a free trip to Egypt and Australia, this one throws in Switzerland and Italy too. Sunil Patel’s cinematography is surely top notch! Vishal-Shekhar’s music is good but they have done better job with the background score. After a very long time I have liked the music of a Yashraj Film. (The last time I liked the music was ‘Chak De! India’).
Ok, now you want to know who is the best among the girls? Tough one. I already rank Minnisha Lamba as good and versatilt actress and she shows why. Be it the bubbly romantic Mahi waiting for her Raj or Mrs. Ahluwalia, she lights up the screen. Bipasha Basu has already said that she feels like ‘Big B’ being the ’seniormost actor’ in the crew, so how can Big B go wrong! But for me, the most ‘improved performance’ is that of Deepika Padukone. She gives a super confident performance and mind this is just her second film!
And second film this is for Ranbir Kapoor as well. This guys shows why he is touted as one of the best newcomers. His character spans across ages and his acting does justice to all of them.
But there is one surprise element. This guy playing Mr. Ahluwalia has delivered a knock out (pun intended!) performance. Believe me, he totally eclipses Ranbir when he is on screen, he looks and acts so good. I am not telling you his name, I don’t want to reveal the biggest secret of this film.
So, how is it? As I said, it’s not great, but it has got its heart and it is entertaining. So an average rating of 2.5 stars. This is your best bet in cinemas this weekend!
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Will check it out this evening. Abhishek, your writing style reminds me of a Mr. Adarsh
I wish Siddharth had an identity
I wish Aditya would give Siddharth one
I wish Punjab could be omitted in one of our films
I wish Deepika was hot without the south indian accent
Rishi Kapoor-Paintal,Ranbir-Hiten, so happy for their grand kids
Teen Deviyan….bachna.. ..oh stop it
parliament bribe,kashmir and amarnath,potholes,aamchi mumbai,indpndnt asssam,ahmdbd bnglr crackers,nri luv fr ind,u krlte chrstn,dg btes,mdia btes,astrlgy-blk magic evrydy mdia ?….who cares,we r creative people
I think i agree with 70% of ur comments.
The film is entertaining, with some decent music but not better than the BGM.
I’m not too high on the cinematography though.
At times it was quite patchy.
Minisha Lamba was SUPER SPLENDID!
U could easily fall in love with her!
Bips was very impressive (and gorgeous) too.
But Deepika? Nope.
Have to disagree.
I liked her character, but not her dull performance.
And yes, Mr Ahluwalia was FANTASTIC!
Wish he was the main lead, although Ranbir was ok too.
Don’t u reckon the film had shades of ‘Alfie’?
Did you mean “Definitely, Maybe” instead of “Devil Wears Prada” ?
Oh Prasun!
That’s what it reminded me of!
But there was a scene in which Ranbir is running around with outfits and coffee which reminded me of ‘D.W.Prada’ aswell.
@Steve:
I have said that Deepika’s is the most ‘improved performance’. She was nowhere near in her first film! And truly Minisha is absolutely fabulous.
@Prasun
Sorry, I have not seen ‘Definitely, Maybe’. Will watch it today only now that you have told it. But as Steve mentioned, the Italy scenes are heavily inspired from ‘DWP’.
@oz
That was a compliment or criticism?
Movie bahot bore thi yaar. Only Mr Ahluwalia, Hiten and smashing Deepika ( only in a few scene strictly, otherwise she is just as plastic as Mrs B ) were the saving grace. I don’t know why this zhopadpatti-looks of Bipasha are so overrated in the industry. Mere saamne aayegi to ek kaan ke neeche bajaoounga kasam se ;)
Ranbir has a long way to go.
@Abhishek : I haven’t seen this movie. I thought you were talking about the 3 girls 1 guy angle.
overrated tripe…..pure drivel…..
I had read somewhere “You copy from one source, it is plagiarism, copy from many it is research’.
Till now I have heard the names of ‘High Fidelity’,'Bad Boy’,'Definitely, May Be’ and counting….
Yes Kcp, Hiten was very good too, how could we forget him?!
All said, i’m glad Minisha’s in this film as many don’t even know her here!
Atleast this way she’s getting exposure in a big film.
Hope it clicks. Just for her!
Oh, and the more I see ur name Abhishek, the more I wanna see ‘Rock On’!
;-)
Hey Prasun, “Definitely maybe” released in the US on 14th Feb 2008. That’s 6 months ago. So your reference to it being a rip-off source for Bachna is incorrect.
Not bad. Bipasha was pretty good… and really hot.
Yeah, I think it was an idea that went wrong to an extent.
It is entertaining but too long for that genre.
Minnisha Lamba’s track was the best in the second half after that the movie went down hill. Yes, Mr Ahluwalia rocks !
The songs were too many, few were good. The Devil Wears Prada stuff killed the movie for me. I mean, the hero’s character arc just went haywire.
Paintal was good but occasionally annoying.
Yeah, I guess its OK to watch it though. Just for because the title is Pancham’s da rocking song :-)
@Banana : I never implied that Bachna.. was a “rip-off” of Definitely, Maybe. It’s just that when the OP talked about “three girls in different stages of life”, I was reminded of Definitely, Maybe instead of Devil Wears Prada. Just an observation.
@Banana
Is that really you ? For real ?
Aah. the end. the lamest fucking end. I wish they had ended the movie after Bipasha says “Its showtime”.
Boring. The only good thing about this movie was the title track …even there I felt the original had better antaras
@turtle
totally agree wid u man. goddamn movie was way too corny.
yikes. money wasted.
Have a heart guys..at least YRF has turned out a watchable film..the other ones were difficult to sit through..this one as at least sittable for those 2+ hrs. Yes, the movie lost itself in the boohoo session of late second half..but I mean, I can get their part too..if they had not showed the evolution of the cad to a good guy, would the worldwide pyaara Indian audiences picked it up..anyways it looks they are going to make some good bucks!!
@magik
main bhi lut gaya bhai…
kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai
YRF Studio mein corn field hai…
very corny man.
yash raj does it again…. bad movies one after the other…. Yash chopra make music albums you might find some success.. stop making movies you sub standardize indian cinema plz for god’s sake
For a second I had thought that A. Chopra would have come up with an intersting story line. Ah! This is in-sufferable even if you fast forward the whole thing…. Just another YR nonsense full of itself…
hiten rocked man…. i loved his timing.. and chemistry with ranbir…
they shouldve had more of their scenes together…..
vishesh.. he was not annoying at all…
have you done a thesis on acting????????????
@arpita,
I found him annoying occasionally when he hams up a scene or two. No ma’am, I don’t think I need to write a thesis on acting to feel that way.