Friday, January 18, 2008

Yaadein

I think the strangely boring crocodile attack scene is emblematic of the problem with the movie as a whole: even when you think that it has the potential to become so bad that it's good, it pulls short of amusing over-the-top-ness and just stays bad. It remains securely in the dud zone. To quote myself, after my sister asked whether the movie was boring or just cheesy [warning -- spoilers galore]:

I don't think boring is exactly the right adjective. Dissatisfying, I'd say. The movie sets up lots of expectations, but everything just kind of fizzles out. It's like the crocodile scene -- they set it up so you think the crocodile is actually going to pose some sort of threat, and then it just wanders off in a really anticlimactic way. Another good example is the scene near the end where Ronit's uncle has him locked up in the house to force him to marry the girl he doesn't want to marry. Ronit punches out the goons his uncle hired to keep him there, grabs a car, and kidnaps the girl he's in love with. You think the movie's finally going somewhere, but then all they do is ride a boat up and down the Thames and sing about how they love each other. Really? That was your plan? And then two minutes after they land, Ronit has a conversation with his mom and goes back to the house. So you've really got to wonder what the point of that whole escape sequence was.

I think a major part of the problem is that the movie can't decide what it's about. If you asked me to describe the overarching plotline in K3G, I'd say it's about a family that's been broken up and needs to come back together again. If you asked me to describe what Yaadein's about, I'd have to say something like, "Well, there's a man, and his wife dies, and he loves Coke and his three daughters, and they move to India, and two of the daughters get married, and one of them has problems in her marriage, and the dad unwittingly arranges for the guy his third daughter really loves to marry some other girl instead, and his daughter pretends not to love the guy because she doesn't want to hurt her dad, and the guy escapes from his evil uncle but doesn't do anything about it, and then the guy apparently decides that he'll only marry the girl he loves if the shareholders of his uncle's company tell him that love is more important than money, and then the other girl turns out not to be evil after all because she doesn't insist on marrying the guy who just told the whole world that he wouldn't marry her if it weren't for money and duress, and then the daughter won't marry the guy because his family doesn't respect her, and then the family decides that they do respect her, and then the movie ends." There's no unifying theme or plotline that I can discern. Well, there is this idea they talk about in the very beginning and at the very end about dads being friends with their daughters, but I can't tell whether the movie thinks that this is the good or bad idea. I thought I figured it out at one point in the film, but then the movie kept changing directions. It's almost like the screenplay was written piece by piece by about 50 different people (or perhaps trained monkeys) and each person only got to see the scene directly preceding the scene he or she was in charge of writing. Each scene seems to fit more or less with the one before it, but as a whole it just doesn't flow.


Another theory I have to explain this movie is that we were all just punk'd by the director. I think his goal was to make the very worst movie he could that people would still go to and expect would be good. So, for instance, he cast very attractive people, but then he had the costumer uglify them as much as possible. He asked everyone to overact and be as annoying as possible. (Strangely enough, though, Kareena didn't go along with this plan. After hating her in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, I was really surprised to realize that I actually found her to be the most sympathetic person in the whole movie.) He arranged for a good soundtrack, but then ruined the song picturizations with the weird costumes and dancing. He put in elements that looked like they would be exciting and then somehow made them boring. So, good job, director! You achieved your goal. I was punk'd.

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