Posted by Sari
Without meaning to, Tarja and I ended up with three Salman Khan movies for our latest Bollywood treat: Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam, Chori chori Chupke Chupke and Tere Naam. The first was a vintage Sanjay Leela Bansali fare: Breathtaking sets, colours and setting up of the scenes but crap story and dialogue. See, Aish loves Salman but they do not tell Aish’s dad early enough. Daddy gets angry, orders Salman never to see Aish again and marries her off to Ajay Devgan. Ajay realises his new wife is in love with someone else and decideds to unite the star-crossed lovers even though it breaks his heart. After wandering around Budapest (substituting for Italy) and looking for Salman Aish realises it really is Ajay she loves. The end. To accuse Aish’s and Salman’s characters of acting like teenagers would be insult to teenagers. They act like they are eight years old. And chemistry between Aish and Salman? Please, it is Ajay that burns up the screen.
Chori Chori Chupke Chupke was a desi take on some elements of Pretty Woman. Rani and Salman are happily married but after a miscarriage she cannot have children. To please the jolly grandfather Amish Puri who wants to be a great-grandfather they decide to get secretly a surrogate mother for the baby. Salman’s choice ends up being prostitute Preity Zinta who moves in with the couple who relocate to – you guessed it – Switzerland. After many convoluted twists, baby is delivered, Preity has learned her own value and is ready to start a new lifev while Rani and Salman can start playing happy families. This was not bad but not especially memorable either. And if Preity’s dance when he first meets Salman is supposed to be a lap-dance, indians have a very strange idea of seductive.
Tere Naam was the most serious of the three. It is a hindi version of a story which has already been done three times and tells of a jobless bully of the neighbourhood (Salman) who falls for the nice girl on the block (Bhoomika Chawla – is she related to Juhi?). It begins lightly enough but turns soon into much darker when Salman can’t control his temper and ends up in mental asylum. Bhoomika’s role should have been played by Manisha Koirala and Salman should have for once kept his shirt on, then this might have worked. Now he tries but the shirtless-Salman stereotype just gets in the way and Bhoomika is a bit too innocent and goody to project anything that Salman might be interested in. The title track is nice, tho.
Eating Muffins 