Review : Salaam-e-ishq

Rating: Above Average (3.5/5)

Genre : Romance
Year : 2007
Running time : 3 hrs and 45 minutes
Director : Nikhil Advani
Cast : Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Ayesha Takia, Akshay Khanna, Tinnu Anand, Vidya Balan, John Abraham, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, Isha Koppikar, Sohail Khan, Govinda, Shannon Esra, Anjana Sukhani

SALAAM-E-ISHQ ( SEI ) : NO WARM, FUZZY FEELING !

After watching this almost 4 hour extravaganza, I feel like I feel after a large and heavy meal ; I liked eating it, but it was way too oily for consumption and I don’t feel particularly enthused afterwards. Rumored to be based on the romantic flick “Love actually”, which I loved actually, I can’t help but compare. Yes, they both feature romantic stories, of couples who are inter-connected with each other through friendship, relationships or just off-chance meetings, and one of the romantic situations in SEI is a take-off on the one from “Love Actually”, but that’s where the similarity ends.

I went in to see “Love Actually” for Hugh Grant, and came away a bleeding-heart romantic, on a cotton-candy- the-world-is-beautiful-and-the-sun-is-shining high. It left me with this warm, fuzzy feeling which SEI failed to deliver. And that really is the crux of the problem, after all that hype and hoopla – it fails to deliver.

SEI features 6 stories of 6 young couples in different situations, and different quandaries. All their problems are apparently caused by love, too much, too little, love for the wrong people, love for people who don’t want it, unrequited love, amnesia-afflicted love and what have you. Out of the 6 stories, 5 stay with you, while the 6th drops off the radar after a while, resurfacing only at the end for a little comedic relief.

Each of the 5 stories is moderately developed, the most believable being the Hindu-Muslim couple – the Ashutosh-Tehzeeb story, simply because of Vidya Balan’s strong performance, and John’s lazy charm . The starlet hungry to make it big, hatching up a publicity stunt which backfires – the Kkamini-Rahul (Priyanka-Salman) deal I had a little trouble believing, since it was a little too stretched – lot’s off treacly love, tears and under-developed characters. And really who was Rahul anyway, and why in the first place was he involved – the director never cleared that up and it didn’t help the believability any. The Stephanie-Raju (Shannon and Govinda) pair, she searching for her faithless Indian boyfriend and he the desi taxi-driver who ferries her around the country was sweet and reminded me of Marisa Tomei’s “Only You”. And the Shiven-Gia (Akshaye-Ayesha) yuppie marriage fiasco, with the groom with the cold-feet had me enthused because of Takia’s innocent naivete and Akshay’s zesty performance. The 5th story was of the stable married couple – Vinay-Seema (Anil and Juhi), whose 15 year marriage is threatened when the husband wants more than just boring, suburban life. This one closely resembled the Emma Thompson-Alan Rickman storyline in “Love Actually”, but was not portrayed with as much feeling (I remember weeping buckets for Emma’s character). The 6th couple’s story was Isha-Sohail as a rural couple unable to give vent to their passion, and I fear suffered the most on the editor’s table. It wasn’t even a love quandary really – just well-done attempts at humor.

The stories almost run in parallel, they develop initially, get to critical mass simultaneously, everything emphasized and every emotion underlined with music and dancing, implode and then resolve towards the end. The actors do fairly well, special mentions to Govinda who plays a Bollywoodised cabbie to the hilt, and the vibrant Akshaye Khanna. Salman has slimmed down, while Ayesha has gotten chubby, although she still looks gorgeous.The director transitions from story to story with relative panache, picturesque shots, and stylish edits. The songs are plentiful, well-picturised and pleasant. And some of the dialogues are so charmingly pretty and so romantically sugar-sweet that I, sucker that I am, longed to write them down.

Still, the movie was too long; “Love actually” did the job and did it better in half the time. Of course it didn’t have the songs and dances, and the Bollywood baggage which SEI has. Where this film suffers is in it’s pace, especially in the first half, where the film moves forward languidly. Also the director tries to tell us a lot, and shows too little (lots of captioning telling us the dates and locations of situations). The treatment could have also been subtler for love stories; at times it’s a bit in your face. All the glitz and glamour notwithstanding, I wasn’t too keen on any pair, although they all seemed OK. None of the many characters in SEI get time or space to develop their own, quirky personalities, into real people I’d care about or root for. And that I think stops this mediocre film from being spectacular.

This is fairly decent fare for a weekend watch, but don’t expect to come away awed with the magnificence of love. And this from someone who’s seen “Love actually” 5 times.