Kaminey –Aaj Kal

Kaminey - catchy title, tantalizing music, brilliant lyrics, teamed with teasing trailers.

Love Aaj Kal – bad title, remixed music, inaudible singer's voices, indecipherable lyrics.

Kaminey – had Vishal written all over it in a good way, dialogues, background score, screenplay etc etc.

Love Aaj Kal - had Saif smudged on it, of course forcefully, it was like watching Saif –Aaj Kal, and he was everywhere, in every scene, even in voice-over. Typical ‘I’m-the-Producer-I’ll-mouth-the-best-lines’ attitude.

Kaminey – without doubt is best movie of the year so far (or till Ishqiya releases), it was crisp, with zero time-waste, every scene was neatly done, but it all went bad in that ‘Free-for-all’ shooting fiasco towards the end.

And of course, one can’t stop comparing this with his earlier master pieces, Maqbool (I call it ‘complete’ movie), Omkara, Blue Umbrella; Here I guess, he tried to pack too much in too little time, may be that was the whole point of the movie, trying to pack everything, and relating all small details seamlessly, and he succeeded on doing that.

Like as I said earlier, it was all good, but that ‘free-for-all’ shooting scene spoiled it for me, and since everything was happening so fast that one starts to alienate from it instead of getting sucked in. It simple didn’t give time to ‘feel’ for characters, like in Maqbool’s Maqbool, Nimmi - one can feel their angst and helplessness, like in Omkara even after watching it ‘n’ times one prays for a different ending. Like in Blue Umbrella, Biniya’s glee makes one happy, and Nand Kishore’s plight after social boycott was moving.

Here, romance between Guddu n Sweety was unconvincing, I don’t know what those ‘Bengali Brothers’ were doing in this movie, Tashi was unconvincing, he was introduced in a fantastic way in that boat scene, but after that whole character took a nose-dive. Lele-Lobo were good but again can’t help comparing them with brilliant cops duo of Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah of Maqbool. Bhope was really good, very fluid, very menacing, neatly done by Amol Gupte (earlier I used to think of him some old guy who ghost-directed Taare Zameen Par’)

Another thing, don’t know what’s the hype about Shahid’s work here; he was overshadowed by Priyanka in all their scenes, or by Amol Gupte or Mikhail or White horses or ‘Dhan ta nan’!

In one line, it is a good movie but not a great one by any stretch of imagination.

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Pheww, forgot to write about LAK, hmmm..not now, some other time!!