…Clueless

Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na - The movie everyone’s going crazy over. Atleast a dozen people I met told me what a splendid movie it was. But somehow, I had this gut feeling that the movie is just pure hype and nothing more. And I must say my gut does a real fine job of prediction!!

The movie is just watchable. The director tries real hard in the first half to try and differentiate the movie but somehow the magic doesn’t work for me. Unlike the others, I found the first half boring, loaded with unneeded songs. There was a direction to the story but it still seemed incomplete. You know, the kind of feeling you get when you’re running for the examination hall and you fear you might have just forgotten your admit card.

The cast was fresh, young and really talented. The two leads, Genelia D’Souza and Maamoo Jaan ka baccha, Imran Khan did justice to their roles to quite an extent. The female must really work on her dialogue delivery - it’s not cute, it’s IRRITATING. The only other newcomer that manages to impress me is Prateik Babbar. For me, he was the finest actor in the movie amongst the newbies. His expressions, his dialogues… everything was very amusing and didn’t fail to impress the audience which was in spilts whenever he said a word. On top of that, he looked very handsome - better than Imran Khan in my opinion. Imran Khan looks a tad bit too sissy. But, that’s the way he is supposed to look in the movie I guess.

Naseeruddin Shah, Arbaaaz Khan, Sohail Khan and Paresh Rawal went about their work in an impeccable manner. Ratna Pathak Shah was also good in her role as Imran’s mother.

The movie does not fail in the acting department. It fails in the storytelling department. Somehow, I could not relate to the movie. The characters, the environment and the situations seemed unreal to me. Even though the way the actors were made to dress up, the way they looked was very real. They did not look like a million bucks all the time. In fact, some of them were down right ugly.

The music is also not really something to cheer about. Only two songs, the Aditi one and the Pappu one have some life. But even they don’t seem to be from A.R. Rahman. They sounded more like Vishal and Shekhar or Pritam compositions.

The story seemed strange and weird in the first half to me. Everything went about too fast. It was like some random stuff pieced together. The second half, even though slow made more sense. It had a definite direction. One more thing to be commented upon is the chemistry between the lead couple. Genelia and Imran look good together. They look young, spunky and bubbly. The depiction of two doting best friends was perfect.

The movie is a good enough effort for a first time director with an almost inexperienced cast. I would give the movie before the interval 2 out of 5. This rating increases by another point by the time the movie is over. So, my final rating would be 3/5.

Last but not the least, don’t go to the theatre expecting another Rang De Basanti or Jab We Met. Expect a movie which has a clichéd theme which is shown in a new avatar. Expect nothing more. Does not live up to the hype for me.