December 1, 2008

Yuvvraaj- Beautiful yet Backwasss!

This man is better than Dustin Hoffman!
This review is not going to make much cohesive sense, it will be rife with dissapointment and swearing and full of pies and no pics of the actual movie though populated with the Anil-caps!
Venting time: This movie is utter shite, utter rubbish, and utterly beautiful. How can a movie be all these 3 things because Subhash Ghai made it that way, it was rubbish perhaps I should have listened to the PPCC, Filmi-girl, and everyone in the blogger world and not have paid money for this! Alas I'm the kid of our bunch and made a silly decision to buy a DVD of this! I know its terrible to buy it in that way but the cinema that would play it was 2 buses and 1 train ride, I can't risk that!He's my Yuvvraaj
Subhash Ghai was one of my favorite Anil directors when I was 8 and at that time I sat down next door on Rita's couch and watch one after the other of the Anil-Subhash movies and I laughed and whooped coz it was so funny then, but as an 18year old I revisited these movies this summer in London at Rita's and realized Subhash is rubbish.
Subhash Ghai has reoccurring elements in his movies with Anil or in general : A nasty horrible father/stepma/family member, property is usurped from the hero's family, Anil gets a good role which flourishes in, a famous oldie actor does a comeback, Verbal-battle-offs, lame rip-off of Deewar/Mother India/Sholay/Romeo+Juliet and many more, a villain with something funny to distinguish himself as a villian-->spot/white eye/funny wig/a twitch!From my fave movie 1942 A Love Story
Yuvvraaj is a gorgeous movie with great shots of Prague, great shots of Katrina faking the cello, great landscape, capturing the sweetness of my ANIL, but as much as I loved the scenery it was terrible story line. I won't even call them proper names of these brothers like Ram Balram the brothers don't even need names as they are characterized by their actions.
Immature Idiot(Salman Khan) is living in Prague everything seems to be all right with him except that he's kicked out of his house,but he's at some gorgeous school of music and he loves his girlfriend Nice Redeeming Female(Katrina Kaif) who plays the cello brilliantly. But she is a rich girl and her father Annoying Plot Twister Father(Boman Irani) wants Immature to have enough money to support her, Nice Female expresses no concern over money to Immature so why does this even come up!
Lovely song "Tu Meri Dost Hai" it was filmed nicely but then came the idiotic acid trip moment where Immature floats around in the clouds! AHHHHHHH I hate unnecessary animation it was sublime and lovely till that part then i pressed fast-forward after.
A bit sadness happens when Immature Idiot learns that Distant Father(Javed Sheikh) has died and he resolves with Plot Twister Dad to run home and get some paisa. He explains his family strife with Nice Female, and mentions that he hits EXCELLENCE Personified Gyaneshwar(Anil) who's autistic and gifted too, why the absolute hell would he hit in the first place, I felt so angry here honestly!!!!Anil-the Commando
When he's back home he meets his extended family of Westernized family including Bad Uncle with White Eye(Anjan Srivastav) who's a bad guy who wants the property to share among his other evil nephews. We also meet Abusive Idiot(Zayed Khan) who kisses his Western vamp girlfriend a lot in the movie! They all come together to read the will along with Nice Uncle with Ponytail(Mithun Chakravarty), suprise surprise Excellence Personified Gyaneshwar gets all the money. What I liked here was that Ponytail Uncle vowed to ruin all of the family if they corrupted Excellence.This is the same pic I have autographed by Anil
This is where it turned into "Rainman" instead of a horrid Tom Cruise we get Abusive and Immature who team up together to be nice to Excellence Personified Gyaneshwar get the money off the poor innocent guy and split it 50-50 and give Excellence 1% dunno how it works. Immature takes Excellence Personified to Prague where Excellence catches the eye of Nice Female who sees that he's completely gifted in music. This is where I wanted to throw pie, Immature then feels jealous of the clearly talented Excellence Personified who wants to sing in Katrina's play. Nice Female encourages him and his twangy instrument while Immature gives him "Shut up" looks for him to quieten down his geniusness! AHHHHHH sorry, then Abusive tags along to Prague and in a cute scene Excellence is encouraged by Immature to kiss Abusive on the cheek I sighed a big AWWWWWW!
In some idiotic plot devices Abusive and Immature grow to love Excellence Personified and see him for what he's worth, this was completely unsincere I wanted to jump into the movie and give my ANIL a big hug and fend off the horrid brothers. Then the 80's movie convolusions come back so the big extended family of shrews come to Prague to see the show Excellence is going to be in. In a BARSAAT CRY-inducing moment Excellence finds the truth about his idiot brothers, he can't express his feelings into words and all he can do is rage and be silent while throwing things around, and thats is FANTASTIC acting right there!
Performances are rubbish, Salman Khan is edging towards his evergreen stage of his career, I have always liked Salman but accepting a dopey idiot like Deven was a stupid move, he acts as much as he can in a badly written role.
Zayed Khan fares better as he gets more of the Tom Cruise role being horrid and abusive to poor old Anil, his kissing scenes with his vamp were unnecessary but anyway
Now ANIL lives up to his name as Excellence Personified, he gives a much more nuanced and less OTT performance than Dustin Hoffman did in "Rainman" and he adds a childlike spunk to his character, even with the fidgeting of his hands while singing the sublime and haunting "Manmohini Morey" his utter sweetness as a character gave me so many moments to cry about and the sad part when he was collapsing on stage was so sad! Anil should get some sort of award for making the portrayal of autism both sweet and subtle!
Katrina Kaif was really surprisingly good here, she looks beautiful in "Tu Muskura" and she acts really well and seems confident in this movie, I love her line "Tu ek anti-family man ho" thats gotta be the best reason to shout at Salman in this movie ever!
The rest of the cast were terrible and I felt like throwing pie at the bitchy vamp of the family who swapped Anil's inhaler. Even the kid who played Anil's friend Bala was better than they were."The mullet of excellent acting"
Yuvvraaj was one of the most disappointing movies of the whole year, I have never cried so many BARSAAT CRIES in one movie while wanting to throw a pie in the face of every horrid character in the movie! Sorry for the vent but it just sucked!

6 comments:

Filmi Girl said...

I was nodding my head in agreement with your entire review! Katrina *was* suprisingly good! Sallu *is* getting to be too "evergreen" for immature idiot roles - and what was the deal with the floating on rainbows?! I couldn't blame the audience for rolling with laughter at that bit.

Anil deserves a Filmfare Award for his performance, though!

Anonymous said...

I never thought I would see the day when you didn't like a movie, Rum! *sad*

I guess I can wait for a cold day in hell before I watch it.

Shweta Mehrotra Gahlawat said...

Yuvraj just ended up a rehash of all the movies Subhash has made in the past 20 years or so :S- trouble is, most of it seems lifted from the flop movies, not his greatest hits :) I heard he actually re-edited (per my suggestion - heeh) Yuvraaj after 1 week of release- but turns out it was too late.... :P

ajnabi said...

Awww, I'm picturing poor Anil with banana cream dripping off of his mustache... It does sound super-sucky. It's a whole new criterion for a movie's suck factor: "Well, you know, even *Rum* couldn't find anything nice to say about it." LOL

Anonymous said...

You have a picture autographed by Anil, wow! I like hime too. Yuvvraaj is a good movie and its music is the best of this year. Shocked that you didn't like it.

Rum said...

Filmi Girl- Katrina was very sympathetic to Anil which I loved, but the whole rainbow acid trip made me go AHHHHHH!

Memsaab-Lol I know, I usually put up with any kind of backwass movies but not when they hurt my Anil,

Shweta- Lol your open letter really got to him! It was a rehash of Trimurti Saudagar and every movie with brothers and usurped property

ajnabi- I would never throw pie at Anil in this movie but the others deserved a pie in the face for being so insincere

Bollywood Lover-I was shocked too that I hated the movie, the music was just amazing and Anil's performance was stellar! I got the Anil autograph for my 6th birthday and i have it on my desk to swoon at!