“It begins on an electric note, the big, bad rockstar escaping from a fight, hair blowing in the wind as he races through the streets of Rome (or is it Prague?) to jump straight into a crowd waiting for him. From then on, it goes downhill, and spectacularly so.
Imtiaz Ali has discovered his baroque side and it is a terrible thing to behold. Everything is in excess. Ranbir Kapoor as Janardhan Jakhar, the naive Haryanvi boy trying to flirt with Heer Kaul, the elusive St Stephen’s beauty, is too much of a buffoon, and as Jordan, the angry rocker, he’s a little too raging bull. Newbie Nargis Fakhri is painful to watch, her mobile mouth overpowering her face, never quite pulling off the “neat and clean” stunner who wants to get her hands and feet dirty with a bit of rough and absolutely cringingly bad as the unhappy wife whose life is slowly slipping away.
And whenever I see Shernaz Patel in any movie these days, it is an automatic Sanjay Leela Bhansali alert: I know there’s trouble ahead and it will involve several medical/legal issues which she will try explaining to the audience (“the blood count is improving” or “it’s a miracle”) but fail.”
“But instead of taking the audience along on his journey of pain, the audience is increasingly frustrated. Too many things are left unexplained. How does Janardhan become such a symbol of rage — does it really just take a single act of breaking in and entering a foreign country to make him the emblem of Free Tibet, angry Kashmiris and angry Khalistanis? Why does Heer not just run away with him?
I think one problem with the film is that it is about a grand passion, and mainstream Hindi cinema is not equipped to show a grand romance except in the most inane form. So while the young couple kiss each other with great gusto, they can’t do much more. Ali’s journey into the recesses of an artist’s soul remains superficial, amplified only by its tokens — a phiran in Kashmir, a group of gypsies in Prague, a Haryanvi haveli for Delhi’s semi-urbanites. Planes, cars, motorcycles. Take whatever mode of transport you will, you come right back to the single fact: this is a film that lacks discipline. All the Rumi quotations of the world cannot provide either.”
Tags: Ranbir Kapoor Reviews Rockstar
