There isn’t anything new that I am going to say if you have already read the countless reviews floating around.

Firstly, it is not a great movie, but it is not a bad movie. 

As an audience I think it is important to know when to question and when not to. Some movies themselves ask to be questioned and examined (case in point Memento, Matrix), but I would rather judge you if you came up with logical flaws in a movie like Gunda (If you haven’t seen it, stop reading immediately and go watch it). This is formally known as suspension of disbelief.

Ghajini as an entertainer wasn’t something I could complain about as a whole (although I liked the Tamil version better, I don’t want to make this a Tamil Hindi conflict. I leave that to the politicians). It was a tight movie and I watched it in the same frame of mind that I used to watch those Amitabh movies on DD1 every Friday and Saturday. For each of those movies, I used to argue with my mother and all my exam marks would be cited before I would be finally given the permission to watch them; just to see some random villian bashing and action sequences, but it used to be fun. As time passed, there was the odd action movie where you really rooted for the protagonist (e.g. Ghulam) like you did in those Amitabh movies. Of course, the audience in 2008 thinks it is more intelligent which is a potential drawback, but I fail to understand how an audience is intelligent if it cannot decide correctly what to overlook and what to analyze; for the simple reason that Ghajini is not Memento although I would be glad if the makers of Memento took some action for the obvious plagiarism. Enough ranting. Movie details now.

Aamir Khan does justice to his role (but he was far better in Ghulam, another revenge saga), Jiah Khan makes an unimpressive debut (she did not debut in Nishabd, her legs did), Asin was probably better in the Tamil version, but doesn’t give any reason to complain in the Hindi version too. The background music by A.R. Rahman surprised me as it seemed uninspired ! A. Murugadoss basically has to copy his Tamil version frame by frame, and is decent. 

Oh yes it had its share of cheesy lines that completely cracked me up at times :

Jiah Khan, on a bike with Aamir riding pillion : Woh log kahin ja rahe hain.
Aamir : Peecha karo !

(Don’t come and ask what was funny there.)

But overall, it wasn’t boring. It is a good movie a few years ago or a few states south. Don’t be too excited about the movie, and you won’t be disappointed.

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