The Hindu : Other States / Orissa News : High on hype, low on content

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Sunday, Jul 05, 2009
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High on hype, low on content

In sync: Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor.

Film: Kambakkth Ishq

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor

Direction: Sabir Khan

It is yet another pop film – high on hype, low on deliverance. Akshay Kumar has specialised in this variety – the tales of a goofy but lion-hearted common man who can desire and get whatever he wants – something Bachchan achieved in the late ‘70s with Manmohan Desai. The good old khiladi has got what it takes. Nobody can touch him in action and his comic timing is improving with geometrical progression. He can get away with the si lliest of lines and scripts with conviction.

Alas! These are different times. Today to suspend disbelief you need at least a thin board of reason and debutant Sabir Khan is no Desai.

The film is high on style and chutzpah. It starts with a bang and the end is equally high on decibel count but in between it simply meanders. Though the actors give their best, the jokes are mostly pedestrian, at times crude, situations mundane and even if you leave your mind in a deep freeze, chances are it will force its way back by intermission. A girl, that too a surgeon, doesn’t know whether the boy (somebody whom she hates), she was with for a night made love with her or not. And when the boy’s brother assures he didn’t, the girl’s heart changes.

Touted as the story of sexes, it is about a brave heart Hollywood stuntman, Viraj (Akshay Kumar) from Punjab, who believes girls are good for only one thing and that thing is not marriage! A surgery student, Simrita (Kareena Kapoor), who part times as a model, also believes all men think the way the stuntman does and that stuntmen know only one meaning of action. Their paths cross when Viraj’s brother (Aftab Shivdasani) gets married to the surgeon’s friend (Amrita Arora). Rest of the storyline moves on expected lines.

Sabbir seems to have forgotten that love withers with predictability. Its very essence is surprise and amazement.

To make love a prisoner of the mundane is to take its passion and lose it forever. Kareena has given it all as the snob surgeon and looks very much the part.

In the glamour quotient, even Denise Richards pales in comparison.A beautiful canvas doesn’t guarantee a credible picture.

ANUJ KUMAR

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