Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

Am I the only one who thinks that Jodaa Akbar is such a major bore?! Hritik Roshan is a hunk alright, Aishwariya a beauty, the costumes are wonderful, the décor (as in the palaces) very grandiose, but the ‘feelings’ inexistent AND the story! What exactly was the story there? I just couldn’t make out… A love story? The victory of the moghul Jalal? The wedding between a muslim and hindu? The possessive nurse? It took ages to unfold and was so painfully slow. The movie was a 3.5 hr one and Mads informed me that it initially, was a 4hr torture.

Whatever the story, I had loads of fun ‘watching’ the movie. The girls and I went for it after classes… PrettyPlum wouldn’t ever dare to go for a movie in her uniform, so she made the extra effort to go home, shower and get into casual clothes. If you’ve read about PrettyPlum and my other best buddy Mads, you wouldn’t be surprised on the extra care that PP took and the fact that Mads landed there in her uniform, regardless of the issues PP seemed to have. The cinema crowd consisted for the most of ‘real indians’, not the kind of Indo-Martians that we are. So these folks turned out to be our entertainers for the duration of the movie…

The honeymooners were taking pics of each other from all angles (in the cinema!) and even asked other people to take their photos. Now if you asked me what’s so exotic about Martian cinemas, I would answer, us Martians. But since the Martians were in a minority that day, I just cannot fanthom what makes a dark room with too many small seats any special. The flash had us in giggles and guffaws alright.

The speccy loud fat guy had come alone. When he later got to know that some of his friends had come, one of whom, a woman without her hubby, he proposed that she come sit next to him. My eyes were ready to pop out! Throughout the movie the loud guy made himself ‘heard’ with ‘wahh wahh’ whenever he apparently was impressed with his beloved India’s beautiful palaces, with the clothes, dialogues… He would clap on songs. The funniest part was the supposedly ‘love-making’ scene. The loud guy started clapping, and as the moves would get more ‘sensuous’, more IT, he would stop and observe, then clap again! Dahhh what a clown non?

The movie itself was quite weird, specially the part when Jodaa (aishwariya)’s mom gives her poison to drink because she were to marry a muslim. The girls and I were so ROTFL. We did obtain some ugly stares, but poison, really?! There was yet another part where Jalal (Hritik) is supposedly trying to court Jodaa by showing off his muscles, with sweat dripped along his spine, the gurls and I just couldn’t control ourselves and laughed big time. Aish who had to have the ‘sex appeal’ too, wore tiny bra-like blouses and they didn’t miss to show her cleavage quite a few times. You can’t expect a dhoom, but still, they did whatever they could with the traditional ‘ghagra’ that a Rajput woman wears.

Additionnally, they tried to give the ‘bomb appeal’ to Jodaa by granting her the sword fighting scenes. We expected some of the sword fighting on the battle-field, but all she did was sword fight with Jalal, which was so so utterly ridiculous. I felt ashamed for both the actors who looked so silly and directors who probably thought they had really hit the jackpot with the Indian fighterwoman.

Sometime during the first half of the movie, the smell of Indian food rose into the cinema… of spices and massala, of channa! ET voila! The Indians who occupied the front row were passing along plastic plates of food! I wish they would pass the plates to the next row, but no such luck. Food is usually not allowed in cinemas and yet here, they had bowls, and all sorts of things! Needless to say, once he had finished dinner, fat guy started belching.

Come intermission time, aka tea time for the Indians, for this time, the distribution of chai started… and that too not in plastic cups, but in mugs please. These people had come really loaded for the movie.

So! Jodaa Akbar is sure a hit movie when the audience turns out to be the kind we had on Friday, else I would advise keeping away from it.
I can’t make up my mind to the key question from PP, “is Lage chunar mein dag worse or better?”

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