I never, ever thought I'd get sick of seeing Priyanka Chopra's lovely face, but hey, there's a first time for everything.
Went to see What's Your Rashee last night on a whim because I trusted Ashutosh Gowariker so much that I didn't care how far I had to travel (30 mins, so, ok, not too bad) or how many tests I had to study for. It was Ashutosh Gowariker, yaar! How could anything possibly go wrong?
Well. In the movie, Harman Baweja plays a guy who has to find a bride by the 20th of the month. He puts out some type of personal ad and, thanks to his dashing good looks, is flooded with responses. To narrow them down, he decides he will only meet one girl for each zodiac sign. All 12 of these women are played by Priyanka Chopra. YAWN. Here's the thing (in my humble opinion): Priyanka did a fine job of acting "different" for each character (and she deserves praise for this--this is the first time any actress anywhere has played 12 roles in one film!), but she just wasn't interesting enough to keep me entertained for 12 poorly written mini-stories. Gosh, I really feel bad saying that, because I could tell she tried to give each underwritten character their own identity. But the film was so drawn out that it was boring nonetheless, and I walked out feeling like Priyanka and I needed some space. Then we had her paired with a dud like Harman Baweja who's less exciting than my microbiology professor, and, well, there you have it (And this guy is supposed to play Siddarth's character in the Hindi version of Bommarillu?!?Say it ain't so!).
Why didn't Ashutosh Gowariker go the cameo-role route and have 12 "surprise" actresses pop up to represent each sign? Then at least I would have had something to look forward to other than the ending credits (literally--I spent most of the last hour praying that each woman would be the last and that we'd already covered all the rashees, only to discover, to my dismay, that nope, we hadn't met the Leo girl yet...ARGH!!).
I can't help thinking that the film may have worked had it been a more charismatic duo than Harman and Priyanka. I'm thinking Anil Kapoor and Sridevi could have pulled this off back in the day, or even better, what about Rani and Abhishek? Now wouldn't that have been a blast?
More bad news: The song picturizations were boring (except for the very last one which was really cool--see below under "The Good News") and awkwardly placed, a shame since most of them were actually really pretty. 90% of them felt like fillers. I cannot tell you how badly I am jonesin' for a good song picturization! Each new film seems to be let down after let down. :(
It was interesting(and quite bothersome) that it just seemed to be assumed that Harman's character was such a "good catch". Like he got to pick from 12 girls who would be just elated to end up with a guy like him. Sure, a couple of them said no, but they had external reasons for doing so like not wanting to leave India or rush into marriage. Why couldn't more of the girls just say no because...well, because they just didn't feel there was anything there? Couldn't there have been one girl who said, "I'm just not really attracted to you like that, but we can still be friends"?
One more nagging gripe and then I'll stop complaining: The ending wasn't all that, and there were stones left unturned a.k.a some of the subplots weren't sufficiently resolved. Not all of my questions were answered, and that sucks after you sit through a 3 hour+ snoozefest.
THE GOOD NEWS:
*Ashutosh Gowariker is still a kick-a** director, and the cinematographer did some nifty camera tricks. This certainly doesn't fall flat because of poor execution. The scenes were colorful and crisp and some of the shots were really gorgeous.
*Priyanka's so prrrety. And now we know that she's not afraid to bare down and scrub the makeup off to play a quirky character. I don't think Aishwarya would have played someone like, for example, Anjali (The first girl Yogesh meets).
*Harman is hot. Why couldn't I have bumped into him when I lived on Sunnyside and Ravenswood? ;) He's not a bad dancer, either, but I don't think he's half as good as he thinks he is.
*We see women with power and real jobs. One is a doctor, the other president of a corporation (at least I think she was president--she sure held a lot of clout).
*The last song was really neat. Like Aamir in Ghajini, its picturized on multiple Priyankas, and she does an awesome job of dancing differently for each character. Oh, and the guitar song was pretty, but got boring after awhile due to poor picturization.
And--**** BIG SPOILER ****--- Yogesh ends up marrying the girl with my zodiac sign! Hooray!(****END SPOILER****).
****UPDATE...LATER THIS EVENING******
After writing this post and reading Darshit's review, I went to go see Wake Up, Sid starring Ranbir Kapoor and Konkona Sen. I really enjoyed it, so much so that it'll be awhile before I can say anything other than "Omg! That was so awesome!!!". So if you're looking for something to see this weekend, bypass What's Your Rashee and check out Wake Up, Sid instead.
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