I had gone to see this movie with low expectations.. but there was a small part of me which still hoped that it would be good, because of the experience that was RDB. But this movie simply doesn't work. It is about the life of people in Delhi 6 and interwoven is a love story of an NRI and a middle class girl and aspiring singer who wants to make it big and escape, in short the pigeon "masakkali" symbolism. And the "kala bandar" fiasco is there too which ends up becoming what the film is all about. The premise was good.. but nothing held the film together.. its like they had an idea and started shooting random scenes without a script. The first half is full of misfit scenes and songs after every 2 minutes(which do nothing for the movie), which made me feel that they didn't hire an editor for this film. They couldn't make it flow. And Abhishek's character and motivations were paper thin to say the least. They knew their Delhi folk alright.. but didn't get the perception of an NRI right in my opinion. And the line "India works, because the people make it work." was one of the worst I heard, because I couldn't see why Abhisek's character would say that after what happened. How does it work? Care to explain, 'cause I couldn't understand... And the scene at the end with Amitabh Bachchan was cringe worthy and ruined the movie further. But the good points include the Delhi characters which felt straight out of real life.. even if a bit exaggerated to make a point. The hypocrisy of Indian people is aptly shown that we call someone brother and don't think twice before destroying his shop. It goes to show how we Indians excel at having multiple faces. And when Abhishek was talking about our laziness and dependence on God, I literally felt like whistling. Also, the kala bandar fiasco, inspired by a true incident shows correctly how we make hills out of ant mounds. The acting was good by pretty much all of them, except Abhishek's American accent sounded fake. Special mention to vijay raaz, divya dutta, waheeda rehman and the person who played "gobar", who excelled in my opinion. Rishi Kapoor didn't have much to work with, and Sonam managed well with looking pretty and delivering her 10 lines. Rahman's music is excellent but feels wasted at unwanted places. In short, the movie is a good collection of short snippets of life in Delhi 6 without anything holding it together except kala bandar, representing our inner evil. And if the message wasn't clear enough, they announced it again and again in the end just to make sure that the audience don't miss it. It would make no difference if u watch this or not, because the message doesn't stay with you like it did with RDB.
