It is written

Two movies this past weekend, the theme of both being destiny... one depicts destiny in the backdrop of our traditional indian value system where a father on this death bed emotionally blackmails his daughter and then Rab Ne (read father on death bed) decides the Jodi and the other depicts Slumdog kids who are destined to be together...


Slumdog was well narrated with 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' in the backdrop and every question taking us back to the protagonist (Jamal Khan's) life... The first hour of the movie was gripping, some excellent shots of Mumbai, the filth, the dirt in which street kids grow up, the perils of being a street kid who are forced into begging and the females into prostitution! But somehow I feel the later half lost the magical touch of the first half... even if Danny Boyle and Lavleen Tandon wanted to make the love story the real meat of the movie, I feel it could have done without the 'masala'... but that's me, my expectation went sky high with the first hour and weren't suitably met in the second. Rehman's score is FABULOUS and that's replaced Yuvraj in my car now, especially Liquid Dance, Dreams on Fire and paper planes



Ab Rab Ne ke baare mein kya batayein? SRK started off well acting as a simpleton but started to HAM as soon as got into the shoes of 'Raj' - though the dialogue
"Raj - naam to suna hi hoga" actually cracked me up! Call me filmi but such stupid humor does make me laugh. Anushka Sharma plays her role well as a debutant and Vinay Pathak (though I expected more) is the versatile best... Adi could have obviously done more with this actor but I guess the story was only about the jodi! The problem I had with this movie was 'they don't make such jodis anymore' and secondly in contemporary India you CANNOT show a MCP who makes a statement like "...lekin use pyaar to is Suri se karna padega"... come'on Adi Chopra, how can you show your traditional roots to such an extent and expect the audience to accept such hypocratic crap! I would have been much much more happier walking out of the theatre if SRK would have transformed into a Raj or atleast accepted that he wants to transform into Raj for Tanni... but then it would have been Raj Ne Bana Di Jodi... guess Rab (read Adi) didn't want that!

But I liked the different perspectives on one topic... both in the indian context, one very traditional and other social, sensitive but yet contemporary!