If
you got vegetables and spices, you can chop them up and make a salad. Or you
can make Ratatouille. Jab Tak Hai Jaan is vegetable salad served just like
that. It has an unhealthy dose of nauseating romance, tears, song and dance. And
of course.. Lots of vitamin M poured in.
With
a story and cast like that he could have done so much more, but no; Yash Chopra
chose to serve this story raw and unpolished, a collage of all the cliches he previously created. What could have ended in an hour
and a half and made people smile in the end, was dragged to a full three hours
and made the audience take naps and set high scores in a few video games,
waiting to escape from the same old drama, heartbreak and cheesy dialogues. There
was Anushka Sharma in the same old tomboy role. Katrina Kaif in the pretty Barbie doll role and King Khan striking his signature pose at every
opportunity available.
Let’s
start from the beginning. Major Samar Anand is the chief of the Indian army
bomb diffusion squad. He’s so daring he doesn’t even want to wear a safety suit
while diffusing bombs. He just digs into the bomb and pokes around and voila!
Bomb diffused! How? Oh come on.. He’s the hero. He’ll always choose the right
wire to cut.
Enter
Akira Rai- Documentary filmmaker for Discovery channel, completely down to
earth, bold and daring enough for two men put together. And of course, as per
norm, she is completely devoid of girly emotions like love and romance. A girl
who doesn’t remember crying in her whole life, she finds out about the most
touching love story of Major Samar Anand.
Now
we dive into the memories of Samar, where the typical love story between him
and Meera begins. There’s always a rich girl asking God for a handsome husband,
and a poor guy working double shifts, and a richer fiancé who has no idea what’s
going on. She’s usually good at acting in her own charming way, but Meera in
the movie sounds like a dumb rich kid who did not really have to be smart to
get her work done. And Samar, talented and bursting with energy, teaches her
how to live life and use her brains more than her impeccable manners. The poor Samar
sweeps her right off her feet. She’s torn between obeying her father and
following her heart. She ends up dumping him, and don’t worry about spoilers
here because why else would Samar be in the Indian army ten years later trying
so hard to die?
But
Akira finds the story amazing, cries for it and marvels at her tears. So
obviously, being a filmmaker, she goes after him to get a story. Well, I guessed
that an hour before it happened.
When
after 90 sleepy minutes there was an interval we had nothing to wait for in the
next half. All the bearable songs were already over, we had had enough of
Samar’s bike and uniform and wondered who designed Katrina’s clothes to make
her look fat with beefy legs. Music was a little disappointing; most songs
sounded stale and easy to forget. We had
no idea, that the second half will actually have a story and it will be a game
called “I know what will happen next”.
Jab Tak Hai Jaan has two reasons to become a huge hit. One is that it was the last
one by the legend and people will ‘respect’ it, and second is the Anushka
Sharma in shorts and plunge-neck dancing around the army camp. I have new
respect for YC who made his signature so strong in his movies that any given
scene can be identified as a ‘typical’ Yash Chopra work. That is what his final
movie will be. Typical. With all due respect, 2 on 5.
