Lesson No 1: To create music, you need to have a tragedy touch your heart. To be a rockstar, you need to wear pyjama pants, have unkempt hair and a sullen look and make a lot of noise while jumping up and down.
Lesson No 2: If you love someone, you need to kiss every time you see each other. Whether you like it or not.
That's all I can help you with. If you still want to go ahead and waste a beautiful weekend, go watch Rockstar.
A good entertainer needs a great cast, a good story, some action, beautiful music, some comedy, great locales, emotions, feelings.. or SRK. Unfortunately, Rockstar has little of it, and fails to capitalize on what it does have - the beautiful Nargis Fakhri.
Ranbir is disappointing, too much of his sullen and unkept look, an idiot act that starts irritating you very quickly, stupid jokes that are forced into the script (he calls the Czech city Parag, and asks questions like "tumhare blood ki factory kharab hai kya?") and a character that faisl to evoke any sympathy or empathy. Nargis is beautiful, but needed the camera to love her, and it doesn't always flatter her. She also needed a dress designer who would bring out the amazing woman she is, not make her look like an old lady past her prime. When she does go western, she sizzles the screen - some of her initial shots in college, the dance in the black dress, the short dress where they have the long kiss dialog.. if she dresses like that, she will give all B town leading ladies sleepless nights. She loses out on acting though, and has a long way to go. To start with, she could try keeping the dialogue delivery a little less animated.
Kashmir and Prague as locales are as beautiful as they come... but just like Nargis, are under-utilized, which is such a shame.
The music doesn't rock, it sucks. Unless you count head banging to "Sadda Haqq" as uber cool rock. The lyricist obviously didn't report for work. And AR Rahman is probably suffering burn out.
And the story. Sorry, but between the 213 shots of Ranbir mouthing Sadda Haqq in his pyjamas, mostly repeated, I seem to have missed it. Something about staking a girl, forcing a few kisses in the name of love, becoming a devdas after her marriage, tracking her and stalking her again, becoming an overnight media sensation after getting deported for house break, losing it, helping her get her bone marrow back, head banging, getting a reputation... and I am not even sure about the ending... do they live happily every after, or does she die? I really did not get that part... there was too much head banging going on. It's one thing to take some cinematic liberties, it's another to rely on them alone!
And yes, I have a personal issue with movies which promote peer-pressure drinking, showing the middle finger, and stalking for kisses as a way to express your love.
I didn't enjoy the movie. If you do watch it, do let me know how you found it! Maybe I was just having a bad day!
9 comments:
I haven't seen the movie yet but if i go by your review then it just makes me appreciate the movie "rock on" even more!
Oh, Rock On was a completely different league. But hey, audiences seem to have enjoyed and liked Rockstar, and some folks have been giving rave reviews... so go check it out and find out for yourself, I might be a minority!
May be it was a bad day Or you just need to slow down your pace of movie watching.
LOL, come on, don't tell me I find good movies bad because I watch too many movies? :)
By the way, did you see it?
Sorry to hear you had a bad day at the movies. Rockstar isn't such a bad movie but it is highly flawed in the sense that I definitely felt frustrated in the knowledge that this film could have been out of this world.
For me the lead actress was a deal-breaker. I mean she is good looking and all, and possesses true Kashmiri features but if that it the only thing Imtiaz Ali decided his female part on, then it was a grave mistake. This movie had the potential to become a great love story.
I went in the movie hall thinking, this would be the transformation of a simple youth to an uncouth brash music icon, however it was a regular boy meets girl tale. Which is not so bad since Imtiaz has transformed seemingly mundane relationships into very involving screenplays in the past. However, at no point I felt that these two people were meant for each other. Like a sufi tale of angst and mysticism that it purported to be (if the name Heer was anyting to go by), this disappointingly did not even scrape the surface of the legendary love story it wanted to reference.
An amorous yarn needs very talky scenes( a hallmark of the director) and despite quite a few of them, Nargis Fakhri couldn't match Ranbir's mature work and she blew it.
Yes, for the first time I liked Ranbir's performance. Credit is due where it is and I felt it was a pitch perfect interpretation of a troubled soul.
As for the lessons that you need pain to create music, that is just a load of B*** which brings me to the music that I felt was very charming in terms of the narrative structure of the movie. It is a sign of our westernized times that we equate Rock music with juvenile anguish.
Ranbir's performance and the music ofcourse made the movie for me atleast a one-time watch.
Ray, you are right... on another day, I might have enjoyed it a bit more! :)
Katiya Karoo is a nice number, but that was it. Didn't like the rest of the tracks much.
By the way, did you know that Fakhri's actually a New Yorker with a Pakistani dad and Czech mom?
The end says it all- "Nadan parinde ghar aa ja"- Let the cast live or die, its time for you to go back home
Yeah, during the promotions with everyone going gaga over the leading lady, they had mentioned the Pakistani-Czech parentage and being raised in NY. That explains the exotic looks. :) Unbelievable huh!
She had also auditioned for America's next top model. If you have not seen the video already, this is the link. She is 24 in this, which makes her 30+ at the release of Rockstar. .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_SCZOfaYwo
@Siddhesh: i really liked the movie...
Nargis's performance makes the movie a bit slow sometimes in between...but its a gr88 movie with great story handled by Imtiaz ali..
Supperb acting and performance by RK.... wow.... thats the best part....full marks to RK...
A R R's music is as usual a slow poisoning.."if you get the tunes you will love it" kind off.....
there are 14 tracks in the movie and to fit all the 14 was really a difficult task but it is done beautifully...
another thing.... You could watch a movie THE DOORS in which actually JIM MORRISON has enacted.. this movie is inspired from the same.. but beautifully handles....
@siddhesh: may be you will like the movie after watching 2nd time (i ve experienced this with couple of movies)
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