I decided to take a break today from work after an enormous amount of work I put in yesterday as described in my earlier post. So I took the liberty today of watching Umaro Jaan. So how was it you ask? Well let me put it this way. If there was ever a test to see how big an Ash fan you are, here it is. Go and sit through Umrao Jaan. I did.

I wouldn’t have gone for this movie in first place but yesterday I was enticed into doing it when Ash tempted me to eat the ‘forbidden apple’ while watching ‘Rendezvous With Simi Garewal’ and I regret it every bit.

J. P Dutta has made the big switch from war movies to musical and I think he fails miserably (in fact his talent at handling war movies also came into question with LOC).
Umrao Jaan (Aishwarya Rai) is the story of a beautiful girl who is forcibly sold into a brothel, falls in love with a young Nawab (Abhishek Bachchan) on her first dance and as events unfold looses her love. The Nawab’s father is opposed to their love and throws him out. But one fine day the Nawab dumps his love as hastily as he picked it up and returns to his palace and then it is upto her to win him back with the help of Faisal( Sunil Shetty) who is also madly in love with her. But she is again dumped by her lover, by her family and pretty much everyone else. Phew even my dumbest friend who applied for MS didn’t get so many rejects.

The point is that the story wants you to believe that they both are madly in love with each other when the screenplay has taken no pains at all to build such emotional bond. The plots seemed loosely connected or was it the slow pace that put me to sleep. But, what is sad is the fact that J.P. Dutta has learnt nothing from LOC. The era of three and half hour films is over and today good editing ( as recently seen in Lage Raho Munnabhai) is everything. And though this is supposed to be a musical the songs are rank mediocre. Annu Malik seems to be running out of inspirations.

As for Ash, yes she dazzles you with those looks but clearly its not enough to carry the movie through. After the movie I tried to remember one Ash movie that has turned to be a Box Office super hit and surprisingly there was none. I hope she gets her priorities right soon because she can’t ride this wave of popularity without results forever. Her age is going to catch up with her one day and then she would look like someone who was famous for sometime. Wake up Ash.

As for her die hard fans, my advise is don’t go for this movie unless they promise you a dinner with Ash or something like that.