Ashley

Here comes another movie on the supposedly controversial issue, romantic relationship between an old man and much younger woman… age difference of 30 years to be precise in this case. A topic assured to raise lot of eyebrows and upset lot lot of fundamentalists in our country. Looking at the topic you would say… oh Amitabh did a similar movie earlier, ‘Nishabd’ which has received lot of criticism. If you happen to have seen that movie, I would suggest you to not at all get prejudiced.

The movie handles the topic very tastefully without any melodramatic effects of typical Hindi cinema and that’s what makes it worth watching. It’s a love story of 64 year old chef, Buddh (Amitabh) owner of a famous Indian Restaurant in London and 34 year old tourist lady from India, Neena (Tabu). He is a man with temper and she is the lady with attitude, and both can manage and understand each other very well and it is almost love at first sight. They meet, fight, get attracted to each other and fall in love. They are so perfect to each other that the age difference is not a barrier till it comes to convincing her father for marriage. It doesn’t even matter to them that they don’t know each other’s name till their second or third date. There is nothing great to write about the story line, from the first scene you know what is going to happen in the end, pretty straightforward. But it’s the actors and direction makes the movie interesting to watch. All the songs play on background and used to take the story forward. The best feature of the movie is the dialogues, they are written very intelligently, effortlessly. This is one is my favorite “Mai jise chahati huu wo muzse umar me bahut bada hai, isame meri kya galati hai.”

Amitabh is aging like a wine. There is not a single moment where you can pinpoint and say he is not good. I would say his acting skills were wasted all these days in the angry young man image all these days. There is scene where he appears fully dressed, ready to meet his date in a white suit… the entry was such dramatic that the whole theatre went ‘WOOOOW!!!’ Tabu is equally great. She moves on the screen with great comfort and elegance. Her styling is just superb. I think it is a role specially written for her. Paresh Rawal is cool in his small role. I also liked Amitabh’s Mother’s character and their sweet little neighbor.

The only ‘Cheeni Kum’ in this otherwise sweet movie is last couple of scenes. They have tried to make it dramatic without any need or reason, I guess just too give it little Hindi film-ish feel. Overall a good movie, worth watching at least once.