Joe Da Akbar

Yea, I saw this movie last night and I must admit I quite enjoyed it. It is a grand opus of some 120 crores of which 110 crores were paid to Hritik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai, 9.99995 crores to the sets, elephants, horses, other actors, the director, spot boys etc and about thirty seven rupees towards the actual plot.

Total eye-candy, Hritik and Aishwarya, the latter being so wooden in some scenes that they could have used a portrait of hers and no one would have known. But through most of the scenes, both the protagonists have done a great job and Hritik has put me personally in a tight spot. He has these rippling muscles which he displays at various times in the movies causing the missus to swoon and ask ME when I'm going to get pecs like that. Three months, I told her bravely, just give me three months, but she laughed sardonically and continued ogling at the said Roshan.

The plot is about 17 minutes long but judicious use of songs and languorous camera work stretch out the movie into a 220 minute opus. The missus kept pointing out the jewellery (its called jadhaav), the clothes (which are the rage with brides and grooms in Mumbai), Hrithik's muscles (I have reason to believe that his pectorals are actually two soup dishes turned upside down and painted over) and the language (more about this)

The language in Hindi movies is always difficult for Mumbaikars like me. Our forte is stuff like "Kayko Boam maar rahela hai?" which always freaks out the Delhi types. When people start saying "Tumhare muhabbat mein pareshan.." etc., the Mumbaikar in me starts feeling a little woozy. And Joe Da Akbar has some seriously heavy artillery where it comes to language. There was a song that went on about "chilman" which to the best of my knowledge is a clay pipe which junkies use to smoke cannabis. It behoves not for main stream cinema to contain such allusions. The missus contests my theory, of course, giving some tall claims about "chilman" being a curtain, but when I point out that she is from Mysore, you, the erudite reader, will agree that my knowledge of Urdu is superior.

All the same, the movie is heartily recommended. Akbar is portrayed as a kind and humane monarch who has the deductive logic skills of a beetle, thus getting Joe Da into trouble. But the story writer, who frankly is no Alfred Hitchcock, gets the mess cleaned up without raising anyone's heart rate by even a beat. What I really loved were the sets and the camera work, and of course H. Roshan, who has splendid personality, even when he is wearing clothes. Mrs. Bachhan is ok, but she has several cup sizes to go before she makes my pulse skip. And the music and choreography is wonderful.