Ghajini - A Review

Well...against all my better sense, I blasphemed day before and I swear I'll never do anything similar again. Had a few hours to kill before shift and I ventured into Ghajini. And I came out with mixed feelings - surprisingly, anger wasn't one of them. I do remember laughing at the pretentious pretender that Aamir Khan is though.

I mentioned to someone the other day, "Making a Memento with a similar touch of class is beyong Aamir & Murgadoss". I guess Aamir was being quite honest when he said that this movie isn't a remake or a ripoff of Memento. What they've done is picked up the basic premise (Antiretrogade Amnesia or whatever) and the look and feel (Aamir's tattooes, the polaroid, the notes etc.) from Memento and made a bollywood masala flick on the same. Good that I wouldn't have to insult one of my alltime favourites continually by referring to this ordinary movie as a remake or a ripoff of it.

So what do we have here? We have a lovely case study on the marketing of a movie that's worth its place in B-school syllabi around the world. The name of the game is positioning. And Aamir has shown that he's an ace at that. Right from the time the movie was concieved, Aamir has been promoting it covertly and overtly. We had those Samsung ads where he appeared with the Ghajini hairdo. And then an appearance on a TV show where he gleefully proclaimed that this hairdo belongs to his character from his forthcoming film which is going to be a hardcore action flick. This was followed by his blogs where he made obtuse references to Memento and then "clarified". But tongues had already started wagging about Ghajini's Memento connection and curiousity levels were piqued up. Next comes the in your face poster. And all the TV interviews about how we went about developing his eight-pack and so on. Bottomline - here's the formula for success in bollywood and apna Aamir has perfected it - Sustained but clever marketing, curiousity factor and star power.

What about the movie itself then? Well...it was a 3 hour marathon. Half of it was devoted to the romance angle between Aamir's Sanjay Singhania and Asin's Kalpana. The rest was spent on Sanjay's revenge. The romance part of the movie would've really worked had it been a movie on its own. The chemistry between the lead pair was good and the pace was maintained. And Asin surely has a lovely expressive face and a great screen presence. The revenge saga was a different story altogether. It left a lot to be desired. First of all, the condition of Sanjay wasn't put across properly. And there were several contradictions to the condition in the plot. Secondly, the character development skills displayed by the director so adeptly in the romance half of the movie were completely missing in this part. Thirdly, there is absolutely no connection between the romance part of the movie and the revenge part. They look like two different movies patched up in the form of intermittent flashbacks.

Now, I don't say that nothing in the movie worked. But every positive of the movie was blunted by some glaring negative. Rahman's music was on the mark again...but was handicapped by some childish lyrics from Prasoon Joshi. Aas-Paas-Chaas-Ghaas Guzareeeeeeesh!!! Gimme a break Prasoon...and go back to the ad world. The cinematography by Ravi K. Chandran was superlative. The action was in true-blue tamil fashion. Old school and awesome. But that was all dumbed down by the editing and the screenplay. Why on earth did this have to be presented as a flashback collage? Whatever happened to the good old linear mode of storytelling? Or were they trying to find inspiration in the narrative style of Memento as well?

Performancewise, the movie belonged to Asin. She was gorgeous and spontaneous. Aamir was pretty Dil Chahta Hai-esque in the part where he romances Asin and huffy-puffy-grumpy in the tattooed getup. No great shakes from him. Jiah Khan was irritating at her best and repulsive most of the time. Her scooty did far better though. Which brings us to the most important character in the movie - Ghajini. Pradeep Rawat of all the people? Did they fall short on budgets that they couldn't get someone better to play the role? Atleast when the movie was named after the villian. This guy was a parody.

Was the movie watchable? For me, no. For the millions of bollywood buffs out there, I'm sure yes. They'll throng to the theatres like never before and make this movie a huge hit...whether I like it or not. As for recommendations on whether to watch this or not, this is a really tricky one. So take your chances, and don't blame me if you feel slighted spending those 200 rupees in the multiplex.