Rishi Kapoor's directorial debut brings for the first time on RK films banner Super Star Rajesh Khanna. This movie was released after a five year exile by Rajesh Khanna. He appears in the movie as a character actor who shoulders the second half and climax of the movie. The movie has Vinod Khanna's son as the lead hero who is playing Rajesh Khanna's son who like his father Rajesh ( Balraj) runs away from his motherland to make money. He makes emotional blunders, cannot mix with the culture abroad, gets cultural shock and then mends his ways. He then meets his estranged father. The father and son then return to their home land. A good clean movie by Rishi Kapoor which should have done better if the editing could have been made crisp and some songs deleted to put in some action sequence which would have catered to the masses. Over all a good movie, good music, good location, good acting and over all a performance which cannot go unnoticed Rajesh Khanna, who plays his role as if he had never gone away. Let us hope we see him more often.
... View MoreThere are several plots within this film so let me just tell you the main one. Aishwarya Rai plays a young Indian woman who comes to NYC from India only to find out that her brother has sent for her with the intention of marrying her off to his boss to get promotions and incentives at work. Terrified, she runs off and is rescued but a cab driver (Played by Akshaye Khanna) who also came from India only to be disillusioned upon his arrival. He takes her to Queens where the men who took him in during the time of his crisis accept her as a sister and she begins to live with them and take care of them. Along the way, she falls in love with her rescuer but he has plans to marry his current girlfriend with the hopes of getting a green-card out of it. She (Rai) takes it upon herself to make sure that he doesn't go down the wrong path with this but his brutal shunning of her sends her running off to seek shelter in the home of her employer in New Jersey. Great songs and locations round out this utterly blissful breeze of a film. A Must see for all! It's almost perfect.
... View MoreI watched this as an Aishwarya fan. I think it's her 4th movie, so it's interesting for me to see her when she was "younger"--although that's only a few years ago! She looked really skinny--too skinny! In a couple of the songs, she does not even dance--what was the director thinking? That we don't want to see Aishwarya?? This was probably the worst Indian film I have seen in terms of the subtitles. First, they were in white letters, so they were hard to read. Second, they were often very stilted English--quite often humorous without intending to be. Third, sometimes they repeated the subtitles, sometimes they put on a long subtitle for .1 of a second. Fourth, sometimes they were just nonsense--A great example is when they go to the "Grapp Family Lodge" towards the end of the movie. Of course it's really the "Trapp Family Lodge" in New Hampshire, and yes, it's the lodge owned by the Trapp Family who were the subject of "The Sound of Music." I have a feeling all that was lost on the director--it would have been a great opportunity to have a song set in the hills above Salzburg, where Julie Andrews sang. It would have added a nice touch of humor. But no. Oh well, a great opportunity lost. Why not get a native Engish speaker to proofread the subtitles? Leaving the stereotypes aside, which the other reviewers have mentioned, I was more upset at the heavy-handed "lessons" in the movie. Yes, I have seen this in other Indian movies too, but not as many and not as awkwardly done. There was the "Pakistanis are really good Indians too" lesson, the "family is more important than money" lesson, the "women are more than tokens in the marriage market" lesson, the "forgive those as you wish to be forgiven" lesson, etc. etc.--every five minutes, and no subtlety at all. A movie can have a message, but when you have 35 different messages...well, it doesn't work. By the way, how about a lesson on illegal immigrants working on a tourist visa? To Indians sitting in India thinking they can just get off the plane on a tourist visa and start driving a cab or work at Dunkin' Donuts, forget it. You can't.Reality checks: New Jersey boardwalk as an exotic, fun location? Please. Are there no hotels/rooms in New York? --why did Akshay and Aishwarya have no choice but to move in with the taxi drivers? Is India that disorganized that a millionaire would find it impossible to find the wife he left behind? And of course all the coincidences would make Dickens blush.So, as a movie, pretty bad. As a showcase for a young (26?) Aishwarya, OK.
... View MoreAfter reading some reviews, I decided to give this one a shot. Complete waste of time and some of the scenes were typical bollywood crap. Akshaye Khanna and Aishwarya are great actors. I've seen them in Taal, and they were so great. But this movie just had no story built in. Only thing watchable was Jaspal Bhatti and Kader Khan. Aishwarya did her part well and so did Akshaye Khanna. But there was no story. Too many stereotypes. Travelling for 18 hours in a suit and tie?? Give me a break. Some things were really immature. Please don't even bother with this movie. I don't always trust IMDb ratings, and some of the movies that have had low ratings here did turn out to be good. But this one was an utter drag. See beautiful movies like Yahaan, Taal, Raincoat. Sorry, Rishi - other than the Raj Kapoor's old music from SANGAM, there was nothing memorable in this. 5/10
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