Salaam-e-Bollywood!!

Remember love actually?? The movie had released when I was in my 12th standard. Hugh grant plus Colin firth plus Alan Rickman plus oh so many others... where will you get such a lucrative package?? plus that sexy sexy British accent (Hugh grant Hugh grant : )) and for personal reasons the movie still remains one of my favourites (plus that cute little kid) in spite of the fact that apart from the initial multi-starrer hype, the movie was not overtly great (but then these people don't give so called chic flicks the credit they deserve. everybody likes happy ever after endings!) . Well... so I was equally excited when the movie Salaam-e-Ishq came out. It was 'inspired' by love actually (aaahhh how well they manipulate that word as a replacement for 'rip-off'). John Abraham plus Akshaye Khanna plus Vidya Balan plus Priyanka Chopra plus Juhi Chawla plus Anil Kapoor plus hmm... the others... good enough!! The trailers were brilliant; songs were super hits...particularly the title song with the bagpipes... the dance sequences, dresses, publicity fashion shows, gimmicks... ek se badkar ek!! The movie, anyone would say was bound to be a 'sooper-dooper' hit. and so, like all the other fools mesmerized by the colours of the movie, I with four other friends of mine, booked tickets for the movie "first day first show yaar... sahi hai!!".. Or so we thought.
The movie was nothing like love actually. Yeah they were talking about love, the stories were 'closely related' but I swear to God, I have never been this bored in my life! (I would rather sit through an hour of engineering ethics and trust me, it is one of the most boring subjects ever!). It was Govinda's come back film of sorts and he couldn't have asked for a lousier come-back. His pair, Madame 'phirangi', looked absolutely out of place... 1. A foreigner trying to speak Hindi is NOT cute. It is stupid and err...stupid, especially when the viewer cannot comprehend what the foreigner is trying to convey. They should've had subtitles for her Hindi lines. 2. A foreigner falling in love with a taxi waala?? Ahem... yeah sure whatever. I mean, I’m not against the theory of ‘true love just happens; it doesn't look for status or money' crap, but seriously this is waaaaaaaay too much for me to digest. A foreigner comes to India in search of her rich boyfriend and falls for a non English speaking taxi waala...!! I wonder if the taxi waala realizes that to have a translator tagging along the couple everywhere, every time can be very annoying, to say the least. The alternative: the girl learning Hindi... hmmm... no comments, seriously. Then there is sweet sugar vanilla and honey ice cream with chocolate sauce and nuts on top couple John Abraham and Vidya Balan. All throughout the movie, John sweetheart has to either run and chase cars/buses/trains/Vidya Balan or cry. He seems to have taken a lot of pain to do all that… kudos. And well he looks good so I was happy (read drooling) Vidya Balan has to cry/be chased by John/get hit by vehicles and the usual... bat her eye lashes and in that all too familiar helpless sweet feminine voice say 'mein kahaaaan hooon??' she does that well too. *clap clap*. Salman khan is as usual annoying with his fake put on self invented American and British hybrid accent... 'I am Rauoool'... oh for Pete’s sake!!! And Priyanka Chopra looks hot. Was she supposed to do something beyond that? Let’s see... Anil Kapoor isn't picking roles that would do justice to him... or any good to his already declining career so I shall let him pass... poor old guy trying to look cool. Juhi Chawla was quite alright actually. See its' not only my prejudice that is writing here... (Although I bloody wasted 125 rupees on this dumb movie... ugh!) I am trying to give credit to the people who have tried to do a good job and miserably flopped. Then there’s that pretty model who cannot act for nuts, trying to seduce Anil Kapoor ( “hi, I’m Anjali”, “ hi, I’m married”… ha ha… yes yes.. the only funny joke in the whole movie.. “) she performs in an amazingly boring re-mixed version of an old Hindi song and does stuff that really doesn’t make much sense... (no no.. by stuff I don’t mean anything provocative) ho hum… yawn… of course then there is Akshaye Khanna and Ayesha Takia. Akshaye khanna does manage to get some good laughs acting like a frenzied guy paranoid about commitment. Not bad at all. And Ayesha Takia... yeah well she is there and looks good in some dhol-baaja-baraat song. Ho hum… Phew!! And now we are left with Sohail Khan and Ishaa Kopikkar. This couple have been given minimum screen space and sadly for us is the only couple that does some justice to the time you waste watching this 4 hour long sleep marathon (that is apart from John Abraham’s good looks :P). I never knew I could laugh at the plight of two desperate newly weds dying to get some privacy to mellow down the rush of hormones. Oh well... you can’t blame me can you?? Aaaaaand so ends our wonderful movie, Salaam-e-Ishq… a tribute to love… I wonder what unimaginably ghastly tragedy our mister director has faced in his love life to have created such a tribute!!!
Salaam-e-Bollywood for its take on love.