Ajooba

If there's one word I can associate to this movie, its 'embarrassment'. It must be embarrassing to everyone associated with the movie, to actually watch it in a theatre. Everything - the script, screenplay, dialogues, song lyrics, direction - shoddy, lousy.

Saw this movie when I was a kid. Liked it then, mainly because it was a fantasy, a superhero-movie. Its a not-so-explored genre in Hindi cinema. The attempt deserves credit, but that's all there is to it. Sashi Kapoor seems to have been in a great hurry in making the movie. Can't understand the reason behind casting foreigners as Hindi-speaking characters, who can't even get the sync right (nothing to say about the dubbing). The screenplay is terrible. The editing even more. If one follows the dialogues closely, one can detect grammatically-wrong sentences (which completely alter the intended meaning). Nothing special about the music.

The biggest embarrassment must be for the Censor board. There are a couple of nip-slip scenes in the movie, one of which is absolutely clear (so much so that I can't even think of a metaphor). The director missed them. The editing team missed it. And the censor board missed it too. So much for the no-indecent-exposure-on screen motto. The officials probably fell asleep while watching the movie.

Can't think of why Amitabh went with the role. It might be because he was a good friend of the Kapoors. But the role hardly has anything for him. With wonderful roles in Hum and Agneepath behind him, he couldn't have followed it up with a worse one. There are a couple of heroic scenes, really worthy ones. But otherwise, they're embarrassingly unbelievable (arrow-catching for instance.. it probably could've been better with CGI, but it was '91..).

Dimple and Sonam do not exactly set the screen on fire. Shammi Kapoor and Rishi Kapoor give an inspired performance, but their scope is limited. Amrish Puri is his usual self in the role of a fairy-tale villain (letting out the villainous laugh every now and then).

On the whole, an interesting concept. Could have been a lot more better.