Interminable, lightweight and (despite some protestations to the contrary) jingoistic Bollywood conjoining of dreary soap opera, outbursts of song and dance, and tedious military adventure set amidst the 1999 India-Pakistan Cargil conflict. Farhan Akhtar’s film is ostensibly about slacker Karan Shergill’s transformation into an admirable, mature individual as a result of his girlfriend’s intervention and his experiences as a soldier. However, this growth of Karan’s character is purely contrived and motivated by the script. Hrithik Roshan, who plays Karan, is a limber dancer—and that’s it. He is the Hindu Tom Cruise, goonishly smiling during Karan’s “immature” phase and unsmilingly serious—imagine!—at war. Akhtar is being called “the Indian Steven Spielberg”; but Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), as simplistic (and sadistic) as it may be, is better than this piece of crap.
The film is titled Lakshya, which in Hindi means “objective” in the sense of an “aim.”
August 1, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I have been regularly reading your film reviews, and would love to see you review more Hindi films. Bollywood too has its share of gems - ‘Do Bigha Zameen’ being one of those whose review I’d love to read from you sometime. True, it’s weepy in parts, but I don’t quite subscribe to the view that weepy equals unnecessarily melodramatic. It can be humane too, albeit only when seen without a prior bias against Hindi films.