Salaam Namastes is a remake of Nine Month, which probably explains why the film tries so desperately to play every joke so over the top, with every character screaming their lines while engaging in prat falls and slapstick galore. What might work in American Audience just doesn’t for Indian audiences, as the tastes and sensibilities are different, and therefore the humor is as well.
At the very onset, the storyline of ’Salaam Namaste’ is quite simple. BOY and GIRL meet, they quarrel, they hate each other and they eventually fall in love!
The BOY is Nick, Nikhil Arora [Saif Ali Khan], who migrates to Melbourne from Ludhiana and finds a new career dimension for him - he becomes the head chef of a cool Indian restaurant called ’Nick Of Time’. He is witty, he is wicked, he is fun to work with and above all, he wants to live life on his own terms. He doesn’t interfere with anyone and expects anyone else to do the same with him. He likes to have fun, enjoy, party and then........go to dreams while sleeping for long hours. Quite possible for him because he stays all alone with no responsibilities to worry about.
But then life was never supposed to move on for him in the same way when Ambar enters his life!!
The GIRL is Ambar, Ambar Malhotra [Prety Zinta], who is a twenty something Indian settled in Melbourne. She too has left her native place Bangalore behind! Why? Because she is young, she is pretty, she wants to have fun and her parents have exactly the opposite in their mind - They want her to get married! She chooses to live life on her own and make a career for herself in medicine while also earn some quick money as a radio jockey [RJ] for the radio station - SALAAM NAMASTE. A no-show at her scheduled show of the interview of Nick - the celebrity chef - is what brings daggers out for Ambar. The daggers soon turn into roses [as expected] and after a few cool sequences, dance on the beach and the beginning of affection happens the inevitable - They fall in love!!
So one may say - what new? Well this is where the novelty factor comes in as the couple doesn’t decide to marry. They in fact decide to live in together without worrying about the future. They are friends who are into a relationship. But marriage? Naah !! Because they are ultra cool, they wanna have some fun and above all they want to give it a try before they eventually take ’saat pheras’.
Salaam Namastes is a very broad farcical comedy, and although it tries to play the tender side a bit, especially near the end, it frequently wallows in tasteless sexual innuendo and bouts of crude joke for much of its humor. It is surprisingly juvenile in its approach, not once allowing a moment of maturity to enter the mix, even if at its core it is about a man coming to grips with fatherhood.
The main problem with Salaam Namastes is that for much of the running time, it isn’t especially amusing. Sure, Saif hams it up in a mostly ad-libbed performance, but we’ve seen him do this shtick so many times before, we expect no less from him. Preity is an actor with very limited ability, excelling in the scenes which call for her to be obtusely annoying, yet is painful to watch when attempting to be reasonable or consoling.
Salaam Namastes never lives up to the potential of its cast and creator, all of whom have shown they can do much better. It’s really Siddharth that botches this one, delving too much into crassness for meager chuckles, while playing the film extremely too conventional to keep one’s interest otherwise. Recommended only for those who find the even the most trite of slapstick to be uproarious entertainment.