After the refreshing Hum Tum from the Yash Raj banner, I went in for this movie with a lot of expectations. Unfortunately, they fell flat.
First, the positives. I think the storyline of a live-in relationship, probably for the first time in popular Hindi cinema, was a good one. The rationale given by the couple to stay together (since their work timings were very erratic) and the reason for breaking up later on, were also quite believable and seemed genuine.
However, one has to note that this movie has pieces borrowed from several other movies and patched together. Man not wanting a baby and his girlfriend wanting the kid is taken straight from ’Nine Months’ (starring Hugh Grant), with the hero predictably falling in line towards the end. Pregnant unmarried Preity Zinta has been seen before in Kya Kehna and cool dude Saif Khan as the reckless lover has been seen in many movies, including Kya Kehna, Ek Haseena Thi and Hum Tum. Further, the comedy in the movie was pretty awful in my opinion. First of all, the Salaam Namaste radio station owner with the evidently put-on Malayali accent, is hardly worth laughing. Javed Jaffri, who I simply loved as VJ in Videocon Flashback and Timex Timepass, has overacted to the hilt, and only serves to annoy rather than entertain, with hardly any good jokes as part of his script. Arshad Warsi, whose performance in Munna Bhai was truly funny, natural and memorable, is very ordinary with a few good lines. And, last and definitely the worst, Abhishek Bachchan has been given the most horrendous comedy scene and special appearance that any upcoming hero can ever hope for. I would blame the director’s lack of sense of humour rather than any of these individual actors, as the buck finally stops there. Making such ridiculous fun of a delivery scene is demeaning and I am sure that most, if not all, mothers will agree with me on this. Incidentally, one scene shows Saif Khan making fun of Preity Zinta’s radio station saying that its listened to only by taxi drivers, which is rather condescending and politically incorrect.
All in all, I would recommend people watching this movie only to broaden their outlook (after all, many people still are not comfortable with live-in relationships) and to watch Saif Khan, who has come up very well in the lat 2-3 years and the ever reliable Preity Zinta.