Welcome to the world of Adi!
Actually I should be scared to write. What if my words have the power to become reality and then something happens that I cannot handle?!!Shabdon main woh taakat hai ki woh haqeeqat main badal jaaye (Words have so much power that they can transform into reality!)
What crap!
Isn’t that the thought that came to your mind immediately? well if not, see Shabd and I promise you that’s what’s going to happen.
Throw some criticism at a Booker Prize winning author Shaukat Vishisht (a hillarious attempt at looking intellectual by Sanjay Dutt!) and he becomes paranoid about his abilities to get real! So, what does he do? He writes about a character called ’’Tamanna’’ who is actually a thought! Yeah, not a desire! (Tamanna means Desire in hindi) This thought he transforms into reality in the form of his wife (another vain attempt at acting by the wax model Aishwarya Rai who’s stunningly beautiful but little else!).
Now a technical doubt... At the end he keeps harping, ’’Maine yeh likha likha tha, maine yeh likha tha’’ before rightly getting admitted to the asylum.. why does he need to convince his wife to cheat on him? The theme of his new novel is ’’Forbidden’’, so his wife should do it without his knowledge as a husband. But he should know it as an author of the novel.. I got this message from the story. That’s what was intended, but the screenplay and dialogues part have spoilt the spirit!
Getting back.. Tamanna who is Antara who is Aishwarya Rai.. is trying to or actually not trying to romance a professor colleague (a hopelessly miscast Zayed Kahn who tries to be SRK in every frame!) This professor of Photography cracks Sardarji jokes at the drop of a hat, but you know what, we are only shown the beginnings of the immensely funny (going by the laughing of the actors on-screen!), lest you may end up laughing too. The Director wants you to be serious!!
So getting serious, Tamanna and Antara fall in love with the professor. Shaukat is the guy who is writing and so Tamanna is doing all this stuff. Otherwise she is Shaukat’s wife Antara! Are you getting it? Never mind the story.. The professor proposes to Antara! Antara cries as she has not told the professor that she is married. ain’t it getting confusing? It’s confusing to me... So, lets leave the story alone...
It’s about a husband pushing his wife to cheat on him. Then not knowing how to handle it, he goes mad and ends up in the mental asylum. Yes, thats the story! Even I should be there for watching this movie and actually having the patience to write a review on it!
We should credit the director Leena Yadav for thinking out of the box. Don’t know who the cinematographer was, but those fonts coming out of the screen was terribly irritating and distracting technically! Screenplay was average. Nothing great! I have made my feelings evident on the story! The production value is good. The sets are in good taste and nothing has been left unturned in giving the film a good look.
The costumes though funny are carried off well by the actors. What else do you expect from veterans like Sanjay Dutt and Aishwarya Rai? The nose-ring on Aishwarya particularly caught my attention. I thought it was the first time that in mainstream cinema, had Aish with a nose-ring. She looked stunning as usual! Did somebody mention acting? Next review please!
Sanjay dutt and Zayed Khan are hopelessly miscast! Sanjay Dutt’s first attempt at an intellectual role fails miserably! If you noticed even after Munnabhai M.B.B.S nobody called him a legend. They just said he fitted the role. Sanjay Dutt, if cast wrongly, can have a bad effect on the film! shabd is a shining example! There’s no denying that Sanjay is an excellent actor, but like every actor he has his limitations. Films like these only help in exposing that aspect!
Zayed Khan was a repulsive sight in the movie. He just tried to imitate the hero of his debut movie The King Khan in every scene. The jumping and landing on his knees, the kind of stuttering while crying, the dreamy look in his eyes... well, enough said.. does he look like a professor from any angle? And does holding a camera in your hand mean that you are teaching photography? Whatever... Even the way he said, ’’chick Chick’’ looked so childish that any kid would have blushed!
What is ’’chick chick’’? Take a guess.. I will answer in the comments section!
Do I need to say more? Watch the movie at your own risk! It’s a complete waste of everything! Aiming at pseudo-intellectualism combining the sensuality of the leadng actors!
And yeah, there’s no Aishwarya doing a Mallika Sherawat, that was just a marketing tactic to get the initial collections upto the mark as they knew it was not going to sustain. There’s an irrelavant love-making session between Paranoid author and wax aunty, which is as well-shot as an abstract painting. The feelings and emotions displayed by the couple in the scene are as original as ’’gautier’’ furniture! So, that’s a waste again!
Overall, Shabd will fade away without making a shabd (Sound)! Don’t get into the world of Shabd