Stunning dialogue...picturesque cinematography....colossal acting talent (barring some stunted scenes by shahrukh khan)....an extremely sensitive storyline... and of course, a brilliant background score coupled with a few delectable songs... what more did aditya’s dream epic require? a tight screenplay.
i must recommend the review on mohabbatein by pete_apf.
this movie is criticised for all the wrong reasons. like the story. okay guys....i truly believe that the best of films need not have the most intriguing stories. titanic, ben hur, spartacus.... 2 line stories. its the way the makers of this movie have narrated their story that has earned them their salt in the hall of fame.
skimpy clothes. mohabbatein was made to be an elite drama... a large part of the indian population, specially the ones who are used david dhawan movies and have hardly had a taste of foreign cinema cant enjoy something like that. why bother with the cleavage fixation? did it do any harm? nah... but it did fetch money from the front benchers. it served its purpose. remember I know what you did last summer? something I can recall is jennifer love hewitt and her cleavage’s wonderful performance. but then the movie was good enough to keep us glued and nobody bothered to point out these things. kkhh was the most flawed movie ever..but we havent had much public criticism of that, have we. the bottom line is that when we get our money’s worth we dont care two sh*ts about much else.
the performances are great. the debutantes arent bad. its almost like amitabh bachchan was born to do this movie. shahrukh is awesome towards the climax. speaking of the climax, the dialogue then and throughout the movie is definitely one of the best ever. no two opinions about that at all. manmohan singh’s cinematography does full justice to the beautiful locales of bath, england. the problem with the movie is that its canvas is too huge. the director focusses a bit too deep on the love stories. there is no central affair, the battle between shahrukh and the big b should have been much much much bigger than the love stories. but it is lent almost equal leverage.
aditya chopra made dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge which made him the most promising director in bollywood... the star in bollywood’s starless night. with mohabbatein, he doesnt enhance his position but nor does he go down. you can still notice his talent. and lets hope he does full justice to that talent in his next movie... and lets also hope that we wont have to wait 5 years for it.
the verdict - better screenplay would make this movie one of the best things to have happened to hindi cinema. period.