Dream….. I guess dream is a very relative term. After you cross the 20’s phase in your life one might look back and say yes I had one, but then I didn’t know then, it takes a good living for a good life. And I am glad I made a right choice. Someone else might look back and say.
Yes I had a dream, but it was lost on my way to make a good living. I wish I had not drifted compromising a happy life for a good living. If you fall in the later category, there is a good chance that you will take home the movie with fond memories of your life. But if you belong to former category, it might just turnout as not so bad movie.
Coming to me, the magic of the “Magik” band worked for me. The movie was not just about friendship, it was trying to untie the entangled threads of relations. The movie was not just about realizing your dreams, it was trying to solve the equations between happy life and good living. The movie was not just about the music, it was trying to draw a line between passion and patience.
Of course the movie was not a flawless execution of a good script. Few scenes didn’t work for me, like the one where Aditya ignores Joe and KD at his B’day party, Aditya suddenly dumping this girlfriend after a fight in the group. And the scene when Aditya leaves a message for Sakshi was a little filmi for me. But, when you look at the movie as a whole, these small things fade out from your memory and you are left with a movie that had it’s soul in the right place. It was quite a brave decision to make a movie that revolves around a round band and then to do a complete justice, was job well done.
Farhan’s debut was a pleasant surprise and he indeed breaths the character of Aditya. Farhan himself singing all the songs makes Aditya’s character come alive on screen. I must say that the master director doesn’t disappoint as an actor. Coming to his singing, of course the songs were of a different kind, that completely gels with Farhan’s voice and hence it was great decision to have Farhan behind the mic. He was not only the producer, actor and singer, but he also wrote the dialogues of the movie. The man of many talents.
Farhan Akhtar, Arjun Rampal, Luke Kenny and Purab Kohli they all had that passion in their eyes for the “Magik” band and you feel for them when things don’t go right. Especially Arjun Rampal has grown so much as an actor. He effortlessly slips into the character of Joe. Prachi Desai makes here big screen debut with “Rock On” and does quite a decent job, but the one we should watch out for is Shahana Goswami, who plays “Debbie”. She was so real. The music was part of the script and never really breaks from the flow of the movie. You could not have expected a better music. Once again Shankar, Eshaan and Loy live upto the challenge of composing for a rock band movie. Javed saab’s young and happening lyrics took me by surprise. If the music was ‘A’ class, the cinematography was “A+”. I think the last time I was so impressed with cinematography was when I saw “Rang De Basanti”. Hats off to Jason West for the mesmerizing camera work.
I cannot imagine how many drafts of the screenplay were written until Abhishek Kapoor and Pubali Chaudhuri came to the final cut. For me, screenplay is the heart of the movie and the duo did come close to a good screenplay , but it could have been better. Another task that’s worthy of an applause was Deepa Bhatia editing. She worked the magic of her scissors for the magik band so beautifully that in spite of screenplay slipping in and out of the flashback , not once you felt the presence of the scissors.
The finale of the movie actually transports you to a live rock band concert. The experience was unbelievable. No words could ever tell you what it was like to be a part of the “Magik” band’s final performance.
Abhishek Kapoor could not have expected a better team to deliver his dream project “Rock On”. I am sure the movie will strike a right chord with the young crowd and they will probably connect more so with the music and passion of the band to be together. But the message I took home was, at the end of the day it all comes down to whether you want to comprise for a good living or you have the courage to fight the odds against your dreams.