I hope I’m not giving much away by telling you upfront, that this movie is ’’based’’ on the English movie titled ’’Nine Months’’. If you’ve seen and liked ’’Nine Months’’, savor the memories of the original, and keep away from this one. If you’ve seen ’’Nine Months’’ and didn’t like it, then keep away because you might like this even less. If you’re like me, though, you’ll see it anyway because you’re now curious to find what that Hollywood movie looks like when it’s adapted to Bollywood.
Let me back up a minute. This is the first movie I’ve ever reviewed anywhere. I’m sadly out of touch with the current Hindi movie world, and unfortunately can’t give the supporting actors and actresses credit by name. The movie stars Saif Khan and Preity Zinta.
’’Nine Months’’ starred Hugh Grant and Julianne Moore. It was funny enough in its way. Grant and Moore are living together, and Moore gets unexpectedly pregnant (and decides to stay pregnant). The pregnancy eventually gets Grant unhinged, and Moore haughtily moves away into her friend’s house. Eventually, and predictably, Grant is drawn into the idea of pregnancy, a baby, and a family. Salaam Namaste borrows most of the same ideas and even scenes, but in order to stretch out to Hindi movie length, it pads the hour and half before Ambar (Preity) gets pregnant, with the irrelevant tale of how Ambar and Nick (Saif) met and came to be together. They are both living in Australia, presumably to make the movie plot more plausible.
Once Ambar gets pregnant, it’s all downhill. She has had a falling out with her lover, but they are both stuck with each other in their apartment, because they’ve paid rent in advance for a year. There is a good dose of screaming fits and melodrama trying to mingle smoothly with light hearted comedy. It doesn’t work that well. The right formula for a delightful ’’romantic comedy’’, which I think this movie tried to be, is light hearted humor working with subtle sentiment.
The dialogue lacks spark. When there is a truly funny or touching line, it feels like it just wandered in from another movie (which it most probably did), because it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the lines. On the positive side, the movie was funny in places.
Robin Williams as the hilarious doctor delivering his first baby in ’’Nine Months’’ is played by Abhishek Bachchan. (I didn’t recognize him and I wouldn’t have believed it to be true, but I just saw this fact in the movie site) He is funny in a slapstick kind of way.
Well, in short, I wouldn’t recommend this. When you already have the story all laid out for you by another movie, you should be able to work on make it entertaining. Salaam Namaste dragged on.
And oh, I didn’t even like ’’Nine Months’’ to begin with.