Movie Review: Jodhaa Akbar
Posted February
16th, 2008 by aslam
To start off, let me just say that Jodhaa Akbar ismore closer to Swades than
Lagaan. What I mean by that is it's anaverage movie that is long and doesn't
necessarily care if the viewersare involved in the proceedings on screen.
Without sounding too harsh,it feels that Ashutosh Gowarikar without Aamir
Khanis just an average director, who thinks he can make mega movies, but
hedoesn't have the talent to handle subjects like these.
Let's see why this movie is a proof that AG is an average director.
The movie has great storyline, which I'm sure we've all heard a billion
times so that wasn't the attraction, Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya
deliver great performances, which again should be expected. The
supporting cast did their best and sets were no Sanjay Leela sets, but
they're fine (we'll come back to that). So more than half the job was
done, all Ashutosh Gowarikar had to do was tell a story in a way so
that it's fun. I remember at least 10-15 times in the movie, where I
looked at my watch and wondered why is that scene in the movie and more
importantly when is this movie going to end. There were no sequences
that would make your pulse race or make you look forward to what was
going to happen. The scenes were done quite unimaginatively, literally,
it was like he took inspiration for those love scenes, war scenes
(which were seriously awful) and other drama scenes from several other
Hindi movies (again not bad, but just nothing new about them).
Lot of people I talked to said that the movie was really long and if
they had cut it short, it would have been a good movie. Maybe, but if
you are not a good story teller, doesn't matter if you have 5 minutes
or 3 hours, they will just seem like a lifetime for your audience.
Which is what I think is the problem with this movie - just plain,
boring way of telling such a great story. Seriously Discovery of India
did a much better job than most of these period movies.
I think what would have helped would have been to focus on one
theme. I mean Ashutosh Gowarikar is no Francis Ford Coppola, so he
should have either focused on one of the many traits of Akbar - the
lover, the great king or the great warrior. Trying to show all three
things in a movie, just means that you are not devoting enough time on
any.
Now let's talk about the good things about the movie. Once again itsa timeless
story that has a lot of room for interpretation and even ifits told as a
biography, which this movie attempts to do, its still atruly remarkable story -
that has a love angle, war angle, treacheryangle, I mean pretty much all the
ingredients of an epic. Then, Hrithik Roshanjust completely morphed into the
role of Akbar. If you see him,especially in the second half, he doesn't remind
you at all of the barechested Hrithik dancing in Dhoom 2. Aishwarya in afollow
up of her great job in Guru, delivers another good performance.Sonu Sood, Ila
Arun and other supporting cast is good, although theydon't have much of a scope
in the movie. The songs were not needed butthey are fine, not the best ARR
composition, but some songs were good.
So its not a total loss if you go and watch that movie, it's just
that with that kind of crew you expect a much better result then what
came out. I guess Ashutosh isn't as demanding as the perfectionist
Aamir Khan :-) so most people just mailed it in. The other glaring
lack of creativity that you see in Ashutosh, is the creation of sets. I
mean seriously Akbar is one of the greatest emperors in the history and
if you are watching a movie that deals with his love story, I am
expecting something grander than a Devdas. This was not even close. I
think Karan Johar or Sanjay Leela would have done a MUCH better job in
handling those aspects. The other thing that really baffles me is the
inability of Indian directors to shoot good war scenes. It's definitely
not the lack of money, its just the lack of imagination. I mean they'll
shoot a song in 15 different locations in the world, so they definitely
have the money. The war scenes in this movie were a joke. There was one
army that Akbar was fighting that seemed like they had dressed for a
Garba dance and not a war....
Anyways I can go on and on, but you get the picture. Everything wasthere, but
the most important thing about making a movie, which wasmissing here, was a
desire to make a truly great movie. It's verydisappointing to see that someone
who gets hailed as one of the top directors inIndia can deliver a mediocre
product like this. It's bad becauseHrithik gave a great performance, much
better than he does for his dadbecause he was hoping this could be his
Mughal-e-Azam, butunfortunately it wasn't even close.
http://www.moviewalah.com/review/2008/02/16/movie-review-jodhaa-akbar
