The melodious music and background score make the movie slightly tolerable and
will make more money than the movie. Shiamak Davar's choreography is
spectacular, especially Mastam Mastam.
Yuvvraaj - What a waste!
The first half of Yuvvraaj is bad and the second half only gets worse. It seems
like Subhash Ghai is stuck in time just like Rajshri Films are. While most of
Rajshri's movies look dated and have the same story, SG's films also have the
same typical storylines and drag needlessly. The only difference is that SG's
films are shot on a lavish scale.
Coming to Yuvvraaj, there are 3 estranged brothers: autistic and musically
gifted Gyaanesh (Anil Kapoor), singing lover boy cum smarty pants Deven (Salman
Khan) and brat Danny (Zayed Khan) who loves to gamble, fly airplanes and make
out with his chick Shazia (Amrit Maghera). Their father dies leaving all the
riches to Gyaanesh. So Deven returns to the family home and hatches a plan with
Danny to con Gyaanesh and obtain a nice chunk of the property. He needs money
to marry lady love Anushka (Katrina Kaif) as her father (Boman Irani) wants his
son-in-law to be super rich.
First the good stuff. Austria looks heavenly and very picturesque. The
production values are first rate right from Salman's house to Anil's bedroom
and Katrina's mansion.Katrina looks breathtaking and picture perfect.
Performance wise, she only flutters her eyelashes and flashes that dazzling
smile. Her Hindi is unconvincing because we haven't heard her speaking Hindi
off-screen. Anil Kapoor is the only one acting in the movie and delivers an
innocent performance, just like his character. Zayed Khan is just playing
himself but there is too much make up on his face. Good for him, most of his
dialogues are in English. Amrit Maghera does nothing but make out with Zayed.
Salman Khan plays his funny and spontaneous self most of the time and a lot of
the dialogues in the first half remind of you of Salman, not of Deven, and he
even makes fun of Anushka's Hindi. Salman and Katrina's chemistry is natural.
Salman looks super stylish and handsome except when he is crying.
The melodious music and background score make the movie slightly tolerable and
will make more money than the movie. Shiamak Davar's choreography is
spectacular, especially Mastam Mastam.
Boman and Mithun are wasted but then the entire movie is a waste of time,
money, acting and music.
Now the bad stuff: the dialogues are extremely tacky. Here are samples: Have
beer and get near to those who are dear, well done my son abhi toh done done
baaki hai, Tum Gyaanesh to ghumaao, pilaao, khilaao phir mujhe bataao apne gale
ka haal. Mithun's dialogue about united families in the end sounds like an ad
for an insurance company. Pathetic!
Then there is the cleavage flashing bitchy bhabhi played by Aparna Kumar. Like
Yaadien and Pardes, there are plenty of mean characters loitering in Yuvvraaj
too, like the blue-lens sporting mama, the purple haired mami and her useless
sons. All of them are after the money.
And all the characters use the loudspeaker mode of their phones. I don't know
any real person who does.
Even the change in the attitudes of Salman and Zayed towards Anil is not well
depicted. The scene where Zayed is asking for a lift and starts shouting in
Hindi is plain silly - I'm still laughing at it.
The pace is very slow. None of the scenes make an impact and thank god the
movie is not three hours long. There is only one man to be blamed for the
non-existent direction, the lack of editing and the shoddy script: Subhash Ghai.
Yuvvraaj is that kind of a movie where you wait for things to happen but the
movie ends without making an impact so you go home disappointed.
Janhvi Patel, Hill Road Media.
http://www.starboxoffice.com/movie/reviews.aspx?m=Yuvvraaj&bid=2008/October/reviews_20081017_10
