Cleaning up. Fanaa and Baabul

Finally recovered from last weekends Bollywoodblogger meeting, a week of teaching and clearing up boring office stuff that got delayed during the preparations for the meeting. I was so out of my filmi loop that I could not decide what to watch. Until I decided to finally get two movies of last year out of the way that so far did not hold much appeal to me. Fanaa and Baabul.

To make it short. Fanaa was way better then I expected. Which was veeeeery little. Baabul did nothing for me, but I was not hoping for much and I have to confess I at least got manipulated into one single tiny tear at the end.

Still there are some comments that I gathered watching them that I want to share.

I started with Fanaa. So I will here too.

- Went into the movie with the plan to count Aamir´s scarfs. And might have messed up. Does anybody have the final numbers? I made out seven different ones:










- Kajol is beautiful to watch. So much that my real-life significant other halted on his way from the musicroom to the fridge for a "Wow, who is that? Oh, that´s Kajol? She´s very cute"
- Aamir should not do rain-songs. At least not without an umbrella. Or if he has to get his hair wet, don´t make him look straight at the camera. Just don´t.
- The supporting cast names are great and mostly wasted... especially the ATF people Tabu and Saxena.
- Fanaa is one of the very few movies where the bad guy uses a Mac. But then Rehan is a sneaky chameleonish terrorwala, hai naa?
- The heating bills of Colonel-Uncle must have been huge if you count in all the windows and doors poor Kajol had to close to keep Aamir out.

Resume: Liked the first half as nice nothing new old-fashioned pyaar ki kahani. Could tolerate the second half in parts. Let´s just say its not as sloppy as the usual terrorist fare like Dus or the likes. Hate the screenwriting in parts of the second half. It´s as "lame-screenwriting-twists-if-you-wrote-yourself-into-an-deadend for dummies" -like as KANK was.

Baabul:

"Yeh shaadi nahin ho sakta" Yesss! Long time, no see hear! You great Über-cliché sentence! And then two minutes later we have Om Puri almost repeating the same words. Loved it. Wrecked the dramatic mood, lekin main kya karu. Great lines need to be welcomed with a loud "Wah!" I´m just glad I didn´t watch Baabul in a cinema. The drowned in tears rest of the audience would have killed me.

- Can we please finally cast Rani again in a movie where she does not have to weep constantly? Please?

- And refrain from putting Salman in pin-stripe suits and ties?










Resume: The first half with Salman is too long and still did not manage to give me any reason why Rani should be as much in love with Salman as she claimed to be in the second half. Same goes for her accepting John that fast. Again another movie where a character portrayed by Rani is not able to get any sympathy from me. Lets see how she will do in Tara Rum Pum Pum. From the trailer it has the potential for making the same mistake.