Last Night I got a chance to watch Mani Ratnam's latest film "Guru". One can discount the fact that the storyline loosely based on Dhirubhai Ambani's life may not have provided much space for entertainment. Still, the movie is not even a patch on the expectations from the director who is known for his master pieces like Roja, Bombay and Dil Se.
A.R. Rahman disappoints with his soulless music, and could not provide any humable tunes to take home. As far as the lyrics are concerned, probably Gulzar forgot to write any, since all I remember is "Gurubhai Gurubhai aala re ...". The dialogs or the lack of it also did not help much for the cause.
The movie sometimes appeared to be too fast in its narration where many characters were left underdeveloped. If Mallika Sheravat had one item number, Aishwarya Rai had a couple more. There wasn’t any thing much for her to do in the film other than dancing or washing clothes. I specially could not understand her abrupt introductory scene where she was doing a disco on top of a rock in the middle of the river bed. I had better expectations from the director who introduced Madhu with "chhoti si aasha ..". The camera was strangely handled by some nincompoop who appeared to be dancing along with the girls in most of the songs, leading to a very unstable song picturization.
The film was solely riding on Abhishek Bachchan's shoulders who, has finally matured into a good actor. With his boyish charm he appeared to be comfortable sharing screen space with other characters in the film. Mithun and Madhavan provided strong performances to support the film. Vidya Balan brings breath of fresh air to the otherwise confrontational scenes. Her character however, wasn't very much etched out and could have been given something more to do.
Unlike the Ratnam's previous ventures the film carried a weak message, that bribery and bending the law is acceptable if done for overall progress. The ending was abrupt and weak where the hero could turn the judicial opinion with a small sermon. All said, Amitabh Bachchan can safely hang his working boots now that he has a new bread winner in the family in form of Abhishek who can now take over from him. As far is this Mani Ratnam-A.R Rehman film is concerned, I do not think I am going to remember much about this in a year from now.
