STARRING

Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Riteish Deshmukh, Jacqueline Fernandez,, Victor Bannerjee, Ratna Pathak, Mita Vashishth, Joy Sengupta, Arif Zakaria and others.


DIRECTION

Sujoy Ghosh


STORY

The story of the film is based on a modern interpretation of age old adventure fantasy of Aladin and his magic lamp. Here, Riteish Deshmukh plays the character of Aladin Chatterjee, who is an orphan and lives in Khwaish city. He feels vulnerable and has been bullied since his childhood by Kasim(Sahil Khan) and others.

However, Aladin Chatterjee’s life takes a U turn after Jasmine (Jacqueline Fernandez) gifts him a magic lamp. The magic lamp also has a genie (like in the fantasy stories), who is called Genius (Amitabh Bachchan).

The Genius wants to grant Aladin Chatterjee three of his wishes as that would free the genie from contractual obligations with the magic lamp. In his effort to end the contract with magic lamp, Genius makes Aladin’s life miserable.

However, all this changes once the earlier genie--Ringmaster (Sanjay Dutt)-- appears on the scene and makes an effort to kill Aladin. What happens to Aladin and his genie forms the rest of the story of the film.


PERFORMANCE

Riteish Deshmukh, who plays the character of Aladin Chatterjee in the film, is natural to the core and enacts the part so well that the audience gets hooked to him. After playing comic characters in so many films, Riteish Deshmukh seems to have come of age and enacted Aladin’s character with a rare maturity.

Riteish Deshmukh’s biggest achievement is that he could hold his own before two of the seasoned actors of bollywood –Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt- in the flick. Riteish’s acting is the soul of this fantasy flick.

Amitabh Bachchan, the biggest icon of bollywood who enacts the part of genie Genius, is certainly not in his elements. In fact, he seems to have gone overboard, which irritates the audience and does little to add value to the fantasy flick. Big B fighting single-handedly at this age with the entire army of Sanjay Dutt, seems unconvincing, to put it mildly.

Similarly, Sanjay Dutt, the adorable Munnabhai who plays the part of genie Ringmaster, fails to enthrall the audience with his character. He does not seem to have done his homework, or seems plainly disinterested, trying to pass the muster somehow with few expressions.

Jacqueline Fernandez, the gorgeous Sri Lankan beauty who plays the part of Jasmine, comes out as a breath of fresh air in the otherwise disappointing movie. But, her role does not have much meat and so fails to showcase her histrionic prowess.

Sahil Khan, who plays the character of Kasim, has enacted his part well. His bullying of Riteish Deshmukh seems convincing. Mita Vashisth and Ratna Pathak do not have any scope to show their talent. Others lend able support to the main cast of the flick.

The direction of Sujoy Ghosh has not been par even by his own standards of ‘Jhankar Beats’. The director has been badly let down by his own screen writing abilities, and in the process the film has suffered. In fact, Sujoy has made a film which is high on visual quality by lacks content.
The music rendered by Vishal-Shekhar fails to strike the right chord with the audiences. The number of songs at the initial stage of the film restricts the smooth flow of narrative and act as stumbling block. Special effects could have been better. Cinematography is good. Other production values are good.

STAR VERDICT

Despite of presence of big stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt and Riteish Deshmukh, the movie will not find many takers at the box office due to its weak screenplay. The movie may be a visual treat but lacks soul. A poor fare.