STARRING

Ranbir Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Deepika Padukone, Minissha Lamba, Kunal Kapoor and others.

DIRECTOR

Siddharth Raj Anand

STORY

The plot of this romantic flick revolves around the character of Raj (Ranbir Kapoor), who is a compulsive flirt and falls in love with three different beauties—Radhika( Bipasha Basu), Deepika Padukone(Gayatri)and Mahi (Minissha Lamba) at different stages of his life. In the first love story with Mahi, while the lady wants to marry him, Raj ditches her and moves to greener pastures.

In the second love story with Radhika, our hero falls in love and stays for some time in a live- in- relationship with her. Radhika, too, like Mahi earlier, wants a long term commitment and marry him, but our protagonist is not ready yet. Raj, once again, backs out of this relationship on the D day.

Finally, Raj falls in love with third girl Gayatri and this time it is the evergreen boy who proposes the girl for a long term commitment like marriage, but the gorgeous babe rejects his proposal outright. This rejection shatters Raj and he realizes his past mistakes and wants to apologize to earlier ladies.

Now, Raj approaches Mahi, who is already married and has children, for forgiveness and tenders his deep apologies to her. After that he moves to second girl Radhika, who is in no mood to forgive him and makes him her assistant. After humiliating him, she has a change of heart and forgives him.

The third girl Gayatri, too, has a change of heart and writes letters to him, but he was out of town. What happens to his relationship with the third girl Gayatri forms the part of rest of the film.

PERFORMANCE

Ranbir Kapoor, in the character of Raj, has given a terrific performance. The young actor looks completely at ease in performing the flirting act with the three girls. Even in emotional scenes in post interval period, he shows excellent depth and range in his acting. Bipasha Basu, in the part of Radhika, looks sizzling hot and has further improved from her ‘Race’ act. The lady is fabulous in her performance and completely dominates the sequences.

Minissha Lamba, who plays the first girl Mahi, fails to impress initially but considerably improves in the emotional sequences during second half. Deepika Padukone disappoints in the acting department, though she looks gorgeous. After such an impressive debut with SRK’s Om Shanti Om, the lady has failed to improvise on her diction and modulation of voice and needs to work on them.

However, a rare maturity has been shown by Kunal Kapoor, who plays the husband of Minissha Lamba in the film. He looks confident and carries his part well.  Hiten Paintal, too, has done a great job. Others provide good support to the main cast of the film.

The direction of Siddharth Raj Anand has further improved from his earlier films Salaam Namaste and Ta Ra Rum Pum and he has successfully handled the racy romantic love story in the first half. But same can not be said about the second half, where he seems to be bogged down by a weak script.

 The music by Visahl-Shekhar is at best average. However, the numbers ‘Khuda Jaane’ and ‘Lucky Boy’ will appeal to masses. As usual with Yashraj flicks, the cinematography is top notch and there are some stunningly beautiful locales shot in the film. Dialogues do justice with the theme of the film.

STARDUST VERDICT

Due to a long weekend and presence of youthful Ranbir, Deepika and Bipasha , the film will do good business at the box office in the first week. But given the weak second half it will find it tough to come anywhere near to Imran Khan’s Jaane Tu… Overall above average fare.