Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Move over Moulin Rouge: We have learnt how to make musicals

One of the most recent (claimed)musical I saw is Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, and my reaction was, we can not make good musicals. The same thought has changed now after watching Aja Nachle. All the filmmakers (who want to make a musical) in bollywood should watch this film and learn. This movie is different. The entire story moves forward with the help of song and dance. Madhuri Dixit could never have got a better comeback film. The entire film revolves around her and she carries it off well.

Ajanta theater is being demolished in two months and Dia (Madhuri) takes the responsibility of saving it, because the place is a symbol of art in the city and she has some of her very fond memories attached to it. She decides to do so by awaking the actor/dancer buried inside the people of the town. And she decides to do so by doing a play on Laila-Majnu at Ajanta. The entire story revolves around Dia's effort to convince people to act/dance in her musical, train them and finally putting up a show beyond imagination. For once we get to see one MP, who is not corrupt and thinks about doing, what people want. The characters in the movie are much real than shown in many films. The cast of the play Laila-Majnu consists of a local gunda (Kunal Kapoor), a restaurant owner (Ranveer Shorey), a government servant (Vinay Pathak), an irritating girl (Konkana Sen Sharma), a stock broker and few other (I should not reveal those here).

The movie is a musical, so the music has to be good. Dance sequences are very well choreographed. Thanks to Jaideep Sahani, he does it again. The script is different from traditional musicals and it's good. All the actors have done justice with their roles with special mention to Madhuri for the brilliant comeback. The movie is clearly one of the best musicals made in bollywood recently. The only sad part was the empty theater. When would Indian audience learn to appreciate a good movie.
I would rate this one as 8 out of 10 and would recommend it to anyone who likes to watch movies.

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