there is no such thing as [sic] free lunch
-- Raj Malhotra (Akshay Kumar)
[May 29, 2006] Known for giving Priyanka Chopra the role that earned her a Filmfare Award for Best Villain (and becoming only the second woman to do so), Aitraaz also offered several songs from the Nasalite that became hits, characteristic Bollywood hamming, extremely poor scripting and dialogue. With producer Subhash Ghai's blessings, the Burmawalla brothers took Disclosure, stripped (no pun intended) it of anything that might prevent their copy from getting the U certificate (they settled for U/A). The background score from Salim-Sulaiman evokes memories of Enigma, while the subtitles department goes gaga turning "ladies room" into "living room," तलातुम into "quagmire" and 987 into 973. A variation on Carmina Burana plays every time Priyanka Chopra's character, Sonia, is seducing her next victim. The songs are silly enough: गेला गेला features Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor on the beach doing a stupid dance while four babes of varying dimensions are wearing bikinis and sashaying on a boat in the background; I wanna be with you (ये दिल तुम पे आ गया) features Akshay Kumar and Priyanka Chopra taking a family-friendly shower together, having a jacuzzi moment and then ending up in bed (curtains please); I wanna make love to you is shot in one take (interesting) with Priyanka Chopra delivering an act of seduction and shooting playing cards from a deck into Akshay Kumar's face just as the song goes into जुआ जुआ प्यार का.
Every film I remember by the Brothers Ripoff has boasted a sign with an egregious spelling mistake; this one butchers इत्तेफ़ाक़ (it becomes इत्तफाक).
There's as much "sensitive" content in this film as can be expected from a Bollywood bowl hoping to reel in the moolah without offending the prudes, the housewives and the "innocent" youngsters. Consider the scene where a groups of guys at a restaurant go drooling over a picture of Sonia on the cover of a magazine before one of them takes the magazine (to a private place, no doubt).
Consider also the following lines from an exchange between Sonia and Raj (Akshay Kumar):
raj : तुम s*x के लिए मुझ पर मेहरबान हो ...
sonia: what do you think eh? i'm a bitch; i'm a slut; a bloody prostitute?
raj : do you think i'm a male prostitute जो तुम मुझे अपने दिए हुए post और पैसे के बदले में इस्तेमाल करो? no!
Things take a turn for the worst as the film hurtles slowly to the inevitable climactic courtroom drama. Bollywood's continued ineptitude with this rather common setpiece is obvious when Paresh Rawal calls Akshay Kumar to the stand during his opening statement. Annu Kapoor's character (named राम चौतरानी, the most interesting name in the film) gets a line of dialogue laced with different synonyms in Hindi for tush. He also gets to make sweeping pronouncements like समाज में दो किस्म के लोग रहते हैं: औरत ज़ात, मर्द ज़ात. He tops this all with the immortal line खरबूजा खुद चाकू को मजबूर कर रहा था कि आ ... काट! come and slice me!. There's a nice shot of Priyanka Chopra sitting in the witness box; it's a silhouette with a decent use of light. It's the only saving grace of a film that largely seems to have been made in the absence of a technical crew of any kind.
The moral of the film is two-fold: it is extremely convenient to have a lawyer as your neighbour; it is really convenient to have a wife who has an LLB.
This film also contained, for those of you who were not busy ogling at Kakista Kapoor and Ms. Ooh-La-La, a reference to next year's Bewafaa, which Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor starred in; what else can one make of Akshay Kumar turning to Kareena Kapoor just after uttering और ये वो वफ़ा है जो आदमी को बेवफा होने नहीं देती? I leave you with Kareena Kapoor's immortal axiom.
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