Vivah

Director: Sooraj R. Barjatya
Year: 2006
Cast: Amrita Rao, Shahid Kapur, Anupam Kher, Alok Nath, Seema Biswas, Amrita Prakash.
Rating: *** (out of ****)

I like Suraj Barjatya. He is kind of cool and so funny. To the point that his movies especially Hum Saath Saath Hain will qualify as a fine comedy. Everyone is so freakishly goody goody that it almost seems spoofy. Still charm on some level. His movies are usually so out of this world, something we can't imagine in our purest dream, which is fine as long as there's no tone of pretension and self importance to them. Fortunately Barjatya never lied about his cinematic sensibilities. He made the 'stories' he believed in. And remains unapologetic about his cinema. Barjatya's cinema views the world in black and white, good guy and bad guy. Clear distinction. His brand of movies can't be called a work of art, unfortunately.

The female protagonists are level headed, intelligent and mellow and yes, very traditional. Not someone who is traditional by the family she was born but someone who knows what she is doing and why. You don't always like heroines stripping right away in an item song, do you? If the answer is yes, go for any Sanjay Gupta film (Kaante, Dus Kahaaniyan). Here you have someone who believes in flirting with her designated husband but in a different way. Like in Vivah, for example, when Poonam serves Prem Kadhi when he doesn't want any, or when she plans the whole thing to come on the roof to meet the guy confessing she actually wanted to come).

The male lead is someone who is necessarily shy, a bit introvert and Mama's or Papa's boy - Prem (Salman Khan) in HSSH. A quintessential progressive traditional urban dude. Sounds great, doesn't it?
One of the comic sequence in Vivah peeks into my mind now. Poonam (Amrita Rao) brings water for a guest (this being her introductory shot in the film) and says "Jal". Who talks like this today?I was laughing like crazy. So was my friend who, by the way, hated the movie. Isn't this entertainment? Okay, he makes the kind of outlandish, unbelievably sugar coated, and sometimes so artificial movies but he never promised any classic. He knows his limits, the movies he 'can make', and makes them passionately. Here, the sign of a good director.

When everyone else curse him, telling how unbelievably lame he is, I find myself rooting for him. You might wonder, with all derogatory adjectives I've used for Mr. Barjatya films, why am I recommending them at the same time? Well because it's hell lot of entertainment, guaranteed. It always makes a good reason to visit the movies.