After being unimpressed for the first half an hour or so, I actually ended up liking 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara'. It is a good movie that takes its time to unravel (and it does take a real lot of time). A road movie which touches upon all the moorings of the genre without really being too melodramatic about them. Watch it if you have patience to just listen to an unremarkable tale, but a close-to-real one nevertheless. I believe all good drama is unremarkable, like real life apparently seems to be.
A few more thoughts. Consider the curious case of Hrithik Roshan. During the initial part of the movie, he hams up the money-is-all-that-matters kind of jerk in a hilariously caricaturish fashion during which phase there are a few good scenes portraying the tension between the 3 friends. Enter Katrina, her Archies Card homilies on life, one deep diving session and voila he has magically transformed into a Boy Scout. After that it is like watching Hrithik playing another character in another movie. In contrast to that, the other two fellows, Farhan Akthar and Abhay Deol, are consistent through out the film, playing the pterodactyls with a secret sorrow.
The sky diving scene was brilliant - it was almost like being there in the middle and sky diving with the three of them. But! What is the ' Saare Jahan Se Achchha' tune doing in that scene - it comes both literally and figuratively out of the blue. When Karan Johar throws the Jana Gana Mana at us in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham it is mega-melodrama. (I just checked the youtube video of the scene for a refresher and I notice that along with that he also packs Vandemataram and Saare Jahan Se Achchha.) A small digression here. I remember tut-tuting the scene when I first watched K3G. Then one day when I was at an Indian restaurant in Germany, this movie was playing and this scene ran. I must confess that I was moved to tears with homesickness when I watched the scene in that context. Coming back, the Saare Jahan Se Achchha tune in the middle of the skydiving scene is prime cut, state of the art, high tech, Olympic class WTFness.
3 out of 5 Stars.
