UMRAOJAAN -BE-ADA

After watching this three hour plus whatever, yawn, I have come to the conclusion that biographical blood doesn't run in the Indian directors vein. How come the Hollywood directors succeed in making such great biographical movies- Ray, Capote, catch me if you can, Gandhi, the aviator, and the list goes on and on, and we never attempt, such films and the moment we attempt it it bounces back. Are the Indian audience not interested in biographies or we don't know how to make them. [biography read as film made on a person existing or a fictional character like umraojaan written so convincingly]

Blaming the audience would be like a loosers statement so lets try to be a winner somewhere and blame the industry guys, the us, involved in filmmaking. I am not going to bore you by telling you the synopsis of the story, coz if you don't know that please don't read the blog, go spend some money and watch this film, and please share with me your views.


Now coming to the point,whats wrong with umraojaan:

Its first and major problem is that its the remake of a classic film Umraojaan played by the eternal Rekha and brilliantly directed by Mr. Muzzafar Ali, so the comparisons with the big sister are always there.

Its second and other big problem is that its directed by Mr JP Dutta the veteran director and has a brilliant line of cast from Shabana Azmi, to Abhishek to Aishwarya, so obviously the expectations are high, and so people are ready to pay the high ticket costs to watch it.

So for audience the disaapointment happens when there is no paisa vasool and for the film fraternity the disappointment happens when such a huge budget film, with so many talented people and so much time and effort turns out to be a dud.

other problems:
1] Direction of JP dutta is very disappointing, since he is the veteran and we the upcoming stoytellers have grown up watching his movies, so has the audience


2] Screenplay doesn't hold, you don't feel for the characters, especially Ash, when you should be crying for her sad story all you want to do is wait for the film to get over. [some of the people even walked out in the middle of the film, which is a disgrace to everyone associated with the business of filmmaking]

3] Scenes between Ash and AB just don't work. like when he comes to see her at the kotha and is lying on her lap, there is just Ash's wide shot [for a considerable amount of time, obviously the director wanted it in one shot], and AB is looking at her, the director hasn't cut the shot for us to see AB reaction, similarly there is the scene when AB mcu is there, Ash is leaning on his shoulder and we don't see her reaction to what AB is saying, well as a audience I would def want that. Besides they are extremely long scenes and start to get boring.

3] Too many songs, especially when they are very average, bore the audience.

4] And since mostly the basics are going wrong, 3 hour plus movie is a very big drawback. It requires serious trimming!

other minor problems:

suniel shetty is completely miscast as faiz ali, he looks like the man about to sing dus bahane kar ke le gaya dil...

whats good with umraojaan:

you can sit 3 hours in the ac theatre and sleep peacefully and save your electricity bill to some extent,
But on a serious note the scene when shabana azmi tells theses women to leave the kotha, but she herself was not willing to leave, did touch somewhere.
scene where the young aish gets up in the night, in the kotha looking for her father was not bad
some of the dialogues were very good, like when AB tells Shabana that i am still a nawab and you are a tabayaf and quite a few more memorable ones.

but that is not going to make us happy, when we know that JP dutta can give us much much more and better narrative!!