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OSO - A rocket which fizzles out

When you have the entire Bollywood ready to shake its booty for free ipods and expensive coffee hampers, it's easy to film a three-hour movie.

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Web Review

Om Shanti Om
Cast:
Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Rampal, Shreyas Talpade and Kirron Kher
Director: Farah Khan
Rating: **½

What begins as a delightful ode to a junior artiste turns out to be a mindless tale of romance and reincarnation.

When you have the entire Bollywood ready to shake its booty for free ipods and expensive coffee hampers, it's easy to film a three-hour movie. At least this is what one understands after watching Farah Khan's second film as a director, Om Shanti Om.

After the feisty Main Ho Na, OSO is a complete disappointment. Though the movie gets off to a good start and keeps the funny bone in splits for a good one hour, post interval, it begins to hinge on a plot that is incapable of challenging even the IQ of a centipede.

As long as Farah sticks to her 70's theme, the movie rocks big time. Shah Rukh Khan as Om Prakash Makhija is hilarious and turns in a loud, but deeply enjoyable performance. He is the proverbial junior artiste who dreams of making it big in Bollywood with the help of his side-kick, Pappu (Shreyas Talpade) and theatrical mother (Kirron Kher), who in her heydays was a junior artiste herself.

The first half of the film doesn't stop at being just an ode to the seventies. It also dusts on issues that have long remained inside the make-up vans of yesteryear actresses. And this is where Farah effortlessly flits between the serious and comic in her tale of a woman's love for a man, his desire for fame and a junior artiste caught between the two.

The first half also boasts of great technical inputs. Shots of leggy 'Dreamy Girl' (Deepika Padukone) dancing beside a Sunil Dutt and a Rajesh Khanna deserve special mention. Scenes such as a moving background propped outside the window of a stationary car show how certain cinematic effects were achieved back then. For all this and more, OSO deserves a pat on its back.

But come second half, it's 'move over junior artiste'. After all, every movie has its hero, is what the movie unintentionally ends up saying. So, what you have is good dose of revenge, love and righteousness.

Though SRK is brilliant in the first half, he tends to overact as one of Bollywood's many star kids in the second half. Talpade is wasted from beginning to end. Deepika is a true siren and surprisingly, can act too. 

Since the film is originally a choreographer's brainchild, this needs to be said. Farah Khan's sense of choreography is slipping. SRK, given all his dancing prowess, ends up looking like a jerk, dancing to some inane dance movements. But the song, which features I-seriously-don't-know how many actors is a treat. It also goes to show the amount of good-will the King Khan enjoys within the industry.

All in all, Om Shanti Om is a mixed offering. Delightful in the beginning and dreadful towards the end. I think Farah let her triplets take priority over her fourth baby.

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