Varsha (Manisha Koirala), a New York-based modern-day Indian girl with the most brittle set of values, screams at playboy and misogynist Shravan Dhariwal (Sanjay Dutt).
Mehbooba
Cast: Ajay Devgan, Sanjay Dutt, Manisha Koirala
Director: Afzal Khan
*
Varsha (Manisha Koirala), a New York-based modern-day Indian girl with the most brittle set of values, screams at playboy and misogynist Shravan Dhariwal (Sanjay Dutt) trying to teach him a lesson publicly and later beseeching him for mercy privately. She repeats his name five times during each tirade on how he has no right to use her, and later on how he must not leave her. Shravan Dhariwal, Shravan Dhariwal…it's enough to make you throw your umbrella at the screen.
Later Varsha adopts the identity of Payal and relocates to Budapest where she meets romantic Karan (Ajay Devgan) who recognises Payal as his dream girl of eight years. As he woos her, successfully, she never enquires what his last name is, where he hails from or who is in his family. Nor is she frightened by this stalker with paintings of her all over his walls. But this is just the set up of this supremely dated, over-done film, which I feel I saw way back in 1988, and which looks jaded and archaic in 2008.
As the love triangle is established, via several songs that fail to linger on your lips, the characters' values get warped further. Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Sooraj Barjatya might take umbrage to this as we see resonances of their films Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun in the joint family setting within the Rajasthani haveli, the grand wedding rituals, the sacrificing siblings etc. Suddenly the kindhearted Karan is willing to trade Payal, without any consideration for her wishes, for the sake of his brother's happiness.
From the opening song set against the backdrop of the Alps, you know this film has come eight years too late, compounded by slim versions of Sanjay Dutt and Manisha Koirala and a youthful Ajay Devgan. Shot in New York, Budapest, Austria, Bikaner and Jaisalmer and Mumbai, Mehbooba might have fared better if it was made a decade ago, with fewer songs and a completely different production design.
The choreography is haunting, but not in a way that makes you shudder; the sets, by the usually reliable Nitin Chandrakant Desai, are marzipan- meets-gulab jamun as we traverse from Budapest to Rajasthan; the costumes, hair and make up are a thesis in retro with Ashok Mehta's cinematography perhaps the only redeeming feature.
Director Afzal Khan fails to use this frame effectively, with the action either too static or then clumsily all over the place.
Eight years delayed or not, he should have attempted to make his film more relevant to the times, if not in values then in length. As it is, Mehbooba is a tiresome period film. UJ
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