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Silly as you can get

Sharmila Taliculam

A still from Silsila Hai Pyar Ka. Click for bigger pic!

Shrabani Deodhar has gone one fact confused that most good directors like her don't confuse. Like the lay public, she appears to differentiate between art and commercial films. She ought to have known better -- there are really only good and bad films.

Her first film, Sarkarnama was an award-winning effort, but her Silsila Hai Pyar Ka, flat as stale beer, cries out for the institution of an Indian Raspberry.

You have a rich businessman (Alok Nath) who hopes a middle-class girl called Vanshika (Karishma Kapoor) who's been brought up with all the right values will bring his wayward son Abhay (Chandrachur Singh) in line.

The film even starts off with a session from the pulpit on Indian values and culture. There is a grandmother (Dina Pathak) who think sons are the best things to happen to a family. She's also a perfect grandmom, reading her grandson's mind and offers him sage advice on love.

The girl, who desperately wants a job, becomes the secretary of the son, who is as surly with her as a soccer star shown the red card. He apparently can't stand her simplicity but the girl falls in love with him. And she takes all that's flung at her for some time till she finds, surprise, she has a backbone.

Click for bigger pic!

And when girls find backbones in Hindi films, they naturally have to expose a good deal of it. So, having had enough of taunts and insults, she reforms -- she turns into a glam gal. And guess what, the grouch falls for her.

Funny thing is, he starts criticising her clothes and acts possessive. What is good for the gander is not good for the goose obviously.

Enter the villain, Jabbar Khagoshi (Danny Denzongpa), and you lose what little interest you've managed to hold onto. The pace first slows and nearly disappears by the second half. This could have been handled better. It could be that Deodhar tried to cram in too much and messed up because the film doesn't look like it was made with no plan in mind, only too many of them.

Karishma Kapoor is the most positive element -- her clothes are gorgeous, she looks great and she has performed well. She's clearly matured a good deal since her raunchy dance numbers with Govinda.

Her dances here are good, even sexy. With her dignity in the other scenes, she even managed to steal some scenes from a good actor like Chandrachur Singh.

Chandrachur Singh may be good, but he is a total misfit in this film. He doesn't look the playboy and it gets very funny when he asks his grandmother of 80 plus about love.

He was better off looking lovelorn in Betaabi and Maachis. He's the kind of actor who needs roles written for him; he can't handle every role. But he's still endearing in a film that's going nowhere.

Click for bigger pic!

The rest of the cast is in to provide some distraction. But, among them, Shakti Kapoor is surprisingly understated as the uncle who believes the bohemian life is the best thing there is. He gets married and divorced four times through the film and is shown as being a big influence on his nephew.

The whole film keeps on about the power of love and how perseverance pays.

There are a couple of good scenes, particularly when the hero and heroine have a spat over whether she is encouraging the villain to give her the eye.

The film has been shot well by Debu Deodhar and the foreign locales are beautiful. The second half of the film has been shot in Gstaad (Germany) and Switzerland. The choreography by Farah Khan and Ahmed Khan are also well done. Only the songs are misplaced. They pop up pretty intrusively.

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Chandrachur has had no hits in recent times. And this film certainly won't his career either. This is Karisma's first film this year. Her last film was the hit Dil To Pagal Hai in 1997. And this was hardly the right film to make her point.

Flashes of Deodhar's skills show in the good cinematography, choreography and acting. Despite all this, what looks like an attempt at going commercial did her in. See what she did with the storyline...