Umrao Jaan [2006]

Umrao Jaan
[Reviewed: June 6th 2007]

* I'm a J P Dutta fan and I've loved all the movies of his that I've seen [Border, Refugee and LOC].

* I have not seen the earlier version of Umrao Jaan starring Rekha, though I have seen the songs and I love Rekha!

* Border, Refugee and LOC are not only films that I love, but the films have such classic albums...all three of them rank as some of my all time favourite soundtracks. When I heard the Umrao Jaan album last year, I felt it did not by any means live upto the soundtracks of JP's past 3 ventures - it was an absolute disappointment. And it was this disappointment from the music that kept me away from watching the film for such a long time.

What did I think of J P Dutta's 'Umrao Jaan'? The starting was strange... The film appeared like some picture of art rather then a feature movie, and that old poet who goes to see Umrao was so annoying - the actor couldn't act and I was like 'oh my God, what am I about to watch?'... but that was just the first 5 or 10 minutes, things definitely got better. In general, the first hour and half of the film were fantastic - I absolutely fell in love with the film!! Those moments in the first half were the real gems of the film and made it beautiful to watch. Then when Suniel Shetty made his appearence, the film got terribly boring and yawn-worthy for about an hour!!! That middle hour was an extreme drag and I was very disappointed. However, thankfully the last 30mins were yet again just as impressive as the first hour and half, so the final impression I have of this movie is that... it was really good! Had the portions with Suniel Shetty been better, it would've helped...but his character and angle to the story kind of weighed down the film a bit - not too much, but it did slow the pace a lot and kind of made it boring...

Performances

Aishwarya Rai Wow! This lady keeps on impressing me in all the movies I’ve seen of her in 2007, something must seriously be wrong haha! No jokes…after watching her natural and flawless performances in Guru and Provoked, she was yet again perfectly breathtaking! Her performance as Ameeran/Umrao was so subtle and natural… and God, she looked so f’in gorgeous! I don’t think she’s looked this beautiful in a movie since Mohabbatein… such a pretty and perfect look, and I loved her costumes. The role wasn’t a dream role or anything and didn’t demand the most histrionics from an actress, but it was still quite a complex role – it was obviously the author backed role of the film and she was simply spellbinding in both performance and appearance. I don’t have any doubts that another ‘top actress’ could have excelled with the performance just as well, however I do not feel that they would’ve left the impact that Aishwarya does, why? Because her being so beautiful and such a graceful and elegant dancer, really helped add that extra quality to the character and the film!

Oh and I absolutely agree that in the part Umrao was narrating, Aishwarya looked and sounded absolutely like Rekha – the resemblance was beyond freaky!

Shabana Azmi was good, though I’ve seen her perform better in other roles and I do feel someone like Kirran Kher would have been more apt for this. I liked Shabana in one of her final scenes when she’s ill and Umrao returns back to her khota after rejection from Sultan.

Abhishek Bachchan Well… Abhishek is a good actor, he is born to act and does the job well… he can sleepwalk through a role – and that’s cool, but it’s also a problem… the same problem he had in ‘Dhoom 2’ comes to the fore in this movie also… a good performance, and that cannot be argued, but it was just such a boring performance…he really must have sleep-walked through it! He looked extremely bored and that wasn’t very appealing. Plus I think it would have been better if an actor with more class, perhaps Saif Ali Khan or even John Abraham, played the role…Abhishek just could not carry it off…Disappointed!!

Suniel Shetty was quite terrible if I must say so, even though I am a Suniel fan! He looked very disinterested and sadly did not do justice to the character in any which way.

The Music of the film was a disappointment for me before watching the film, and I still am no huge fan of it as it is such a disappointment compared to J P’s previous albums, but I must say that after watching the film the songs all seem so much nicer… they were situational and apt for the movie.

Overall The film is definitely worth watching and actually, I may even watch it again sometime seeing as though I own the DVD now hehe and it was a nice movie...

The only downsides of the movie were:

* Abhishek Bachchan & Suniel Shetty - terribly casted. J P loves them, I know... but he could've either changed the characters to suit them, or taken other actors...because these two did not suit the movie or their characters at all, they looked misplaced!

* The length... the films screenplay went for a toss in the middle segment and could've been handled much better.

However, aside from those downfalls... the film is still worth watching and was a treat to watch. Recommended to EVERYONE!!