Sunday, September 03, 2006

Lage Raho Munnabhai Review: Refreshing as ever before.

So finally came the D-day of the much eagerly awaited second innings of the hugely popular Munnabhai MBBS. First things first, let me clear all doubting clouds; the movie is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the earlier one. It can safely be termed as a second edition.

Three years back, two characters got shaped and sculpted from the laymans’ scalpel. And this time they are back with a bang. Munnabhai, rogue with a golden heart and his totally adorable side kick – Circuit. Apart from these two, all the characters are new and even some actors.

The plot is quite simple but often simple things have sharp twist. So the twist is that Gandhi is back from the old history books. Munnabhai has some “chemical imbalance” and ends up seeing the Mahatma himself. So for a while Munna is his usual self but soon finds Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as his agony uncle - infact his agony bapu.

Munna is madly in love with a RJ and pretends to be a professor of history in order to impress her. But in the course of events he finds his tried and tested ways of using unlawful power utterly useless. He turns to Mahatma Gandhi – the greatest man who ever walked on this planet as proclaimed by the man of the century, Albert Einstein.

Gandhi guides Munna towards the ghandhian principles and Munna in turn leaves his dadagiri and gets in to Gandhi-giri.

The script is top notch, infact if you ask me, its one up than the previous one. The acts are also of a higher order. Sanjay Dutt, I believe, is just born to do this role. Arshad gives more current to ‘Circuit’ than ever before. Boman Irani as ever gives a classy act in a mixed role and Vidya Balan is grace personified.

The music might sound a bit damp but it gels really well in the movie and works wonderfully. So what’s missing, the adorable jaddu ki jaapi. There are some glitches here and there but the numerous hilarious episodes peppered in the entire movie make you glide smoothly over them.

Ending note: The movie manages to make you laugh, cry and at the end think about the forgotten values of Gandhi. It manages to do all this without sounding preachy (just like Rang De Basanti). It’s about finding Gandhi once again - and this time not in museums, text books or on a 500 Rupee note but in Ourselves.


beaming,
Neo.

1 comment:

Nirav said...

Better late than never, I watched the movie yesterday.

Agree to everything wholeheartedly!