FILM REVIEW: JAB DIL KISI PE ATA HAI

Reminiscent of HAHK! it has the same magic touch.

By Anupama Chopra

MOVIE: JAB DIL KISI PE ATA HAI
DIRECTOR: KRISHNA VAMSI
CAST: NAGARJUNA, TABU

Sooraj Barjatya's legacy lives on. Jab Dil Kisi Pe Ata Hai -- the dubbed version of mega-Telugu hit Nina-pillate released six months ago -- is a south Indian Hum Aapke Hain Koun! with echoes of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Maine Pyar Kiya thrown in for good measure. We have impossibly happy joint families and wedding songs (Didi tera devar deewana-style).

Two brothers who bring up an orphaned girl, are devastated when on her wedding day she runs away with her lover. Twenty years later, the sister's daughter Mahalakshmi (Tabu) comes to town, ends up living with the brothers' neighbour, and falls in love with the elder brother's son. It's all song and dance till the parents meet.

The film is enjoyable as long as it's fun and games. Director Krishna Vamsi creates the same cosy domestic texture that HAHK! did. Tabu, all long limbs and silken hair, is breathtakingly sensuous but this isn't the Urmila Matondkar in-your-face oomph. The romance between Tabu and Nagarjuna, set to lilting music by Sandeep Chowtha and shot in Seychelles, is passionate and a little comical -- she calls him her "Greek Vir", i.e. Greek God.

However, the film's magic wanes when Vamsi resorts to melodrama. As for the violence, it is jarring. And the climax, in which a dying Tabu is rushed to the hospital, is unnecessarily cliched. It's almost as if the director sought the easiest way to unite the warring families. Still, Jab Dil... is in parts fresh and funny. 

Write to us | Subscriptions

© Living Media India Ltd