Overrated

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

The funding of hospitals is never easy. There is always a constant demand for new equipment, medical researchers and other staff have to be paid and debts have to be met.. If you can find a rich donor who would like to see his name emblazoned on the hospital walls, lucky you….providing of course the conditions laid down by the donor are not too demanding.In this film a top neurosurgeon Akash Sinha (Anil Kapoor) is compelled to make an unusual decision. In order to save his hospital from closure, he must marry the rich donor's spoilt and somewhat hysterical daughter Soniya Kapoor (Preity Zinta). Akash must sacrifice his love for Neha Mathure (Grace Singh) his charming anesthetist and constant support in all medical matters.If you haven't guessed it by now, the dialogue of this film is in Hindi and it is given the whole Bollywood treatment. It is adequately sub-titled, but you'll need a comfortable chair because the running time is a little less than three hours. It's a strange mixture of a film. Apart from the hospital's basic problems, there is the eternal triangle of one man and two women. The romantic drama is well played out, the gentle Neha swept off her feet by Akash and selfish Soniya doing her best to destroy their love for each other. Soniya is forever having tantrums which keeps the action alive. Some of her wild scenes are reminiscent of the Bette Davis technique.If at any time you are becoming a little weary of the dialogue, rest assured the principal actors will burst into song and you will begin to wonder if this is a musical after all. But no! This is the Bollywood style, and the overpowering music takes up every change of mood and comes crashing down all around you. The Indian population must like this style of entertainment. It's almost as if the film makers are determined to give their patrons three hours of intense pleasure.The characters in the film are well defined and the scenario easy to follow. The photography is brilliant and the music, as I said, encroaches a little too forcefully over the action. As for the dance and song routines which interrupt the dramatic sequences, I guess they are a matter of choice. They give you a "breather" , I suppose, in the very long film and add to the whole night's entertainment.

I must admit that after seeing this film the first time a couple of weeks ago I was less than impressed. Bachchan, of course, was excellent, but I felt that movie was missing something, or maybe it was trying to hard to be something else, or perhaps it was Preity Zinta's villainous departure from her previous girl-next-door roles.....I wasn't sure.....But, upon watching it a second time yesterday, the film's brilliant subtlety exploded on the screen. It was all there: wonderful dialogues and performances from Bachchan, Kapoor, Singh (and -- yes - Zinta: she's a little over-the-top in her performance, but in the end the effect works [the character she creates truly is weird/creepy]); a remarkably restrained and appropriate camera style from Verman (including his interesting use of 180-degree-arc two-shots during key dialogues); outstanding sound recording and perspective matching from Kamte and Dev; brilliant music and choreography (sans the chorus lines); and some excellent writing -- particularly the development of key thematic parallels and negations. For example, Irani masterfully, yet subtly, contrasts the two dominant child-parent relationships -- Soniya-Gulshan and Akash-Siddharth -- to comment quietly on the impact of western materialism on the values of successful Indians living abroad. The theme is reinforced by the masterfully directed wedding scene -- starkly devoid of the colorful mise-en-scene, music, and traditional practices that are picturized in typical Hindi film weddings -- in essence emphasizing the alien(ated) character of the proposed relationship. The effect is reminiscent of Subhash Ghai's Pardes (1997), but without the grandstanding that dominates the earlier film. Additionally, Irani's selection of neurosurgery as Akash's profession provides an excellent metaphor for the exploration of the film's climatic theme, which --without giving too much away -- involves the resolution of a key moral dilemma.All-in-all, Irani demonstrates remarkable restraint and deftness in her directorial debut. The film's naturalistic look belies the subtle thematic complexities that inform the storyline. Watch this film more than once -- you might be surprised!

They'll tell you its a story of sacrifice, with some stupendous performances. But really its just dreary and dull trash, this guy Amitabh turns in a 'restrained' performance that borders on the contrived - a problem with most actors from Bollywood; their acting is plain contrived. Lifted across-the-border music [Yeh larka from the original 'Falak pay kaisa', the hit from the mid 80s] does not add much zing to the proceedings. And who was this actress with this Cleopatra like 60s hairdo?? Gawd, guys, get a better person to do that next time!!Only watch if you relish boredom. Really, its just another one in the long list of cinematic trash churned out by the Indie movie industry.

`Armaan', which marks Honey Irani's directorial debut, has a surfeit of high-minded sentiments, some genuinely honest and lovely moments, and unfortunately, also a number of snigger-inducing scenes. Mind you, her direction is charmingly understated, and the leads are truly likable. You have that eminence grise of the Hindi film industry, Amitabh Bachchan, playing the noble Dr. Siddharth Sinha and Anil Kapoor as his equally noble son, Dr. Akash Sinha. Gracy Singh, who was a winsome village maiden in `Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India', and selflessly stood by her man, plays Dr. Neha Mathur, a winsome anesthetist here, and again selflessly stands by her man. Preity Zinta, that cherubic-looking leading lady, is cast against type and has fun as a spoilt heiress (is there any other kind?), unhampered by scruples or too much clothing, who will do anything to get her way. At one point, she helpfully dons a pair of scarlet horns to show just how diabolical her character is. She has a hoot being devious and gleefully smiles at the camera as she mouths insincere apologies to her rival in love, the upstanding anesthetist. Her angelic face belies her spiteful machinations; she makes a persuasive bitch. Randhir Kapoor, appearing on-screen after a long absence, plays her guilt-ridden tycoon father, who gives in to her every whim to atone for his preoccupation with making money, and in so doing, creates a monster, albeit a very pretty one.All of this is fine, except that several of Honey Irani's characters in this film (based on her story; she co-wrote the screenplay, as well) are doctors, and most movie actors, I suspect, are congenitally incapable of convincingly portraying the medical profession. Amitabh has style and panache, and in his role of CEO of this hospital, he has less medical jargon to spout, which helps his credibility enormously. He also makes an extremely dapper ghost; his demise does not prevent him from making several well-dressed and chatty appearances each time his screen son is faced with ethical or emotional dilemmas. However, Anil Kapoor playing a neurosurgeon, in an otherwise competent performance, is at his hokiest when called upon to be doctor-ly. The movie includes a couple of surgery sequences where Anil's character peers flummoxed into his patient's open skull and haplessly mumbles to his cohorts, `This is a very complicated case!'.not the most confidence-inspiring talk from a celebrated neurosurgeon. No number of defibrillators, the glittering array of scalpels and other medical paraphernalia managed to influence me otherwise! Not for a moment did I buy that Anil and Gracy Singh are overworked, put-upon members of the medical profession, especially when after the first messy surgery, they take a song-and-dance break in the bucolic vistas surrounding the hospital. There they finally get the opportunity to discard their drab hospital scrubs, wear true movie-star designer clothing, break into song and be themselves: a Hindi film hero and heroine!The strongest points of the movie are the lovely depiction of the father-son relationship--Amitabh and Anil exhibit wonderful chemistry together, the well-etched characters of the principled Dr. Siddharth Sinha, his son, and the willful heiress. Randhir Kapoor makes a welcome return to the screen looking, more than ever, like his father Raj Kapoor during his character actor years. Honey Irani elicits sincere performances from her entire cast and deftly stages the emotional scenes with poignancy. Too bad the story is set in a hospital, and the actors make such awful neurosurgeons and anesthetists.