Delhi 6 goes for a Six

After listening to music and watching promos of Delhi 6 for past few days on television I was quite exited to catch this film. Alpesh (ardent Raykesh Mehra fan) in a discussion on shout-box said he would like to catch Delhi 6 in a theatre because it was a Raykesh Mehra film, giving due credentials to his hit filck Rang De Basanti, starring Aamir Khan, this incidentally also was Indian nomination at the Oscars. During this short conversation with Alpesh I shared a juicy nugget about Mr.Mehra's previous film- Aks (starring Big B, Manoj Bajpai and Raveena Tondon). Aks was big flop. And after catching Delhi 6, I'm obliged to reiterate Mr.Mehra was the (driving) force behind Aks.

Delhi 6 evoked lot of anticipation in public, but the film fails to capitalize. It literally confused the crap out of people watching. There was a group of college kids in theatre who clapped -sarcastically- on all crappy occasions. Technical stuff like editing is poor. Songs pop up too often during first half. In particular the picturization of song 'Rehna Tu' (incidentally my favourite from album) is unjustified, a romantic love kind of song, great music but what you see on screen is Rishi Kapoor and Abhishek Bachchan driving car at night on empty streets. You would rather like the television promos of same song.

The characters aren't explored to the fullest so you do not connect with any. During film you even forget what the film is about. Mr.Mehra tried to weave many issues/stories in film but sadly... the main things I found was 1) A NRI kid coming back to India and likes things here 2) Monkey menace that occurred in Delhi few years back 3) Hindu Muslims living in perfect harmony in first half and exactly opposite of it in second 4) Good wins over Bad in the form of "Ram Leela" which runs parallely as film progresses, often you get irked and you see it as interruption 5) Abhishek Bachchan taking photos at regular intervals from one of his Motorola cell phones. Sonam Kapoor has nothing significant to do, her aim is to become Indian Idol. She looks quite gorgeous and did pretty well in whatever she had to. Cyrus Sahukar plays role of a photo cum videographer, who indulges in socially impermissible relationship with Lala's (Prem Chopra) wife, who is a lot younger than sixty some Prem Chopra.

The first half is about coming back to India, exploring and liking it. And the later part of second half is filled with Hindu-Muslim riot, with a local female Hindu politician trying to aggravate riot with her venomous speech(sort of) on other hand a Muslim cleric (not sure) leads and defends Muslim community, “Itt ka jawaab patthar se denge” was his line. Lastly Om Pure (Sonam's dad) fixes Sonam’s marriage against her will, she flees home for Mumbai (she gets selected for Indian Idol) with Cyrus Sahukar while Abhishek Bachchan tries solving Hindu-Muslim riot by attempting Monkey Man. He comes across Sonam and Cyrus while they are on way, still in monkey attire he scares hell out of Cyrus and he vanishes in no time. Abhishek speaks his heart out Sonam concords. They hug and people arrive, people thrash Abhishek like anything and he goes unconscious or dies (wasn’t able to hear, audience din outgrew film sound).

Vijay Raaz, Rishi Kapoor, Waheeda Rahman, Om Puri, Sonam kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Cyrus Sahukar, Atul Kulkarni, Divya Dutta and many others including Abhishek Bachchan seem to play cameos. Everyone plays their role quite well.

The characters are good but too many. My friend commented during first half “This looks like a documentary on Delhi the difference is we are paying to watch this one.” There are few moments of comic relief as well. Bad job Mr.Mehra. It could have been a fantastic film. Better luck next time.

Watch it at your own risk if you are a normal movie goer. Haven't been able to catch Alpesh. Watch is once, I recommend.