You enter the darkened auditorium to watch Farah Khan's directorial debut Main Hoon Na with a lot of hope.
You get a lot too. Here's what you get:
College romance, forgetful principal, a professor who spits, another who speaks bizarre English, a terrorist in the garb of a Hindi teacher, a professor who wears designer saris and makes hearts go aflutter.
Brother Ram trying to get back stepbrother Laxman, Brother Ram trying to save girl in distress, India and Pakistan wanting to be friends by releasing 50 prisoners each, a terrorist named Raghavan trying to thwart this event by killing an Indian general's daughter, Ram rising to the event.
Plus song and dance, and R D Burman songs used as background music.
Anything you want in a film, you get here in the three hours and two minutes of Main Hoon Na.
The first half is fun with the college capers and some interestingly done background music by Ranjit Barot and Shah Rukh Khan bursting into song every time he sees Sushmita Sen -- in spite of the loose pacing.
The second half, however, gets convoluted when the threat of Raghavan is forgotten for a while as family matters of reunion take precedence. Once that is sorted, we move into the action zone.
Did I mention there is lots to see in this film? Director Farah Khan seems to have taken pretty much every film ingredient she can lay her hands on, put it into a blender, and churned out a movie. The churning results in some parts that are finely meshed and some that remain chunky.
It is good, however, to see Khan levelling the playing field and having enough action to challenge the most hardcore action directors. It is straight out of Matrix, with a dash of Jackie Chan.
Performance-wise, Shah Rukh Khan is Shah Rukh Khan. Just the same you saw ten years ago.
Sushmita Sen is a revelation as she steals the thunder from the much younger Amrita Rao.
Rao is pretty much modelled on Christina Aguilera -- chunky jewellery, nose rings, frayed denims et al. In the second half her character can best be described as Aguilera meets Indian woman. She remains bubbly and effervescent, as her role requires her to be.
Zayed Khan gets a poor bargain in a role into which he tries to put everything he has got, ending up with a charming performance. Suniel Shetty has a stylish beginning, but ends up lacklustre.
This being one of Boman Irani's earliest films, there is not much you can see of him. Satish Shah and Bindu are competent.
Watching MHN is like ordering everything on the menu: You like some, you don't like some.
Watch out for the full review of Main Hoon Na on rediff.com in a few hours!
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