Yeh Saali Zindagi!

A brilliant script, exceptional dialogues and outstanding dialogue-delivery are the USP of this movie (some of you might beg to differ, especially girls (and only girls for that matter :P)).

With a brilliant cast, of the likes of Irrfan Khan, Chitrangada, Saurabh Shukla, Prashant Naraynan (another brilliant TV actor), Arunoday Singh (relatively new comer, needs a little refining as an actor, but does justice to his character in this movie), the gorgeous Aditi Rao Hydari, Sushant Singh and Yashpal Sharma, at his disposal, Sudhir Mishra has once again shown his class. He has definitely lived up to his reputation of a wonderful film-maker, the reputation he built with movies of the likes of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Chameli and Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi to name a few.

The movie is exceptionally paced and you hardly find time to find any logical errors per se. And trust me; you don’t want to do that to this movie! Let me tell you, I, for once, thought that there is no break in the movie for I had thought we had gone for around one and a half hour on the trot without a break, where in fact, we had just spent 45 minutes with the movie. The dialogues strike you right from the word go! All the characters in the movie are lively and fun to watch. They all have a backdrop against which their lives till date have been painted, barring a few, the ones of lesser importance. Again, what makes the story more interesting is the fact that you have all kinds of characters - a lover, his boss, his love-interest, a local small-time bhai, a mafia, a police-inspector, a businessman and his brat, a politician and his daughter - a perfect recipe for an exquisite cuisine. And given a brilliant script, all you can expect later is some out-of-the-blue twists (which are very much the heart of the story) in the tale, some really good songs - Dil Dar-Ba-Dar, Kaise Kahein Alvida - that are not out-of-the-world in nature but that gel really well with the context of the movie.

I don’t know to what process in the film-making do they belong to (probably editing, somebody can help me make enlarge my knowledge base), but the way the characters were introduced with their credentials, the way the locations were described (hideout-1, hideout-2, and etc.), probably set the mood for the movie. I know this is a common practice and one of minimal importance in many of today’s movies, but then doing away with this editing stuff in this movie would have probably robbed the movie of its rhythm. Again, this is my take and anybody is welcome to differ on the same! J

Talk about performances and you cannot find a better person than Mr. Irrfan Khan himself. He simply overshadows other short but brilliant performances from the likes of Saurabh Shukla and Sushant Singh. Chitrangada is good as always, Arunoday is learning to laugh :D, Aditi Rao, ummm.. I would rather adore her beauty ;) than comment anything about her performance. You actually feel for Irrfan’s character, the way he pursues his love-interest. As an audience, I couldn’t expect more entertainment, and as a critic, I frankly do not want to tear apart this movie. This movie has definitely set a benchmark to match up to for the rest of the movies coming up this year.

Nonetheless, one thing that could have been done to make this movie more interesting was to chop off the last 5 minutes from the movie. Come on, not every movie has to be a Happy-Ending types and then the title of the movie would have been justified. But then again, I change my stance because the end justifies the tag-line!

The dialogues are so good that they once again command some more attention and praise. Some of the dialogues, for instance, the one where Arun (I am using the character’s name on purpose to not divulge much details about the plot, neither do I want to reiterate the dialogues verbatim, as I know, I won’t be able to do justice to these brilliant dialogues) decides to help out Priti, in spite of the fact that his mind didn’t want him to do so, speaks volumes about human emotions and how people behave irrationally (or rather rationally for that matter when you are in love). Another one is where Satbir talks to Kuldeep about gifting a diamond necklace to his wife Shanti to avoid her objections, the fact which is then eventually justified in the 2.5 crore dialogue at the end.

Looking at the bigger picture, this is a MUST-WATCH movie for boys (some fun-loving girls can enjoy the movie too). This is one movie you cannot afford to miss this year! Mr. Sudhir Mishra – Kudos to you!

Rating: 4.5

P.S.: I have been waiting to write this review for long for I wanted to do complete justice to the movie. I hope I did. Sorry to have kept waiting my lovely readers!