By Martin D'Souza, Bollywood Trade News Network
Remakes have bombed, and whoever has played with fire has got burnt. Ram Gopal Varma will be the first to agree. Agreed, Om Shanti Om is not a remake of KARZ, but there is no keeping KARZ away from OSO. The two are so interlinked that it is difficult even for director Farah Khan to yank it away, however hard she may have wanted to try. So the song picturised on Rishi Kapoor that was a rage almost 30 years ago is what she begins the movie with. Of course, she's there with Shah Rukh Khan in the audience as Rishi sings, "to gao, Om Shanti Om, Shanti, Shanti Om...". It's the Subhash Ghai classic repackaged. It's not a smooth flow of sequences in the first hour and the end, too is long. A 25-minute cut would have helped. Also, the ending, where there is the Mahurat shot of the film OSO, with Arjun Rampal (producer Mukesh Mehra), the ballroom full of guests suddenly disappear. There's no justification to the scene that follows. Besides, one cannot help but keep going back to main Hoon na, Farah Khan's directorial debut. As a masala movie, it has its sad moments, happy moments, dance and drama. But there is that extra something missing that takes the zing out of it. Ok, the sets are good and Farah has taken pains to get the 70s look and feel, but that alone is not enough. I guess the villain has to be the script. It leaves a lot of loopholes. If Sajid Khan got a bevy of beauties for his title track in Heyy Babby, Farah Khan gets the entire industry for one song. Almost. It's Shah Rukh Khan all the way with little or no scope for the others. Shreyas Talpade is wasted. However, Deepika Padukone could not have asked for a bigger debut. She has quite a lot of footage. She carries off the 70s look with style and when she has to be herself, she's natural. You can't classify her performance as brilliant, but she has the talent to prove herself. Arjun Rampal is the surprise package. As the film producer, married to Deepika (Shanti Priya), and hell-bent on making it big, even at the cost of getting his wife killed, after he learns that she is pregnant and can be a hindrance to his rise, his menace is calculated. Then 30 years later, as the aged Mike, he returns from Hollywood, backing the making of OSO, the film he had stalled then, with the biggest current star Om Kapoor (Shah Rukh Khan). Incidentally, SRK too had died in the fire trying to save Shanti Priya. He was then a junior artiste, doing bit roles. The roles are reversed now and he brings Arjun to his knees A La Rishi in Karz, with a song that describes the past. For all the hype, OSO is surely a downer. It will take more than an OSO to better SRK's performance in CHAK DE, which is still a rage!
