Posted by Sari
Okay, I am an unashamed SRK fan-girl and I don’t think I’ll ever grow out of it, so it is not a great surprise that Om Shanti Om was the most fun I have had in a movie theatre since forever. Farah Khan’s chart-busting hit has really everything and the kitchen sink in it. I don’t think any modern indian film I have seen has captured the filmi concept of paisa vasool (money’s worth) as well as this, Farah Khan’s homage to Bollywood, SRK and Manmohan Desai. Om Shanti Om is a reincarnation movie. In the first part filmi bit player Om Prakash Makhija falls for superstar Shantipriya, and dies trying to save her from a fire. After the intermission Om reinkarnates as Om Kapoor, scion of Bollywood royalty and bratty superstar. He starts to remember his previous life and begins to hatch a plan to exact revenge for Shanti’s murder.
SRK is fit, Arjun Rampal is surprisingly effective villain, newcomer Deepika Padukone is gorgeous heroine, everything looks wonderful, the songs are great - even the übermelodramatic Phantom of the Opera homage Dastaan at the end of the film - but what makes the film work are the absolutely non-stop inside jokes on Bollywood film industry and on Sharukh himself. Some of the jokes are extended scenes like the hilarious Dard-e-Disco (pain of disco) item number Om Kapoor performs in a movie where he plays a blind, deaf, mute amputee about to see his love to marry another, Some are just throw away lines, like the moment in the red carpet scene (one of the many Singing in the Rain homages in the film), where Asawari Joshi as superstar Rajesh Kapoor’s wife delivers perfectly her self-satisfied “Ya myself lovely” –line.
It is not a movie for Bollywood newbie as most of its humour depends on knowing something about Bollywood. It is not a movie for a cinephile as it is not really that great a movie – Main Hoon Na was much better as a film. But especially on the big screen with an audience wolf whistling to Sharukh’s sixpack it is just what the doctor ordered: Paisa vasool.
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