Salaam Namaste - ok...now where do I puke ???

Lets start with the good things about Salaam Namaste. The best thing about the movie starts after the movie ends- yes you read it right. The director, in a seemingly-innovative-but-plagiriased-from-"Rush Hour"-twist, has put up an assortment of behind the screens scenes during the closing credits - so a couple of hilarious mis-shots during shooting and some leg pulling amongst the cast that he places at the end do invoke some genuine laughter. Also, Javed Jaffery pulls off his comic character with elan generating some well deserved laughs. Arshad Warsi creates some nice moments with his sharp one-liners which, though hilarious, are nowhere a patch on the fabulous job he did in MunnaBhai.

Apart from that, this movie expects you to laugh and cry by creating such situations at which any person with even very modest sensibilities would wonder as to what did he do to the director to make him treat his intelligence with such disdain.

Coming to the specifics, you are expected to laugh when:

1. A fat, dark guy with a big white tikka on his forehead hams "Hambar...Hambar" mimicking the Bollywood stereotype of a south Indian.

2. Saif hams,"Hambar...Hambar" and Preity hams, "Nikhil Arora.....Nikhil Arora..." heyy, havent you already fallen off your chair with laughter ??

3. Saif drinks milk on a commode toilet seat.

4. Preity pukes in his cap.

5. Abhishek Bachhan peeps between Preity's legs where he is a doctor and Preity is the pregnant lady about to deliver.

6. Preity tries hard to "push" the babies off her womb...while everybody around the bed cheers as they'd have done to the Sachin of yore tearing apart Shane Warne.

7. Preity gives crude orgasmic moans on finally managing to eat some Belgian chocolate ice-cream - the background is that she is pregnant and has uncontrollable cravings for this particular brand of chocolate, which, Saif and Preity somehow manage to find in the middle of the night.

8. You see stickers saying, "No fart zone" pasted at the doors of the house that Preity and Saif share.

The list is endless, I bet your patience would not be.

Ok, now moving on to the senti stuff. You are supposed to gather all your sensitivity and be moved to tears when:

1. Saif, who had initially refused to take the responsibility of the child he fathered, gets so moved to own up his child that he undergoes a blood test to find out if he is thalasemic. Gosh, can you imagine, a blood test - now, ain't that the biggest sacrifice ever made by a father for his son - undergoing a blood test. Its a sacrifice because our man (ok, metrosexual) is scared of blood and blood tests, whatever that means.

2. Whenever you look at Preity in the second half in dresses which invariably leave the lower 27% of her ridiculously inflated belly bare. Guess the director thought the bigger the belly is, the more sensitized would the audience be of the trauma that Preity's character is going through. This, combined with bare lower one fourth of the belly would evoke extra large sympathy and empathy in the audience.

A couple of things that I failed to comprehend were:

1. Saif, who's an architect by qualification, an immigrant to Australia and such a successful chef that he qualifies for the tag of "Successful Indians in Australia" is ohhhhh so innocently unaware of the consequences of having sex. (ok, we do get the "Protection not being 100% safe" stuff but that scene is too far from being credible)

2. Indians in Melbourne have nothing better to do in life than listening to the love story of a god forsaken RJ in a god forsaken radio station. Can't say about Melbourne because I've never been there but while in Delhi, I am as bothered about some RJ of 93.5 FM falling in love with a chef as Preity Zinta is bothered about my wearing brown socks instead of black.

3. Drinking in the pub with a girl, bringing her home and sleeping with her through the night is not infidelity - and if you didn't "do anything" with her, you are absolved and "Ganga ki tarah pavitra". I wish my girl friend was this magnanimous.

Actors wise, Preity, though looking slightly old in close-ups, looks beautiful and is very likeable with her high energy levels.

Saif Ali Khan, it seems, has perfected the art of playing the pussilanimous, spineless male protagonist. He did it in Kya Kehna, he did it in Parineeta and he does it in Salaam Namaste now. One nice piece of thinking displayed by the director is the white and pink ladies top worn by Saif throughout the climax with "Girl Power" writen on it with glitters. Nothing fits Saif's character better. Saif is a reasonably decent actor and he pulled it off well, but he couldn't rise above what his director gave him and that's fair enough.

Arshad Warsi and Javed Jaffery are good actors and pull off all their scenes with panache.

Abhishek Bachhan, in the guest appearance, breaks many hearts. After admiring him in LoC, Yuva, Bunty Aur Babli and Sarkar, I couldn't help but wonder at his selection of roles. He is painful at best and disgusting at worst. What made him take up this role is beyond comprehension.

The crib is not at not having been given an exquisite piece of cinematic brilliance, given the trademark Karan-Johar look of the movie and a cast containing Saif Ali Khan (yes, I know he got a National Award for Hum Tum). No body expected that. All one is asking is, "Please don't treat us like completely moronic, vacuum headed sub-humanoids, esp. when we did pay for the ticket".

The issue is just basic respect for the other guy.

-SVLS