In accordance with a prominent line from the film “ Buri aadat badal daalo, Aladin ko maar daalo ”, director Sujoy Ghosh kinda kills the magic of the legendary fairy tale character in his contemporary adaptation of the Arabian Nights account. Certainly the inspiration is interesting but the execution tends to become formulaic.
Aladin Chatterjee (Riteish Deshmukh) is bullied in school for being namesake of the fairy tale character. Classmates often ridicule him by making him rub lamps through which no genie emerges. And one fine day, Genius, the Genie (Amitabh Bachchan) does come out of the lamp, much to Aladin’s disbelief. Genius is on the verge of retirement and has his last three wishes to grant to his final master Aladin.
In such state of affairs, what could have shaped up as a fantastic fantasy ride from hereon, merely ends up being a formula-driven love story. Ideally the viewer expects Aladin to make magnanimous wishes from the Genie to add a new flamboyant flavour to the revisited fairy tale. Unfortunately all of Aladin’s wishes are expended only in winning his ladylove Jasmine (Jacqueline Fernandez). Jasmine is predictably the new entrant in college who Aladin dreams of but doesn’t dare to propose.
Much like Aladin realizes he doesn’t want to win his love through downright magic despite having the choice, this is one Bollywood plot that resorts to minimalism (in storytelling) when it had absolute scope to get larger than life.
Then there’s also a villain in the form of Ringmaster (Sanjay Dutt) who keeps clowning around with his team of circus extras. An ex-genie, he wants to use the magic of lamp for himself over humankind. There’s also a comet whose reflection is to be captured through the conventional climax combat.
Sujoy Ghosh does make a decent attempt to interpret the anecdotes of Aladin in his own cinematic language. Characterizations of Marjina and Qasim are loosely derived from another popular Arabian Nights story Alibaba and the Forty Thieves . A female frog serves as a reference to the fable of The Frog Prince . Ghosh has a vibrant vision in depicting scenes where the Genie opens doors to Aladin’s dreams. Some characters of the Ringmaster’s crew are creatively caricatured like a Wolverine-nailed sidekick and a masked sexy figure without a face.
But soon enough the bound script (that’s Sujoy’s banner name) writing by Sujoy Ghosh, Ritesh Shah and Suresh Nair opens up to an assortment of Bollywood clichés. The basic romance plot reminds of Rakesh Roshan’s Koi Mil Gaya with Riteish playing the underdog and Genie replacing Jadoo who helps him woo the girl. Sadly Sahil Khan can’t even match Rajat Bedi in being the bad bully guy.
The scene where Ringmaster reveals the secret past to Aladin and creates a rift between him and Genie seems distinctly derived from a similar scene in Main Hoon Na where Suniel Shetty divides step-brothers Shahrukh and Zayed. Also the pre-climax song has an exactly analogous setting as the prom-night Gori Gori track from Main Hoon Na . The screenplay also turns back to DDLJ for the trademark ‘ agar ladki palat ti hai, toh pyaar karti hai ’ scene.
The VFX effects supervised by Charles Darby ( Matrix, Harry Potter ) comprise of some decently done sequences. But the director can’t ignore the inclination to include some tacky juvenile jugglery on screen like the archaic electrocution sequence catering strictly to the kids. Sabu Cyril’s art direction gives a fantasy feel to the hill-station town. There’s too much of song and dance and Vishal-Shekhar’s musical score is just passable.
One can perfectly envisage Riteish Deshmukh for the character of Aladin for the kind of expressions he is capable of. But he doesn’t go beyond your imagination. Amitabh Bachchan is vivacious as the Genie but gets loud and animated at times. Sanjay Dutt amuses to an extent through the buffoonery of his character. Jacqueline Fernandez looks absolutely stunning and can give the Kareenas and Katrinas a run-for-money through her gorgeous looks. The immensely talented Ratna Pathak Shah is wasted in an inconsequential role. Mita Vashisht almost apes Archana Puran Singh’s character from Masti but hams it up badly.
Just in case a Genie ever emerges out from your lamp, for Aladin’s sake, wish for once that our filmmakers come up with better ‘bound scripts’ and more enthralling adaptations. Till then all flights of fantasy should go on strike.
Here is the link to watch movie online. Just copy paste the link below.
http://hindilinks247.com/watch_video.php?num=1&id=3658
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