Movie Review : What's Your Raashee
What's Your Raashee
Cast: Priyanka Chopra, Harman Baweja, Anjan Srivastava, Dilip Joshi, Darshan Jariwala, V Badola, Manju Singh
Director: Ashutosh Gowariker
Duration: Three hours and 30 minutes
Critic's Rating:
Goodman told us why it was important to know the zodiac sign of a stunning girl in the college or a handsome hunk in the neighbourhood before embarking on the arduous path of romance. It's rashee, the zodiac sign, that decides our personality type, she said. And we believed her. For Yogesh Patel, the central character of Ashutosh Gowariker's latest movie, though, rashee isn't for romance but marriage. The young MBA student-cum- executive-cum-guitarist-cum-DJ must match his compatibility with one of 12 girls over six days before taking the big plunge. It isn't an easy choice to make, especially with a bunch of goons threatening to chop off his fingers.
There's Anjali, an Arian who likes Tom, not Cruise, but Jerry's bugbear, a girl who pretends to love wine and cigarettes to impress the NRI bride-hunter. There's Sanjana Shah, the noodle-strapped Aquarian from Kampala who pleads with Yogesh to reject him because she's already in love; there's Kajal, the spunky Gemini who falls for him but wants to date him for a year before deciding whether to tie the knot.
Yogesh has his task cut out. The Libran power woman wants a pre-nuptial agreement; the honest Cancerian admits having lost her heart and virginity to a use-and-forget neighbourhood boy. The Sagittarian option is an astrologer who wants alingan and chumban to propitiate the stars, and a Virgo, Pooja, an idealist doctor who wants to practice in the village. And for good measure, we have Vishakha, the Taurean super-rich daughter of a cotton king.
It's really a long, long list of women. And it has resulted in a long, long movie. The movie's first hour is also its most entertaining. Not that the movie degenerates thereafter, it merely gets repetitive and wears you down.
More since Gowariker can't resist the song and dance routine with every lady. The title track and Aaja lehrate should be chartbusters. Bikhri si zulfein should be sung plenty of times in television shows. But once over, most of the songs don't stay with you. They merely act as narrative speed-breakers.
If the movie still works to an extent, it is because Gowariker maintains fluidity in the narrative and gets uniform good work from his support cast, especially from Yogesh's elder brother Jitu (Dilip Joshi) and his uncle (Darshan Jariwala) who bring subtlety to comedy.
Back in 1974, Sanjeev Kumar played nine characters in Naya Din Nayi Raat. The film flopped but the actor's performance was applauded. In What's Your Raashee Priyanka Chopra gets the role of a lifetime playing 12 characters. And while she does fairly well with the urban characters – power woman Rajni, microbiologist Sanjana, college girl Kajal – she is not comfortable acting as girls distant from her own surroundings. A funny laugh and non-convent accented English, that occasionally slips, doesn't really make for a girl that Arian Anjali is. It is just a caricature. So is Shankara, the underage girl. Priyanka's is a competent performance in a role where anything less than memorable is a form of under-achievement.
Size matters. A less-than-ruthless editor could have easily trimmed What's Your Raashee by 45 minutes without compromising on its soul. Gowariker seems to have fallen in love with his own work. Too bad, his indulgence prevents the audience from doing the same.
There's Anjali, an Arian who likes Tom, not Cruise, but Jerry's bugbear, a girl who pretends to love wine and cigarettes to impress the NRI bride-hunter. There's Sanjana Shah, the noodle-strapped Aquarian from Kampala who pleads with Yogesh to reject him because she's already in love; there's Kajal, the spunky Gemini who falls for him but wants to date him for a year before deciding whether to tie the knot.
Yogesh has his task cut out. The Libran power woman wants a pre-nuptial agreement; the honest Cancerian admits having lost her heart and virginity to a use-and-forget neighbourhood boy. The Sagittarian option is an astrologer who wants alingan and chumban to propitiate the stars, and a Virgo, Pooja, an idealist doctor who wants to practice in the village. And for good measure, we have Vishakha, the Taurean super-rich daughter of a cotton king.
It's really a long, long list of women. And it has resulted in a long, long movie. The movie's first hour is also its most entertaining. Not that the movie degenerates thereafter, it merely gets repetitive and wears you down.
More since Gowariker can't resist the song and dance routine with every lady. The title track and Aaja lehrate should be chartbusters. Bikhri si zulfein should be sung plenty of times in television shows. But once over, most of the songs don't stay with you. They merely act as narrative speed-breakers.
If the movie still works to an extent, it is because Gowariker maintains fluidity in the narrative and gets uniform good work from his support cast, especially from Yogesh's elder brother Jitu (Dilip Joshi) and his uncle (Darshan Jariwala) who bring subtlety to comedy.
Back in 1974, Sanjeev Kumar played nine characters in Naya Din Nayi Raat. The film flopped but the actor's performance was applauded. In What's Your Raashee Priyanka Chopra gets the role of a lifetime playing 12 characters. And while she does fairly well with the urban characters – power woman Rajni, microbiologist Sanjana, college girl Kajal – she is not comfortable acting as girls distant from her own surroundings. A funny laugh and non-convent accented English, that occasionally slips, doesn't really make for a girl that Arian Anjali is. It is just a caricature. So is Shankara, the underage girl. Priyanka's is a competent performance in a role where anything less than memorable is a form of under-achievement.
Size matters. A less-than-ruthless editor could have easily trimmed What's Your Raashee by 45 minutes without compromising on its soul. Gowariker seems to have fallen in love with his own work. Too bad, his indulgence prevents the audience from doing the same.
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