• Friday, August 15, 2008

• Country:

  India

• Language:

  Hindi

• Runtime:

  152 min

2008

Why do girls always fall for the wrong guy? Their mothers warn them about him. Their friends shake their heads disapprovingly. Their minds tell them to escape while the going is good. But no! Oh no! Their hearts are another story altogether. You see, they are always sending all the wrong signals. His name alone is enough to scramble their brains and set their hearts racing. Meet Raj. He is the stuff of dreams, with the looks of a 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' good boy. Who can blame him for falling in love as many times as love is fortunate enough to find him. It's not his fault that he's a heartbreaker, its in his DNA.

Come… discover his three love stories; Raj and Mahi, Raj and Radhika, Raj and Gayatri. Different ladyloves at different times in his life. And each one of them teach him a little bit about love and a little bit about life, in their own sweet, sexy or sassy way. Come fall in love... three times over!

Character Sketches:

 Ranbir Kapoor as Raj

The accidental lover. Easy, boyish charm is something no guy can cultivate. You have to be born with it. Like Raj. He's not your regular boy next door, though he has a misleading quality: his 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' good boy charm. Couple this with a sense of humour and an unintentional sex appeal and what you have is a package that is lethal in its irresistibility. So, really, you can't blame the poor boy for the effect that he has on women. At the same time he's not really complaining.

Minissha Lamba as Mahi

 Sweet, romantic, innocent Mahi. She believes that the world is her oyster. So what, if it was limited just to Amritsar most of her life. That doesn't stop the universe from conspiring to make all her wishes come true. Her life is made of stuff that's rarely found outside of a Hallmark card. She is a happy child…the Chosen One. She truly believes that nothing bad will ever happen to her and that her path will be decked by rainbows and strewn with flowers. That's where she walks, humming a happy song, with a Mills & Boon in one hand and her true love holding the other.

Bipasha Basu as Radhika

 The Gorgeous one. She's a sexy and confident girl. Lives in Mumbai, on her own terms. In her own flat. She is a dancer with Shiamak, and has the ambitions to shine on the silver screen. She is a girl of today. She doesn't feel any false modesty when it comes to showing her feelings for the opposite sex. She shrugs away all the old fashioned rules set by society as she believes in doing what makes her happy. As long as it doesn't compromise with the happiness of her lover.

Deepika Padukone as Gayatri

 She is like any of the other girls who move to another country to study and to eventually make it big. And yet, she's unlike any other girl. She's smart and she's sassy. She's beautiful and she's ambitious. She knows what she wants and she also knows how to get it. Life can be tough for a girl living alone in a strange land. But Gayatri is fearless. Her already beautiful eyes sparkle even more when faced with challenge. Nothing will stop this girl from achieving what she wants from life. Or from love.

Maxabout Review

Watchable

Bachna Ae Haseeno is a movie for all the guys out there, not that it has nothing in it for the female audience. The guys would easily connect with the male lead character. The other characters too are well etched and easy to identify with.

The movie starts off well, the first half is a romantic comedy with the main lead (Ranbir Kapoor) involved in 3 love stories. The first story with Minissha Lamba is sweet typical teenage romance. Its funny at times and well directed. The second with Bipasha Basu is about a live-in relationship. It’s exactly what most guys seek for, a non committal relationship with a hot woman. The final romance with Deepika, the most important of the three as most of what followed in the second half is a consequence of the Deepika – Ranbir story, isn’t convincing. Overall though, the first half is entertaining.

The second half is emotional (which is okay), a bit too long and very predictable. The execution of the script by the director especially in the second half could have been better. The editing too could have been much crisper. The music and locations, well it’s almost like a world tour with a song in every single location. Two songs stand out, the classic Bachna Ae Haseeno and Khuda Jaane. The cinematography is fantastic; the locales of Australia and Italy have been beautifully captured.

Goofs

• Factual errors: Raj works at Microsoft in Sydney as a game developer who made Halo 3. But Microsoft was just the publisher of Halo 3. Halo 3 was developed by Bungie Studios.
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: While playing in Swiss Alps, Ranbir and his friends are heard singing "Dhoom Machale". The story in this movie revolves around 1996 and Dhoom wasn't released until 2004. However, background music is rarely dictated by which time period the film is in.
• Anachronisms: During the party scene in Raj's house, the song that is being played is Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, but then neither the song nor the film had released when this story was supposedly taking place.
• Anachronisms: In the scene where Mahi misses the train, she is shown reading Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince. Even the first book in the Potter series wasn't released in 1996.

Trivias

• Katrina Kaif's track from Siddharth Anand's next produced by Yash Raj Films was chopped from the film. Sixty per cent of the film was already shot and YRF found the story was becoming too long. As a result they decided to do away with one girl's character altogether. Katrina's character was the only one that was not shot, so they decided to do away with her character.
• Katrina Kaif was removed from the project as the film was becoming too lengthy.
• Amrita Rao was offered a role, but she refused the offer.
• Preity Zinta was in talks for playing a role in the film.
• The title track song 'Bachna Ae Haseeno', was sung originally by Kishore Kumar in the film Hum Kisise Kum Naheen (1977)and was filmed on actor Rishi Kapoor. When the idea about using the song 'Bachna Ae Haseeno' from the old movie came, the music duo Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani were excited but they decided not to do a remix version of it. The track was completely re-worked by retaining some of the original vocals of Kishore Kumar on the beginning of the song. And then they got Kishore Kumar's son Sumeet Kumar to sing the rest of the song as a new composition with Vishal Dadlani's rap lyrics. The final product turned out to be unique mix with the legendary singer Kishore Kumar and his son heard in one single track in which the recording is separated by decades and that same song filmed on actor Rishi Kapoor's son Ranbir Kapoor.

Awards

1. Filmfare Awards
   Event: Filmfare Awards
   Result: Nominated
   Category: Best Supporting Actress
   Recipient(s): Bipasha Basu
2. Filmfare Awards
   Event: Filmfare Awards
   Result: Nominated
   Category: Best Playback Singer - Male
   Recipient(s): Shilpa Rao
3. Filmfare Awards
   Event: Filmfare Awards
   Result: Nominated
   Category: Best Playback Singer - Female
   Recipient(s): Shilpa Rao