Andaaz Review

Food for thought! A li'l easy crossword:

1. Namuna Miss India, also Miss Uniworse (4)
2. Miss Geography Class in school, but become Miss World later (8)
3. Begins with A. Ends with Y. First two letters rhyme with "Ack!" (6)
4. Begins with A. Ends with Zzzz. Minus the z's, means zero in Hindi (9)

Answers:

1. Lara
2. Priyanka
3. Akshay
4. Andaazzzz

Congrats! If you've cracked that puzzle, you are eligible to now skip Stage 2 - watching Andaaz - to directly move to Stage 3 of reading the review and winning a chance to do yourself a favor.

The film distributors were on strike till recently. The real reason seems to me that they were protesting against distributing something so ghastly. With movies like this being distributed across the country, the strike may as well have continued indefinitely. But alas, it made it to the theaters.

How exciting can a movie with lines such as 'Nahi, tumhe meri kasam', 'Agar tum mujhse pyar karte ho tho pehle kyo nahi bataya' and 'Mein vidhwa hoon, mujhse kaun shaadi karega' in excess be? How interesting can a story of childhood friends not knowing they love each other be? How thrilling can a movie with Akshay Kumar and Lara Dutt playing Class XII students and enacting the Salim-Anarkali number for the College Day be?

Kajal (Lara) and Raj (Akshay) are buddies for life. Raj even grows up to become an Air Force pilot so that he can propose to Kajal up above the sky so high. But before he blurts out the three words, his dreams crashland as Kajal says she is love with a third party and is getting hitched to him.

Raj decides to forget Kajal and cavorts with Teeya (Priyanka Chopra) in South Africa. But his life takes a new turn when he comes to know that Kajal is none other than Teeya's bhabhi. What's worse is that Kajal is now mentally ill after she has lost her hubby in a plane crash.

Teeya realizes R and K have had an affair in the past. So she sacrifices her love for the sake of her widowed bhabhi and her current beau. The movie comes to a screaming climax with Raj hurling a handful of sindoor on Kajal's forehead.

Action hero Akshay Kumar fails to elicit any reaction from his fans. No action, no Akshay. The lover boy image looks odd on this hero whose muscles are all wasted in the movie. Now that it has been ages since he has had a hit, he looks very tensed and nervous.

Lara and Priyanka (the Miss World who did not know in which state her birthplace Jamshedpur is located, and the one who said her living idol was Mother Teresa) outsmart each other in outstripping. Without an iota of grace or elegance, the two shamelessly cavort away.

Since there is isn't much difference between one leggy, buxom heroine and another, only talent will help them survive. Since Lara and Prinks have none of it, they may as well go back to sharing and caring for Orpahaned Ostriches in Australia and Handicapped Hyenas in Honululu.

There are exactly four lines in one number that actually remind you of the music part of the movie. The 'Rabba Ishq Na Hobe' is so jarring on the ears that it may be harmful to your tympanum. Visually too, the number looks like it was built on the Lankini and Dhakhini theme from the Ramayana with Lara and Prinks doing the honors.