Jaaneman - Lets Fall In Love Once Again

After watching the vacuous synergy of DON, here comes a film that sweeps you off your feet with its expansive vision of a world where true love triumphs even if it takes six songs, seven aptly choreographed dances (Farah Khan, take a bow) and five utterly heartwarming moments of drama, all woven into a tongue-in-cheek pastiche that collects all the clichés and conventions of the traditional filmy triangle into a clasp that saloms Broadway's truest and most vigorous musical tradition.
Initially it's a little tough to get into the gorgeous groove and the flamboyant moves orchestrated by a director who has the derring-do to take on the clichés of cinema and turn the mon their head. The first twenty minutes are near-disastrous, what with the dialogues with a devilish dwarf of an uncle (Anupam Kher) about the hero Suhaan (Salman Khan)'s past brush with love marriage and divorce going nowhere. But then the narrative gathers momentum. And we're soon looking at lives that are defined and dressed-up in the best musical tradition. Sadly the music score isn't as supportive as it should've been. Much of the musical impact comes from Gulzar's tongue-in-cheek lyrics paying a homage to that feeling of lovelorn wistfulness and of course the central performances.Akshay Kumar as the college nerd (look: courtesy the American serial Friends) who silently worships the student next-deskis full of perky beans bubbling oversensitive motions that show how effortlessly he links with his character. But it's Salman who propels this pungent tale of dramatic love forward. In a narrative saucily freed of serious intentions, buoyed by devices that take sporting potshots at that sting-thing called love, Salman creates an endearing graph as a callous arrogant wannabe film-star (check out his super starry tantrums in New York when an American director offers him the second lead) who turns into a sobbing mass of fatherly concerns in the second-half when he realizes he has a baby from the wife whom he once deserted.JAAN-E-MANN uses potboiler-conventions to tell a story that takes Hindi cinema to a new narrative level. Characters cheekily tampers with time and space to the extent that they appear to be no slave to either. Musical outfits pop out of nowhere. A Qawwalli group emerges from a cupboard and celebrates the nerd Agastya's devotion to the beauty with brains, when the cool dude Sohaan realizes he still loves the ex-wife whom he's been trying to thrust on the nerd (it's a complicated knick-knack of plotting devices) window panes shatter in computer-generated synchronicity...
Shirish Kunder uses a fascinating and energetic new form of storytelling that fuses the traditional Hindi-film triangle into the all-encompassing vision of Broadway musicals where colours create a riot of over-the-top emotions. Sadly the format is inconsistent, veering vigorously from satire to homage.