Prince Alarming

He hams, hams some more, yells at times, throws glasses here and there, swings his hips awkwardly, not even wishing he could dance.

Film: Yuvvraj
Director: Subhash Ghai
Cast: Salman Khan, Zayed Khan, Anil Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Boman Irani, Mithun Chakraborty
Rating:
Running at : Inox Forum, City Centre, Swabhumi
He hams, hams some more, yells at times, throws glasses here and there, swings his hips awkwardly, not even wishing he could dance. Meet Prince Charming. Princess Charming, looks and smiles, sniffs and smiles, sobs and smiles, whimpers and smiles again. No wonder, Prince is the best she could get. Enter bad brother and mad brother. Really bad, and not-really-mad. And Subhash Ghai, thinks he has the perfect show-stealer in hands. But somewhere in the middle, he gets his sense stolen. And we have Yuvvraj.

There are times, in course of Yuvvraj, you pinch yourself to believe that this is a Subhash Ghai movie. Yes, the sweeping colourful sets for song sequences, a little old-fashioned idealistic dialogues do look and sound familiar, but that hardly compensates for the complete lack of what we can, hesitantly even, call a story.

As Yuvvraj progresses, it feels like you8217;re watching an expensive, magnified version of a daily soap. The story, the exchange between characters, and even the vamp, looks straight out of a tele-serial. It doesn8217;t help that Katrina looks ethereal in her skirt dresses. It doesn8217;t help that Boman Irani lights up the screen whenever he shows on it. It doesn8217;t help that there8217;s an A R Rahman song every 10 minute. Because the hotchpotch is unforgivable.

Sample this: Salman Khan is Deven, a cranky aspiring musician, the 8216;obsessive lover8217; as the narrator tells you over and over again. His hair is dyed copper, body bulked up atrociously, speech stilted and accent scarier than Katrina8217;s. There8217;s a hardly a scene where his tortured emotions he is filled of a ton of that, says Ghai8217;s narrator make themselves visible. He has thrown glasses and broken things with more vengeance in silly comedies too. He had been thrown out of his house, twelve years before the story starts, because he beat up his autistic older brother Gyanesh Anil Kapoor. Gyanesh is autistic, the throwing-pillows, eating-with-a-bib-on type but sings ragas like you have heard no maestro sing. He has 8216;genius disorder8217;, says Ghai. So, despite being autistic he can make out that people had been plotting against him when a video clip full off crooked filmy speech is shown. You can8217;t question that. Even if Kapoor looks like he zooms in and out of his character when he is bored and when he8217;s not. Danny Zayed Khan, the youngest, is a spoilt rich brat, who does nothing plausible to average human sense. Zayed Khan, however, fits the role like a T.

So, here8217;s Ghai8217;s story-sellers. The story? When the billionaire father dies, he leaves very small fractions of his wealth to everybody and the bulk to Gyanesh. So, Deven and Danny start plotting to lay their hands on the wealth. In course, they discover the true meaning of being brothers. And Ghai thinks he has a story8230;

There8217;s no action, little acting, a lot of songs. Songs, which refuse to end, at times sound alike, and are picturised with silly gloss. Then, if you feel that Yuvvraj is about a bunch of out-of-gear people trying to play God, put your conscience aside. Because you are mostly right.