Guru or Amateur?

As with all Mani Ratnam movies, I was not impressed with the recent Aby-Ash flick, Guru.

It was a good concept - as all of his films are - but poorly followed through, as usual.

Abhishek did a wonderful job based on the script he was given (he's a complete gem, no doubt gonna make daddy proud), and Aishwarya gave perhaps the best performance of her life. There was real chemistry between the two in the married couple scenes, which were all very enjoyable. But it disappointed as an epic character story, possibly because Mani couldn't decide whether to make it a love story or not.

The dialogues really lacked punch - I kept expecting great dialogues that would allow Abhishek to bring back the Amitabh splendor and show real depth or development of character. I really wanted to love and understand Guru, and see how his character evolved - but the whole experience was so hollow. I really found it hard to see why Guru became who he did, what his motivations and intentions and feelings may have been. Yes, we get he doesn't hear the word 'no' and he's very driven. Uskay aagay??? There was so much potential to link the character's growth to the birth and growth of India as a nation, yet half the time I was trying to understand how many years had passed and where we were in the timeline. Did his hair turn grey early or did he really have his kids in his 40s? I think I spent the whole movie trying to figure out what year it was.

Not to mention that the songs were dismally placed and a total ear-sore (what are A R Rahman and Gulzar smoking?) and the background music was exaggerated, unnecessary and, like a bad 80s movie, went from soft flute to catastrophic orchestra and back to soft flute in crazy turns. Plus the slow motion effects in the courtroom scene (a la the climax of Saathiya) were excruiciatingly annoying and ruined the entire effect of the gravitas Abhishek was trying to bring to that (supposedly) electric courtroom.

The tagline for the movie is 'Villager. Visionary. Winner.' While the first two may be appropriate, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around Winner. Guru indulged in corruption and bribery and broke the law quite brazenly, and we're supposed to root for him because it's the classic poor man-rich man fight? Yeah. Not so much. This is the 21st century after all. If this had been a story about a man who actually beat the system and reached success, it would actually be far more inspiring and noteworthy.

Lets not even go to the bizarre Madhavan-Vidya Balan subplot (though they were both good and Madhavan looks so much nicer now that he's lost weight).

And I never thought I'd say this, but I really liked Mithun! Very nicely done there.

All in all, I really am going to think twice before going to watch a Mani Ratman movie again - I'm beginning to think he's all hype and nothing else.