The festive season has begun with a bang with the much awaited Salman-Kareena starer, BODYGUARD.
Like every Salman fan even I was waiting for the movie to release and I was damn sure the movie would be worth a watch, as I had already seen the Malayalam version some 5 times and I was totally floored by the story, acting and music in the original.
To tell you frankly, I was tad disappointed. The Hindi version lacks soul. There is no connection between any scenes and the love story falls flat. The movie that was 2 hours 40 mins in Malayalam was reduced to a 2hour movie in Hindi.
The story was altered to showcase the ongoing Salman massy wave. Unnecessary fights, unnecessary characters and situations which were not there in the original was included and in turn the soul of the movie i.e. the story was killed.
The original story in Malayalam had superstar Dileep playing the title role. He is shown as a weird guy who from his childhood has developed a strange interest and passion to be with the brave and the powerful, taking any amount of risks. He jumps out of college and starts learning to become a brave goonda by becoming a bodyguard for famous anti socials. He accidentally hears about the ultimate don of the city Ashokan (thyagarajan) and finds ways to get to him.
A lot of confusion is created by the heroine's character played by Nayantara and he ultimately loses the job as a Bodyguard and he is asked to leave the village. To prove him, Jayakrishnan saves Ashokan and his family from a murder attempt and becomes the favorite bodyguard of this man, who has retired from goonda activities and is presently engaged in other business.
The chemistry between the hero and the heroine is developed from the first scene itself where the hero is in awe of the heroine because of her simplicity and her kind nature and in turn the heroine is very impressed with his innocence and protective nature towards her.
Even when she starts playing the prank on the hero posing as his girlfriend over the phone, her intention is to get his attention diverted so that she can spend more time with her friends and have fun in college, as she and her friends are tired of him and his bufoonary.
A lot of funny scenes and situations are shown over the screen when Dileep who is irritated with his self proclaimed girlfriend (who calls him everyday) starts suspecting every girl in the college and goes in search of her. Ultimately he falls in love with the voice of the girl and he is ready to do anything for her once his duties towards the heroines family is over.
She falls in love with the hero when she slowly, over a time, understands how much he worships her and how much she means to him while they talk over the phone. She tries to talk bad about the heroine's character to check his devotion towards her and that is when she is amazed to see that he is even ready to split up with her as he cannot hear anything bad about the heroine.
Even when the mystery unfolds in the end, it comes as a jolt to the audience about the girl who the hero marries thinking it to be the heroine.
In the Hindi version, the story has altered a lot from the first scene to the last, there are no moments created to make the viewers understand how Kareena's character got to love the Bodyguard. If they would have stuck to the original screenplay the movie would have been equally enjoyable in Hindi too.
After seeing the original, the Hindi version is something one wont be able to digest. It seems as if the movie was made in a hurry to release it on Eid to cash in on the 5 day weekend.
Salman has done a fantastic job and Kareena gets a half baked role, I still dont agree with her when she says that this is one of her best roles, even better than Jab We Met.
Rest of the cast does a decent job and the music is a BLOCKBUSTER, especially Teri Meri Prem Kahani, which is my favorite track but the songs are shot as music videos and then inserted wherever they wanted to insert, in short there was no connection between the scenes and the songs.
Overall the movie will be a huge hit over the Box Office (the movie has made 20 crores on its opening day itself) because of the current Salman Khan wave but this is not a great love story that the makers and the actors were claiming to be.
