{"id":745,"date":"2007-01-28T22:07:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-28T22:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/2007\/01\/review-salaam-e-ishq-2.html"},"modified":"2023-01-23T01:15:13","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T06:15:13","slug":"review-salaam-e-ishq-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/2007\/01\/review-salaam-e-ishq-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Review : Salaam-e-ishq"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/a>\"\"\n\n\n\n

Rating: Above Average<\/strong> (3.5\/5)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Genre : Romance
Year : 2007
Running time : 3 hrs and 45 minutes
Director : Nikhil Advani
Cast : Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Ayesha Takia, Akshay Khanna, Tinnu Anand, Vidya Balan, John Abraham, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, Isha Koppikar, Sohail Khan, Govinda, Shannon Esra, Anjana Sukhani<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SALAAM-E-ISHQ ( SEI ) : NO WARM, FUZZY FEELING !
<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After watching this almost 4 hour extravaganza, I feel like I feel after a large and heavy meal ; I liked eating it, but it was way too oily for consumption and I don\u2019t feel particularly enthused afterwards. Rumored to be based on the romantic flick \u201cLove actually\u201d<\/a>, which I loved actually, I can\u2019t help but compare. Yes, they both feature romantic stories, of couples who are inter-connected with each other through friendship, relationships or just off-chance meetings, and one of the romantic situations in SEI is a take-off on the one from \u201cLove Actually\u201d, but that\u2019s where the similarity ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went in to see \u201cLove Actually\u201d for Hugh Grant, and came away a bleeding-heart romantic, on a cotton-candy- the-world-is-beautiful-and-the-sun-is-shining high. It left me with this warm, fuzzy feeling which SEI failed to deliver. And that really is the crux of the problem, after all that hype and hoopla \u2013 it fails to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEI features 6 stories of 6 young couples in different situations, and different quandaries. All their problems are apparently caused by love, too much, too little, love for the wrong people, love for people who don\u2019t want it, unrequited love, amnesia-afflicted love and what have you. Out of the 6 stories, 5 stay with you, while the 6th drops off the radar after a while, resurfacing only at the end for a little comedic relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of the 5 stories is moderately developed, the most believable being the Hindu-Muslim couple \u2013 the Ashutosh-Tehzeeb story, simply because of Vidya Balan\u2019s strong performance, and John\u2019s lazy charm . The starlet hungry to make it big, hatching up a publicity stunt which backfires \u2013 the Kkamini-Rahul (Priyanka-Salman) deal I had a little trouble believing, since it was a little too stretched – lot\u2019s off treacly love, tears and under-developed characters. And really who was Rahul anyway, and why in the first place was he involved \u2013 the director never cleared that up and it didn\u2019t help the believability any. The Stephanie-Raju (Shannon and Govinda) pair, she searching for her faithless Indian boyfriend and he the desi taxi-driver who ferries her around the country was sweet and reminded me of Marisa Tomei\u2019s \u201cOnly You\u201d<\/a>. And the Shiven-Gia (Akshaye-Ayesha) yuppie marriage fiasco, with the groom with the cold-feet had me enthused because of Takia\u2019s innocent naivete and Akshay\u2019s zesty performance. The 5th story was of the stable married couple \u2013 Vinay-Seema (Anil and Juhi), whose 15 year marriage is threatened when the husband wants more than just boring, suburban life. This one closely resembled the Emma Thompson-Alan Rickman storyline in \u201cLove Actually\u201d, but was not portrayed with as much feeling (I remember weeping buckets for Emma\u2019s character). The 6th couple\u2019s story was Isha-Sohail as a rural couple unable to give vent to their passion, and I fear suffered the most on the editor\u2019s table. It wasn\u2019t even a love quandary really \u2013 just well-done attempts at humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stories almost run in parallel, they develop initially, get to critical mass simultaneously, everything emphasized and every emotion underlined with music and dancing, implode and then resolve towards the end. The actors do fairly well, special mentions to Govinda who plays a Bollywoodised cabbie to the hilt, and the vibrant Akshaye Khanna. Salman has slimmed down, while Ayesha has gotten chubby, although she still looks gorgeous.The director transitions from story to story with relative panache, picturesque shots, and stylish edits. The songs are plentiful, well-picturised and pleasant. And some of the dialogues are so charmingly pretty and so romantically sugar-sweet that I, sucker that I am, longed to write them down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the movie was too long; \u201cLove actually\u201d did the job and did it better in half the time. Of course it didn\u2019t have the songs and dances, and the Bollywood baggage which SEI has. Where this film suffers is in it\u2019s pace, especially in the first half, where the film moves forward languidly. Also the director tries to tell us a lot, and shows too little (lots of captioning telling us the dates and locations of situations). The treatment could have also been subtler for love stories; at times it\u2019s a bit in your face. All the glitz and glamour notwithstanding, I wasn\u2019t too keen on any pair, although they all seemed OK. None of the many characters in SEI get time or space to develop their own, quirky personalities, into real people I\u2019d care about or root for. And that I think stops this mediocre film from being spectacular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is fairly decent fare for a weekend watch, but don\u2019t expect to come away awed with the magnificence of love. And this from someone who\u2019s seen \u201cLove actually\u201d 5 times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rating: Above Average (3.5\/5) Genre : RomanceYear : 2007Running time : 3 hrs and 45 minutesDirector : Nikhil AdvaniCast : Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Ayesha Takia, Akshay Khanna, Tinnu Anand, Vidya Balan, John Abraham, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, Isha Koppikar, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":"","facebook_10233691416821117_190635594420624":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[51,76,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-51","category-bollywood","category-watchable"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":3,"uagb_excerpt":"Rating: Above Average (3.5\/5) Genre : RomanceYear : 2007Running time : 3 hrs and 45 minutesDirector : Nikhil AdvaniCast : Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Ayesha Takia, Akshay Khanna, Tinnu Anand, Vidya Balan, John Abraham, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, Isha Koppikar, … Continue reading →","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p45CAb-c1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10299,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/10299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}