Kathmandu:

Salaam-e-Ishq (Rom-com)

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, John Abraham, Vidya Balan, Govinda, Shanon Eshrechowitz, Akshaye Khanna, Ayesha Takia, Sohail Khan, Isha Koppiker

Directed by Nikhil Advani

Showing at theatres near you

Love is a many splendoured sting and it takes a creator of Nikhil Advani’s insouciant romanticism to get a hang of the episodic Hollywood romance Love Actually and turn it into a full-on celebration of the Great Bollywood Drama.

Salaam-e-Ishq is both a hefty homage and a tongue-in-cheek spoof on ‘Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Bollywood But Were Too Ashamed To Seek’.

It’s all here... the frightful conflicts of the heart (Muslim girl Vidya Balan loses memory and is nurtured back to health by Hindu boy John); the delicious twists and turns of a midlife crisis (Anil Kapoor learns ballroom dancing from Anjana Sukhani in what’s a straight homage to Shall We Dance); the wonderful cultural divide that fuels immense chemical compatibility between two mismatched souls (played by Govinda and Sharon in an episode that tilts its toupee to Aamir Khan and Karisma Kapoor in Raja Hindustani).

Then there is a Rajasthani couple in a joint family trying hard to make out (Sohail Khan and Isha Koppiker doing a version of Basu Chatterjee’s chawl-romance Piya Ka Ghar), a commitment-phobic yuppie and his exasperated fiancée (now why do Akshaye Khanna and Ayesha Takia remind you of their roles in the Subhash Ghai comedy Shaadi Se Pehle?)...

The Priyanka-Salman track (with a special voice-appearance by Karan Johar) is broadly spoofy... but nevertheless spiffy as the item girl and wannabe ‘tragedy queen’ Priyanka pulls out all stops. Now you see her as the consummate item bomb, now you see her as this made over Dehradun girl who wants love instead of Karan Johar.

If the Salman-Priyanka track is broad burlesque, John-Vidya is delicate and sensitive...

Editor (Aarti Bajaj) uses the scissors gently but persuasively. Bits of songs, emotions, dialogues and locales float in and out of the episodic narration to create unity in the dynamics of the diversity. Often you feel Advani’s frantic search for a common ground among the various couples who inhabit his vast kingdom of commitment in love and marriage.

Acting-wise, the film is a storehouse of well-utilised opportunities for some of our biggest stars. John and Vidya look like the perfect made-for-each other couple. Juhi Chawla has little to do, and yet she brings much empathetic grace opposite Anil. Akshaye Khanna is in full form, creating a volume of unexpected havoc within the emotions served up at the broadest pitch of the boudoire comedy. Govinda as the new-millennium Raju Hindustani is engaging in ways he never was in Bhagam Bhag.

But Sohail Khan as the horny bridegroom is the best. Delectably cartoonish, he invests a kinetic animation into a unidimensional role.

The camera and art work blend the colour and kitsch of Karan Johar, Yash Chopra and Dharmesh Darshan in what could be the formulistic equivalent of a tribute to the potboiler. But the pot boils at a sensuous simmer. You love John when he tells his amnesiac soul mate that it doesn’t matter if she’s forgotten their past together, they still have a future together. Hindi cinema has a past and a future. Salaam-e-Ishq strides both worlds, and yet retains its balance.