'Guru' the Movie

Time - 9:30am. Venue - Garuda Mall. Presently in the parking lot. What the hell ? 10 bucks to park my fuel-sucking bike...and I just recently watched a movie for 19 bucks on a balcony seat.

Time - 9:35am. Venue - Still the same Garuda Mall. Wow!! Huge place. My first visit. I looked around with eyes wide open, just like how a baby looks at the world around it. People everywhere, mostly college guys and girls.

Girls .... oh so they are all here ... now I realize where all Bangalore girls had vanished ... they are not in R.T.Nagar anymore ... they are all here ... but where the hell is Inox ?? I follow a group of girls ... hey no assumptions ... I'm just hoping they'll lead me to the multiplex ... 1st floor ... 2nd floor ... 3rd floor ... 4th floor ... where the hell am I going ... I hope I won't fall off this scary escalator ... are they going to the terrace ... mass suicide ... love disappointments ? Oh here's Inox ... finally !!

Friends haven't come as yet ... I'm scared to touch anything ... everything looks expensive ... even that sweeper who's glaring at me ... ah here come my friends ... now I need to fear nothing ... oh this was supposed to be a movie review right ... Cool screen ... cool seats ... cool ... in fact ... its too cool or rather too cold ... ssshhh the movie's starting ...

A 1950s story ... cool east-man color effect ... nice start ... a villager ... goes to Istanbul to earn money, earns almost enough to start his own business ... the first half of the movie accelerates at good pace ... Abhishek looks good ... Aishwarya Rai (a bit of a setback after Dhoom, but she wasn't looking good in that anyway), decent performance.

But hey, hold on, this Guru bhai is growing at too fast a rate ... last I saw him in a small office, now he owns cars, in an instant he's building a factory, the next instant he's the entrepreneur of Shakti Group of Industries. Too fast, too fast, how the hell did all this happen ... ok lets assume he did a lot of illegal stuff, bribed government officials, did not pay excise duties on imports ... fine i'll buy this explanation, but would have been better if I was shown how Guru became a business tycoon so soon.

Mithun da ... looks good too ... old man, but looks good. Now, whats Vidya Balan doing in a wheel-chair ? Multiple sclerosis ? Hey c'mon, she looks so good, she needs to dance around like a little girl, not sit on a wheel-chair. Make Aishwarya Rai sit on a wheel-chair rather. Ok, summary of first half - Guru bhai, starts off as a villager, and grows to become a big business tycoon, how I'm not sure, Aishwarya is his wife (whom he marries for the sake of dowry), Vidya Balan can't walk, but she adores Guru bhai.

Interval time ... cool urinals ... they emit red lights ... I did a bit of a disco with my body fluids ... had to stop when the guy next to me frowned.

What ?????????????????????????????? Popcorn and coke costs 70 bucks ? Are you crazy man ? Is he importing his pop-corns from Zambia ? I ain't paying anything ... you get it ... I ain't paying anything !!

I get back to my seat ... coke and pop-corn in hand ... with a lighter wallet ... hey the girl next to me keeps kicking me ... get yer feet off me woman ... these are my new trousers ... uff she kicks me again ... I was about to pour my coke inside her nose, when the movie started.

Second half ... I must ask my little brother to watch this movie ... and my dad too ... Second half is a bit of a dragger ... unnecessary songs ... 2-3 songs are pretty good ... Rehman's music ... naaaah doesn't sound like Rehman ... enter Madhavan ... Vidya Balan's life partner ... journalist ... with only one aim ... get Guru bhai down ... Guru's irregularities are slowly exposed ... but Guru fights on ... he faces an enquiry ... talks about 'India shining' for about 5 minutes ... good dialogues ... movie comes to an end ... you can take everything from him ... but not his courage ... b'coz Guru fights on

The cinematography is excellent ... dialogues are good ... I loved Abhishek, he's got this simplicity in him, he ain't handsome, his rugged features and unblemished smile makes you connect with his character immediately, Aishwarya looks less plastic ... Vidya Balan is adorable ... Mithun da is good ... Madhavan ... hmmm ... not too strong ... he needed to be more stronger

But .... yeah ... here's the but ... the movie lacks details ... superficially it looks good ... do a bit of introspection, and you'll get a whole lot of doubts ... some characters are neglected and not given a proper finish ... some songs occur at unnecessary places ... neither his growth is explained properly, how he's caught is not dealt with properly, how he gets out of the noose unblemished I still don't understand ... Vidya Balan is totally wasted ... Madhavan and Mithun never make their appearances during the conclusion ... Rehman's music makes you feel cheated ... on the whole it fails to bring about inspiration ... the viewer is still left confused over which path to take ... I thought I'd emerge out of the theater with so much of 'josh' that I would open an anti-Biocon company right opposite Kiran Mazumdar's office, but I came out of the theater still cursing the pop-corn guy and the parking attendant. I have watched movies that create so much of motivation that I had dreamt of becoming a Nobel Prize winner over-night. This movie creates no such effect, and whatever it did create is way too temporary that lasts only until you walk down the corridor to the restroom.

This movie, had a potential to be directed much better (remember, this is ManiRatnam), so it disappoints you there. But the positives exist too. The shooting is done in Badami, Melkote, Chennai and parts of Turkey, and the cinematography as I said earlier is really good. I haven't so much revealed the story, as I want you to watch this movie. The story has been compared to Dhirubai Ambani's Reliance story ... I don't know how far thats true ... but one needs to understand the difficulties involved in being an entrepreneur ... the movie does no preaching ... it just shows that there are grey shades to every character ... but hard work eventually pays. Watch it once ... its a 'different' movie ... literally

My ratings: * * *

My story isn't over as yet ... I walked over to the food court ... ate some Bhel-puri ... some crazy guy sitting next to us began preaching about going abroad ... and getting true value for our hard-work there ... he also talked about how important it is to think about what we need to give our country right now ... there was truth in what he said ... he also talked about the mall-culture ... yeah talk about it man ... and talk about that pop-corn guy as well ...

I had a look around again ... hey who are these people ... whose money are they feasting on ... I need to bring my brother here ... there are school kids here ... if I ask for a heavier wallet, my bro would put stones into it ... anyway not a place you take your girlfriend to ... if Guru brought Aishwarya Rai here, she would reduce his huge group of companies into a foot-path stall ... do you know she bought 11 banaras saris for her marriage ... yeah I've been reading a lot of Times of India these days

Finally I walked out ... had a lot of trouble finding my bike ... such a huge place man ... where did that guy who stole my 10 bucks for parking, hide my bike ... ah there it was ... I sped off towards MG Road ... I hardly felt my wallet now ...

And oh yeah ... remember that girl who kept kicking me throughout the movie ... know what I did to her ... naah I did not pour coke into her nose ... that coke was costly dude ... I threw a pop-corn on her ... she kept searching for whatever that hit her ... I'm a happy guy now ... and oh yeah, the movie, go watch it, its an ok movie, you might like it ... just know what markets, shares, debentures are ... that will help you...