Art & Entertainment

Zindaggi Rocks

Sush can't make the nation cry along through this weepy. Instead, you just want to tear your hair in irritation.

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Zindaggi Rocks
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The world is almost equally divided between Aishwarya Rai and Sushmita Sen admirers. I root for none. And so, after Kalpana Lajmi’s dismal Chingaari, the disenchantment with Sush peaks again with Zindaggi Rocks. As an actress Sush has a way of making you aware that she is "performing"; she might be choosy about her roles but the effort that goes into inhabiting the myriad characters shows. In Zindaggi Rocks she does a bad job of acting. As rockstar Kria, she doesn’t even play the guitar as she should be. Then she overdoes everything else—being cute, smiling, laughing and, of course, crying. Every emotion is many a pitch too high. Her Mother Courage-type of character demands a strong connect, a sense of empathy from the audience. Unlike Rajesh Khanna in Anand, Sush can’t make the nation cry along through this weepy. Instead, you just want to tear your hair in irritation.

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If that was not enough, she is surrounded by a loony brigade for a family—an overhysterical (if that’s possible) Moushumi Chatterjee in the double role of her mom and aunt, a dizzy friend played by Kim Sharma, an insufferable cowboy-driver and a precocious adopted child with a hole in his heart that needs corrective action. In comparison, as Kria’s doctor-lover, Shiney Ahuja sleepwalks through the film, often without an expression on his face—a terrible imbalance of histrionic power.

The screenplay itself is muddled to say the least. Half the time I kept wondering about the name of the doc—is it Suraj or is it Rehan? Well, the press docket informs me it is "Suraj Rehan". There is much else to question. What’s the need for a constant voiceover to tell you what’s happening on the screen? Where in the world do you get nurses who do nothing but serve juice to the doctor and try and hook him up with his pretty patients? Why is the handsome doc saddled with a comatose wife, when her stony presence does nothing to carry the film’s story forward? Or, is this a subtle tribute to Pedro Almodovar’s Talk to Her? And, pray why does a film on a rock star have such awful music? I can’t remember a single one of those Anu Malik ditties, the constant play on FM notwithstanding.

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High Fivew

Bollywood
1. Lage Raho Munnabhai
2. Woh Lamhe
3. Zindaggi Rocks
4. Khosla ka Ghosla
5. Pyaar ke Side Effects

Hollywood
1. The Departed
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
3. Open Season
4. Employee of the Month
5. The Guardian

Rock
1. The Open Door (Evanescence)
2. Songs from the Labyrinth (Sting)
3. Undiscovered (James Morrison)
4. Modern Times (Bob Dylan)
5. Black Parade (My Chemical Romance)

Courtesy: Film Information

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