Veer-Zaara

Old yet passionate, frail yet sublime, the estranged lovers in Yash Chopra's film are no ordinary love birds. Their body language, demeanour, speech and attitude hark back to an era when emotions were hallmarks of human nature, not designer things to be used as and when required in bubblegum concoctions that masquerade as romantic musicals in our wretched times.

An old-fashioned love tale for the tear-ducts. Which, I must pleasantly note, still holds and very mildly moves you.

Despite a chorus which wells up every time there is a three-hankie moment, sun-kissed sarson da khet, colourful dupattas endlessly fluttering, a dementedly jovial Amitabh Bachchan and largely incomprehensible Punjabi dialogues, Khan strides across Aditya Chopra's screenplay with assured ease. Anil Mehta's camera loves him and so does most of India.

Veer-Zaara has a new backdrop, but takes the same route as his previous love stories. Though Yash Chopra lends his brand of freshness in creating a visually captivating picture, Aditya's script is overtly sappy and unnecessarily lengthy. Half an hour of the film could have been easily chopped off from its 210-minute running time. The music by the Late Madan Mohan is mellifluous, but there are too many songs. One would rather see Veer, Zaara interact and fall in love instead of singing songs in sugarcane fields.

"Veer Zaara" is inordinately long and sentimental. Certain things like fabulous camera work, art direction and sensuousness of the moods, are a given. And you would over look the clichés simply because there are such good performances, especially from Preity and Rani.