I love Bollywood films. Ravishing, well-invested musicals, song and dance, dialogues which are larger than life, wonderful actors, strong characters. The song numbers have been an artistic tradition Hindi films, and what particularly amazes me about all these films is the complete irrelevance of the song numbers to the film's story itself (unless it's a film like Dil To Pagal Hai, where the music is part of the script).
I think Jhoom Barabar Jhoom is a brave attempt to make a film with the songs being part of the screenplay. But even then, it just doesn't work. Why? Because there is NO screenplay. The entire film is a big dance show. And it shouldn't be like this. When there are no songs, the film consists of silly jokes and plastic "acting". Some sequences are so ridiculous that you start hating anyone who's been ever involved with this film. It is intended to be funny and crazy, which is a good purpose, but this film manages to be neither this nor that and instead, it sadly ends up being a big silly show. I do admit that the songs are well danced and catchy, but they become tiresome at some point, mainly because most of them are actually the same song in different versions.
The acting (not that it can be called acting in this case) is bad. Abhishek is annoying and miscast. Pretentious performance. Preity, an actress I like immensely, is her usual bubbly and vivacious self, but here, somehow lifeless. The fact that a great actress like Preity could even think of appearing in this film makes me want to slap her. Bobby and Lara are terrible. They ham, overact, and even in the dance numbers get overshadowed by the leading stars (at least here they make some sense). Lara is particularly horrible as a prostitute with her fake French accent. All in all, I do recommend to watch it if you intend to go and dance through the entire film. Quite a special watch buhaaaa...
