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 The movie begins at Bardoli village, Gujarat where a wealthy old man decides to write his assets in the name of his grandson Yogesh Patel (Harman Baweja), the only person in the family to remember his maternal grandfather on all occasions (read birthdays). Yogesh is doing his MBA at Chicago with a rocking life style of a sincere student in the day time, popular guy in the campus and a DJ at a night club.
But things are not rosy at home in Mumbai where his elder brother has taken a huge amount of loan and lost it in stock market crash and is not able to pay back to several people including a local bhai. He is supposed to give attendance everyday at Bhai’s office and he is being constantly threatened by two chelas of the dreaded bhai who has a style of threatening defaulters – he would cut the fingers by using a betel nut cutter.
A family astrologer predicts that within a very short time Yogesh would get married and he would get a fortune on the very same day. Yogesh makes an urgent visit home after learning of sudden ill health of his dad, which turns out to be a false news and he is further taken aback by the ridiculous request made by his family members - he has to marry a girl in 10 days in order to save his family from an eventual complication and disgrace. After a long phase of jet lag and persuasion and emotional blackmail by family members he agrees to marry and being a principled man he refuses to accept dowry. He starts reading a book which he happens to find at home and what’s that book all about? No prizes for guessing – “What’s your Rashee?” and then starts the poor translation of Linda Goodman’s sun signs book into a loose movie plot. As if it is not enough, there are two additional silly and forgettable sub plots.
The girls start entering in a random zodiac fashion and each zodiac has a story to tell. Ashutosh Gowariker struggles to stitch a convincing story relevance-wise as well as astrology-wise. Some zodiac signs lack convincing characterization and a few overlap. Only a few succeed in making an impact due to the versatile Priyanka Chopra who delivers every character with sheer conviction and brilliant performance.
Anjali (Mesh) with a slouch and a bad dressing sense, Vishakha (Vrishabh) with a childish behavior who wants to test the person, Kaajal (Mithun) a vivacious and bubbly girl who thinks it is a must to give some time to understand each other before marrying, Hansa (Karka) a traditional girl with a broken heart, Mallika (Simha) an ambitious and headstrong dancer, Pooja (Kanya) a doctor who wishes for a husband to support her in every venture of hers, Rajani (Tula) a dominating business person for whom the marriage is a business contract to save her from an ongoing CBI enquiry, Nandini (Vrishik) who has a conservative exterior with a diametrically opposite true nature and who is passionate about becoming a supermodel, Bhavna (Dhanu) an astrologer with seductive charms, Jankada (Makar) a school going underage girl, Sanjana (Kumbh) a sophisticated and a straightforward girl and lastly Chandrika (Meen) a filmy kinda person who believes in re-incarnation and second lives….huh
While adapting the extremes of every character to the demands of screen, the story loses it’s plot (if at all it had any) in a big way only to be saved mercifully by the brilliant Priyanka Chopra.
Music has always been a strong point of Gowariker’s films here it’s a downer. Every zodiac breaks into a compulsory song with only very few being catchy. The story becomes so predictable in the second half that you wait for the movie to get over and start counting how many signs are still left and with no interest left to see which sign the protagonist ultimately marries.
From whatever little you showed us (for a fraction of a second) on the screen Mr. Gowariker, I could gather that Yogesh Patel is Mithun moon sign and Scorpio sun sign. But his birth details do not match with the chart generated towards the end of the movie. But you were so busy adapting extremes of Priyanka Chopra’s 12 zodiac signs, you completely neglected the characterization of the main lead. He is just a foreign returned student with some music knowledge and giving all similar responses, exclamations and surprise reactions to the extreme idiosyncrasies convincingly exhibited by Priyanka Chopra’s characters. Harman Baweja doesn’t impress overall. However, the rest other cast members have put up a good show.
The film would have been a little more bearable had it been under three hours but a running time of 3 hours and 30 minutes appears far too much. If you may ask whether to check it out or not well there are only two reasons to watch this astrological blunder made by Ashutosh Gowariker – Priyanka Chopra and Priyanka Chopra.
Rating: 2 out of 5*
Starring: Harman Baweja and Priyanka Chopra
Director: Ashutosh Gowariker
Sampurn Media
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