主播大秀

With the collective talents of this star cast on board, you might expect to find a melodrama of considerable merit in Baabul. Indeed, there are moments of great poignancy between Rani Mukherji and Amitabh Bachchan. However, Ravi Chopra's new film is ultimately hampered by a staid formula and a surfeit of trite dialogues. It's a throwback to an age of overtly sentimental cinema that today's more discerning cineastes will find laughable. Equally, others will revel in it's mawkish quality.

Balraj Kapoor's (Amitabh Bachchan) happy home is torn apart when son Avinash (Salman Khan) is killed in a road accident. Devastated by her husband鈥檚 death, Milli (Rani Mukherji) must come to terms with life as a widow. Unable to bear the altered state of his once vivacious daughter-in-law, Balraj defies conventions and familial opposition to bring love, laughter and colour back into Milli's life once more.

There's no questioning the talent of this star cast. The scenes between Rani Mukherji and Amitabh Bachchan are exemplary - their personal turmoil sensitively portrayed. The didactic tone of the film, however, is at times, excruciating, and even they are helpless in the face of such over-earnest monologues. Featuring black and white, insubstantial secondary characters and a series of highly contrived emotional highs and lows, this is storytelling at its most crude. Most disappointing perhaps is Hema Malini, whose performance is reduced to a mere showcase for her timeless beauty.

"CRUDE STORYTELLING"

The heady star cast and the glossy facade will lure audiences to the cinema, but reactions may well be mixed. Suckers for a sob story and a family drama should come armed with tissues, but those of a more sober disposition may well find the film amusing, for all the wrong reasons.