An extraordinary love story

As it often happens, you go click-happy on a holiday; but later, when you browse through the photo album, you end up with only a couple of heart-tugging, nostalgia-evoking pictures. Ghai's Yaadein suffers a similar fate.

With Yaadein, Showman Subhash Ghai tells you a long fable fantastically independent of the laws of logic and believability. The end result: An ordinary love story set in lush, eye-candy locales but with very few memory-adhering moments.

When the film begins, you are optimistic that Ghai may be able to extend his oeuvre with this venture. Via a crisply-edited flashback, you are told that Raj Singh (Jackie Shroff doing wonders for post-40 male vanity by looking dapper in a salt 'n' pepper haircut) is a London-based NRI who has lost his pretty wife, Shalini (Rati) in a freak car accident.
Before dying, Shalini elicits a promise from Raj, who has been a stranger to his growing daughters, that he will be their friend hereafter. Raj makes a valiant attempt but fails miserably - a fact established by an impactful scene where one belligerent beti even threatens to report him to the police if he raises his hand on her.

In a last ditch attempt to keep his family together, Raj brings his brood of betis to an idyllic pink farmhouse somewhere in bucolic India. But after flirting tentatively with a Fiddler On The Roof-like situation where Raj tries to match-make for his daughters, Ghai shifts gear to familiar territory and dedicates a song-studded, ennui-ridden episode to youngest daughter Isha (Kareena Kapoor) and her romance with her dad's best friend's son, teen-tycoon, Ronit Malhotra (Hrithik Roshan).

A shoddily-shot scene of Ronit rescuing Isha from a sleepy crocodile who seems more willing to nap rather than snap and a cycle race that seems to be stapled onto the film in a bid to promote Hero Cycles (Coke and Paas Paas are blatantly plugged too) suggest that minimum pain has been taken while scripting these portions of the film.

What is reprehensible is the dad, who is supposed to be a dost, trotting out the shameless cliché about a girl marrying an entire family and not just the boy. Therefore, his daughter Isha must forego her love for Ronit since his parents disapprove of the class differences between them. Puh-lease.

To corroborate his theory, Isha's older sister who had defied her dad and married for love, is harried by her avaricious in-laws and sobs into Raj's lapel, "I want a divorce." The obedient Isha willy nilly complies with her dad's wishes and lies to Ronit that she mistook a platonic friendship for love due to the idyllic holiday "vatavaran (!)" She urges Ronit to marry a rich girl who is willing to merge her firm with Ronit's if he marries her.

True to age-old stereotype, this rich, cropped hair Miss pooh poohs the idea of living in a joint family and wants no babies - they spoil the figure. Ronit, rightly blows a fuse at this bizarre turn in his love story. But strangely, he just takes Isha by force for a boat ride where he sings a pained number. But if you deduced that they have eloped you are wrong - it was just a musical break.

Finally, Ronit's diamond-dripping mother, shaken by Ronit calling her ma'am instead of ma, has a sudden change of heart. Going overboard, she calls a board meeting of their company where Ronit asks the members to signal with their coloured folders their choice of his bride - the moneyed Miss or his poor honey, Isha! A true democracy, this. Yaadein begins well, gets into a muddle in the middle and ends with a climax that can be best described as corny and contrived in turns.

But if the film doesn't slacken totally it's because intermittently Ghai does succeed in activating the audience's tear ducts. The tender moments involving Raj and his daughters do bring a lump to your throat. Also, a sprinkling of humour, like Hrithik making Jim Carrey faces to amuse himself, help to pepper the prosaic passages.

Also, despite the script's inability to lend psychological depth to Jackie's character, Shroff's sincerity proves to be the ace up his sleeve. He packs a k-o punch in his outburst against Ronit's uncle's (Amrish Puri's) character, and moves you to tears with his moist-eyed look when he imagines his wife, Rati, playing the dholak at their daughter's wedding. Hrithik Roshan succeeds in pumping sizzle into a predictable role.

Kareena looks terrific but is far more appealing in the sensitive moments (especially in the quieter, tear-stained close-ups), than in the lighter moments where she gushes like a freshly sprung geyser and swivels her hips to Malik's music.
In fact, except for the feelingly-rendered title song, Anu Malik's music lacks his famed flourish. As a director, Ghai's flair for shot compositions strengthens with each new film; but as a writer he is still too beholden to heart-tugging but formulaic fare. Though this feel-good fare of questionable script quality may attract audiences out for a lark, if you are looking for something memorable, you will have to really glean through Yaadein.

By Dinesh Raheja