Movie Review: Mausam (Hindi) 139

The promos of ?Mausam? seemed reasonably promising. It had been a long time since there was a film that had a simple-sweet romantic theme as it core sans metropolitan complexities. They had ruled the box office in the 90?s, and were a rare breed now. And this one failed to break the trend and this ?Mausam? ran into bad weather. Replete with every cinematic cliché around, the film is acutally a thesis on Bollywood clichés.

The film begins in the early 1990?s in a Punjabi village with the usual clichés of mustard fields and the mandatory celebratory song and dance numbers. It is here that our local boy Harry (Shahid Kapoor) meets Aayat (Sonam Kapoor) who has just arrived from Kashmir seeking refuge with a relative there. Soon, love blossoms with not many words being exchanged but by passing love notes; old school romance, you see!

Within days, Harry expresses his love for her. Just when you wonder about what?s going to happen next, Aayat disappears from the village without a trace and without answering his question. Cut to 7 years later in Scotland by when Harry is an Air Force Pilot and Aayat is an aspiring Ballerina and the latter?s family has been affected in 1992 Babri demolition and 1993 Mumbai riots. The couple rekindles their love.

Now that the two are together, you atleast hope for an interval, but the audience has no luck yet. There?s more! This time Harry disappers from the scene for the 1999 Kargil war and becomes disabled. The two lose contact yet again. The tragedies don?t just end there. There?s the 2011 WTC attack and the 2002 Gujrat riots too. Strangely, Aayat has the uncanny ability to find herself in every conflict around the globe.

As they meet and go apart umpteen times, strangely, they are unable to reach one another although they have the telephone numbers of those they know in common. The film can use the alibi that the story predates Facebook or Orkut. And during the process, the film feels to go on forever, or will it end at all? Granted, there are some songs that help it, but the pain of sitting through this film is simply traumatic.

The clichés just don?t end there. For a happy ending, the hero has to single-handedly fight hordes of villains and save the damsel in distress. And when he is done with it, he saves a child stuck on a ferris-wheel and regains his disabled hand! And lo, there is a white horse on the scene that also needs to be saved. In the end, the two are united and start a family with the ferris-wheel kid and the horse tags along too.

Although set in the 90s, it may have worked better in the Black and White era. Probably Shahid?s father Pankaj Kapur?s wet dream to make a romance flick since his childhood but could manage the money only now. Obviously, the clichés in this film don?t work anymore now. I?m not saying that clichés don?t work; only the formula has changed. Those that work are more of the likes of ?Ready? or a ?Singham?. Keep Out!

Rating 2/10: Probably the year?s worst Bollywood movie