Hello

Title: Hello

Vital Stats:
Director: Atul Agnihotri

Starring: Salman Khan (Plays no part at all), Katina Kaif (same as Salman), Sharman Joshi, Sohail Khan, Arbaaz Khan, Amrita Arora, Gul Panag, Dalip Tahil, Isha Koppikhar (yup there is "h" in her name), Suresh Menon, Sharat Saxena.


Plot: Based on Chetan Bhagat's novel "A night @ the call center" this movie is about a night in the life of 6 people who work in the same call center. These are Shyam (Sharman), Varun (Sohail), Millitary Uncle (Sharat), Esha (Isha), Radhika (Amrita) and Priyanka (Gul). Their boss is Bakshi (Dalip Tahil) who runs the call center. Though it becomes a bit confusing towards the end whether he "owns" the center or is simply an employee himself. This is a story about these 7 characters and a special night in thei lives where nothing is going right. Shyam is in love with Priyanka who is now marrying a NRI because she wanted money in her life, Radhika has her own issues so does millitary uncle. Varun loves Esha who is mad after modelling and can not enter a commitment because of her passion. This one night brings a lot of chaos in their lives that leave them all changed people by the morning. Cant reveal too much about the changes else I would have to include spoilers!


My Psychobabble: This movie has so much to owe to Drona. Had I not seen Drona last weekend I would have probably brought out the big guns and would have shot this to pieces. But since my experience with Drona (that I survived, Oh yeah!) I am now more tolerant to the limits to which the directors can really lose their mind without being locked up in a mental asylum or shot by execution squad or boiled in hot oil for making us suffer the torture of the farce that they called movie etc. etc.

So then how is the movie really? Let us put it this way it is tolerable if you are suffering one of those evenings when everything is going wrong and basically you don’t give shite. The movie alternates between insanely boring to simply insane to mildly interesting. The characters are mediocre, the script week, direction poor, situations unreal and the whole appeal a big fat zero. My biggest problem is with the script and the direction both of which were horrible.

That being said, Sharman Joshi still comes out tops and very surprisingly I saw Sohail Khan act and I did not get the urge to slap him right across the face! Sohail Khan by his previous standards was amazing and actually managed to get some expressions on his face that didn’t include twisting his face into weird shapes. Sharman Joshi as I have already said was fantastic. I especially loved the way he played his alter ego, a small red devil that pops up during the movie and instigates him to tap the phone of the girl he loves. Man that character was awesome! If nothing else I would say that that small part by Sharman Joshi as his alter ego was worth watching the whole movie.


All the other characters are completely and absolutely wasted with special emphasis on Dalip Tahil. It is OK to portray a character that is madly in love with U.S. and would do anything to get there but to make him do all the idiotic things that Dalip’s character does is frankly disgusting. And seriously who ever came up with Amrita Arora’s character? Whoever that was, one small advise, dude get off the Star Parivar news channel and Ekta Kapoor stuff and get a life!

Verdict: I haven’t read the original novel but my experience tells me that novels usually aren’t anything like the movies are. If you loved the novel then by all means go and watch this one as the movie is not very bad. It is just not very well directed. If you miss this one though trust me you wouldn’t have missed anything minutely significant.