Jodhaa Akbar

Yawn Jodha Akbar zzzzzz

What an absolutely horrible movie!!!!  What an incredible buildup in marketing and absolutely pssstt… no delivery at ALL!!!

Hrithik Roshan as Akbar – tanked so bad, he couldn’t have been worst cast in that role.  That simply was NOT his role to do.  The guy comes across as this nice, sort of guy all caring and compassionate and whatnot.  This is Akbar – for crying out loud!  Mughal emperor, king of intrigues, warrior, politician.  It would be impossible for him to be Akbar without having at least a few evil moments.  Hrithik plays him like he was a warrior-monk!!!  You can practically see the halo around him.

Aish has one look – sort of a wide eyed – I-am-so-fakely-innocent – she doesn’t manage to snap out of that look even once.  Not once does the glazed look in her eyes disappear.  When I saw Guru, I thought, could she possibly be more dead if she tried?  She responded lethargically here by playing MORE dead!!!  You are JODHA AKBAR for crying out loud.  Freaking title role in a blockbuster movie, could you possibly show an emotion or two?  Apparently NOT!

The movie actually starts off on a promising note on a war scene that appears to be well shot for like 10 seconds.  Then deteriorates from there.  It goes downhill so surprisingly fast, that by the end of the first ½ hour, you know you are gonna be bored outta your mind.  Then you fall asleep after an hour, wake up due the cacophony of some really BAD music.  Throw popcorn at the screen hoping to shut the suckers up.  But alas!!! It continues to drag, and Drag and DRRRRAAAAGGGG for a full 3.5 hours.

At the end of the movie, you walk out feeling all refreshed from your cat naps that you are bound to take through the movie.

Lets follow the story line (at least those parts for which I was awake) .  Akbar is portrayed as a sissy-boy who stands at the sidelines looking all pained and harassed as various wars are fought and extras are fakely dying around him.  Then he fires his most loyal general for being too bloody and begins a reign of fake-mercy.  I say fake-mercy, because he’s still sending threatening letters to all and sundry kings to merge with his kingdom else he will annihilate them.  If he really was all that saintly, why the hell didn’t he stop threatening the kings?

So one of the kings being threatened is Jodha’s daddy.  When he tries to make peace with Akbar, the other Rajput kings break off relationship with him.  Which includes the breaking of Jodha’s engagement.  Apparently, she’s heartbroken – or so we learn later from her daddy.  The director probably couldn’t get her to play the emotion of heart-broken so decided not to show us that directly.  Anyway, so daddy-dearest visits with Akbar who happens to be dancing with an elephant at the time.  Yea an actual elephant – whatever… too boring to elaborate.  Daddy presents the marriage proposal, Akbar says he’ll think about it.  Whaaaat???!!!!

Then Akbar goes off to pray at the Ajmer Sharif and there is some quasi-political-religious thingie that happens that convinces him to accept the marriage proposal.  Then apparently, and I didn’t quite understand why, but both parties – the bride and the groom parties decide to trek out in the middle of the desert for the marriage ceremonies!!!  They setup huge tents there – bride gets the red tent, groom gets the green tent and everyone else is in white tents.  Awwww… it looked chooo pretty. 

Then the bride-to-be in the middle of the desert, sitting alone in her red tent, suddenly wakes up to the fact that she’s marrying someone outside her religion.  Has a controlled little fit of sorts with all proper decorum and princessy language, and summons Akbar to her tent.  He saunters over just like that.  She wants assurance that she can continue to be Hindu and keep her temple.  He comes out with great fanfare and fake rage and then just capitulates while calling her a cool babe or something like that in mughal-term equivalents.  I think he meant to call her ice maiden, but nice guy that he is, he ended up calling her cool babe.

So they proceed with the dual wedding ceremonies followed by the one and only good song of the movie.  It was a soulful sufi number that could have been better.  But it was probably better than the rest, so I’d say not bad.  Somewhere during the song, Akbar has some kind of enlightened moment and starts dancing with the Sufis.  That was sorta cool.

Then comes the wedding night, when the bride cold-shoulders the groom and you kinda go… whaaaaa???!!!  So nothing hot happens and he goes off to sleep by himself… yea right!  Anyway, he takes off in the morning and then she follows at leisure at some point.

Finally, she ends up at the palace and is introduced to the in-laws.  All are really good to her with the exception of one villainess.  So then starts the most boring part of the movie – which goes on and on and on for an eternity.  Nothing of interest actually happens.  Hrithik strips down and dances with a sword in front of Aish to impress her.  She’s dutifully impressed.  She takes over the kitchen and cooks to impress him.  He’s dutifully impressed.  Ho humm *yaaawwwwwmmmss*

Then some palace intrigue happens and creates distrust in Akbar’s mind.  In the middle of all that courtship and whatnot, he just shuts down and kicks her back to daddy.  She goes off quietly without a fight or anything.  Then he figures out what’s what, and goes to bring her back.  She’s supposed to be angry.  We know this because the other characters in the movie (including Hrithik) are telling her not to be so angry.  But you don’t actually ever see her being angry.  You’re just supposed to believe what the others are saying while she looks all dazed and glazed and heavily made-up.

Then Hrithik tries to win her over with a sword fight.  He wins the fight, but she reneges and refuses to go back with him.  At this point, you wanna walk upto the screen and congratulate him on getting rid of her.  I mean, if as viewers we were so bored with her, can you imagine actually living with a plastic doll like that?!  But Hrithik is such a nice guy, he says to her something along the lines of “I know you’ll come to me because I will win your heart.” And then he leaves.  Whaaat?!!!! 

Then Akbar does some field research and launches a marketing campaign to improve his image.  Campaign is wildly successful, proving once and for all, how Paris Hilton got to be successful.  In fact, the marketing campaign is so successful, it brings Jodha back home without Akbar having to do anything more to win her heart!!!

Then after a failed assassination attempt, they finally get it together.  There is this totally fake romantic scene where two very beautiful people who are absolutely aware of their own beauty and careful not to smudge each other’s makeup and camera angles, somehow manage to indulge in a fake make-out session that wouldn’t fool a two-year-old-kid.

Then some more family politics happens, which gives Akbar a chance to appear even more merciful and somehow a little stupid while Jodha rides all over the place (away from the action scene) quite pointlessly.  But she manages to turn up at the right place in the end when she stands around looking pretty and confused as Hrithik and a supporting actor battle out one-on-one the right to be emperor of Hindustan!!!  As if!!!!!!

And that’s the end… of the movie… mercifully.

Wow… how boring was that!!!

Seriously, I wouldn’t even recommend that you watch it on DVD.  Definitely, not worth the time.  Even AR Rehman gave up on it, the music was so terrible.  I wouldn’t have believed it was AR Rehman’s but I actually saw the credit given to him onscreen.

Sucked!