Fanaa (2006)

Lack of good storyline.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Fanaa was a commercial success upon its release a little less than a decade ago. It was Kajol's well-awaited comeback to movies after a five-year hiatus, and that's how it was mainly promoted. It was the first movie in which Kajol and Aamir Khan where pitted against each other, and sadly nothing between the two of them really works. There's little chemistry, little understanding, and the relationship is left to the big songs. In the end we are left with a story so feeble and uninteresting that one would wonder why the hack an actress of her caliber chose it. Fanaa is one of those pretentious potboilers which want to be seen as poetic but then they have so little to offer on their own. The story is melodramatic and unconvincing, and all the tough job is given to Kajol, of whom naturally so much was expected. And thankfully, she doesn't disappoint. Even within the limits of a weak script (and a badly written role), Kajol rises above it to deliver a heartfelt, fully complete performance. There's something about this lady - she comes across extremely real and does so little to convey big emotions. She is always relatable, and never a star. This movie really shows why this natural actress is one of the most popular in the country and appeals so much to the masses. And then we have Mr. Khan, who suddenly looks overly jaded and old, and the terrorist part of his character was so amusingly amateurish and poorly done that no one would take this nonsense character seriously anyway. Fanaa has nice music and no story, it also wastes the talent of Tabu, Rishi Kapoor and Kirron Kher. In the end, Kunal Kohli, who was responsible for the wonderful Hum Tum, disappoints big time with this silly, silly film.

'Fanaa' is at best worth one watch.But, what makes 'Fanaa' watchable is Aamir Khan and Kajol, both of who rise above the limitations of the script and show glimpses of their histrionic genius. But the movie offers nothing stellar, nothing extraordinary The main fault of 'Fanaa' happens to be its script. The shayari in the first half is a bit overdone. Even the dialogues are a bit too filmi than real. And in the second half, the lines given to Kajol's son are poorly written, ineffective and lack subtlety. Kunal Kohli has not been able to extract a performance out of the child artist and most of the sequences involving him end up looking superficial.Kajol's performance is particularly superb.Aamir, as expected, delivers a noteworthy performance. On the sidelines, Kiron Kher and Rishi Kapoor are natural. Tabu's dialogue delivery has a hint of her Hyderabadi background, and that is a downer. Lara Dutta and Shiny Ahuja appear in cameos of few seconds.

The second half of this movie seems to be largely inspired by "Eye of the Needle" which I had watched twenty years back. It starred Donald Sutherland. "Eye of the Needle" has the backdrop of World War II. A German spy gets marooned on a desolate British island colony, probably Gibraltar. He falls in love with a woman who stays on the island with her crippled husband and their son. She too falls for the hero. When she learns about the hero being a spy she mercilessly shoots him. The tag-line of the movie ran like 'it is easy to love an enemy but difficult to kill a lover' (not verbatim). Replace the island by Kashmir made inaccessible in winter. Replace the German spy by lost husband terrorist. Crippled husband by alcoholic father. Presto, you get "Fanaa".The story writer (who won a Filmfare award for this movie!) owes us an explanation.

Fanaa had a lot of marketing hype - the reclusive Aamir paired with Kaajol on a comeback. Music which was blared repeatedly out of various channels and the neighborhood paanwala and your obnoxious auto driver and the yuppies whose car would blare out 'subahnalla' which is the defining song in the movie. The terrorist who falls in love or the love story of a terrorist had good potential - instead it becomes just another Hollywood pot boiler whose basic idea - a Lone Wolf Killer-cum-terrorist on the prowl who falls in love - is A DIRECT COPY OF 'THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE'. In fact Rishi Kapoor's death scene and the subsequent scene are shot by shot copies.Picture this : Kajol has just seen the dead body of her father and rushes to Aamir who blithely lies that her father is drinking with his buddy Satish Shah. This is a direct copy of Donald Sutherland's Needle telling Kate Nelligan's Lucy that her husband David (Christopher Cazenove) is drunk - just when Lucy has picked out David's dead body. This seems to be too obviously the long arm of co-incidence. Sharad Saxena and Tabu are a combined duo equivalent of Ian Bannen's Colonel Godliman who are chasing Rehan/ The Needle.So whats good? Obviously the superb performances by Aamir Khan and Kajol as star crossed lovers caught in events not of their making. Rishi Kapoor is also superb as Kajol's father - here is an actor whose subtle performance was not drawn out in his heydays as he was usually typecast as the guitar toting singing teenager. These three performances redeem the otherwise dismal movie which would have sunk without a trace . Not to speak of needless controversies promoted by the fascist Right Wing against the movie in Gujarat.