Darling (2007)

It is a performances centric movie

good back-story, and good acting

Fantastic!

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

Post RGV Sholay, I dreaded to watch another Film Factory product. With expectations pined below zero, I begun watching the movie.Should the ghosts and spirits movie necessarily scary? RGV seems to have been inspired by Shaun Of The Dead which was a horror flick loaded with comedy.Fardeen Khan's role is akin to Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya only more sleazy husband.Isha Koppikar doesn't have much scope as a doting housewife and obviously running on older version when it comes to matters behind the closed doors. Seriously if you put the jigsaw pieces together it reveals what RGV is fetish about! Eesha Deol gets the meaty pie and this time she dons the Urmila's role in Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya. Only more freer, vengeful and spirited.... literally and figuratively.Zakir Hussain (a RGV regular) gets it wrong completely this time – he irritates. And so does Kota Srinivas Rao, both the roles should have been chopped completely.Upendra Limaye role should have been given more depth. And her killer-looks assistant was hilarious.Background score adds to the eerie atmosphere.The RGV style of camera-work is predominant here. Thankfully not struck (permanently at least!) to heroine's back as in his earlier works. Seriously is the cinematographer partner in crime too? Last but not the least, stop the close-up camera work. We have had enough! Darling does invoke good laughs thanks to the efforts by the lead actors. Though the end is contrived.

Like his earlier movie "Bhoot", RGV exploits the idea of ghost in the background of a society which is apparently rational, doesn't believe in ghosts but believes in ghosts. The Bengali children's fiction writer Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay has exploited in many of his ghost novels for children the contradictory urban mindset which refuses to believe ghosts, but can't stop being afraid of it. In RGV's "Darling", the fear is coupled with the protagonist's helplessness where he knows that neither his wife nor a psychiatrist will believe that a ghost is troubling him. And that fear is spiced up with his consciousness of his guilt.Aditya's behaviour after the discovery that Gita has got slightly killed reminds one of RGV's controversial Telugu thriller "Madhyanam Hathhya" where the protagonist Ravi kills his suspicious wife equally accidentally and struggles to dispose off the mortal remains. The tension that followed, starting from the stone that sparks off Aditya's wheel, the axe that lands up in front of their door that doesn't puzzle Aswini and the cool questions of his perverted office mate makes one suspect that Gita didn't actually die. Maybe her pregnancy story was a prank, she hold an oxygen inhaling device in her underwear before she was carried to the grave and maybe Aditya's friend and wife are all aware of the events and are trying to collectively play a game with Aditya. A surprise. That belief was almost a conviction when Aditya and his kid could listen to the "bees saal baad" song, but Aswini said that she couldn't hear anything of that sort.After few minutes when we see Geeta again, as the ghost, we understand that RGV is going supernatural keeping the background rational. I didn't understand why the psychiatrist was shown in such a bad light. Srinivasa Rao Kota was a real bad choice for a psychiatrist, if RGV's aim was NOT to put the profession in bad light. Was he ever treated like this by a money-mongering psychiatrist when he needed some real help? Maybe. But it was a poor joke.For Esha as Geeta it was probably a remake of the 2006 Vikram Bhatt movie "Ankahee" where her character Kavya used to say, "This life is not working its time for a fresh start". So, the Darling "fresh start" wasn't that unpredictable.

Here the movie starts with the very good song. Then suddenly the story changes with the death of the heroine("I don't know how did she die just by pushing"). Fardeen khan then gets scared always and i doubt how come the police did not recognize when he is behaving in such a manner?K fine cut it out then comes the boring part of hero scaring for every thing and actually nothing is scary even i felt it sometimes to be a comedy movie. After first half Esha Deol comes as the spirit and at that time the movie catches some speed and we could see some interesting scenes and moments. The best part of the movie is the scene in the hospital in which Fardeen khan and his wife go to see his friend and there by the time he is lying Esha Deol beating him. She even beats his friend when he lies to help his friend. Overall the movie is not as good as RGV's Bhoot and not as worst as Ramu ki Aag.These points are only for Esha Deol who has done exceptionally well and Fardeen khan and Esha Kopikar have done a good job. All in all it's not a worst movie but it's not a good one either.

The movie starts out well, but around the middle part starts to falter. You realize that the director had a thread-bare plot which he tries to stretch out to the maximum, causing the film to feel begrudgingly slow.The performances are okay. Fardeen Khan does well as the man in over his head. Esha Deol was interesting and a convincingly good antagonist. Isha Koppikar, unfortunately, was not up to the mark. Fardeen's friend, Sameer, had an interesting role, but it feels like his role was chopped up at the editing table.The two police characters - Bhaskar Reddy and Malti - were terrific every time they were on screen. He the talkative one, she the stone-faced silent one.I wasn't exactly bored by the film, but I was aware of the slow pace.