Jodha Akbar at Mayajaal

Last weekend went to Jodha-Akbar ... I first saw the trailer at Sathyam (during TZP ... what a movie). What struck me was the grandeur and camera work.

I reached the movie hall 3 mins late (thanks to Chennai traffic and my smart planning :). When I entered the theatre (Screen 8?!) Amitabh was narrating ... and probably helping reduce the movie length by 30 mins.

After few mins of narration, gyan session by Byram Khan (Yuri is impressive) to young Jalaluddin Mohammad and beheading of Hemu Hrithik enters. Then couple of frames later enter Aishwarya with a "kathi chandai" scene. Sonu Sood looks refined as Soojamal. All goes ok ... but you can't ignore the jarring music by Rahman. There are many scenes where the back-ground score is heavier than required. Hrithik and Aishwarya look pretty ... the casting is good and Ravi Dewan has worked hard with the actions scenes. The elephant taming scene looks impressive (I guess Akbarnama refers to Akbar taming elephants ... don't know if this was all true).

How Akbar becomes the king of the masses is not very well depicted ... it'd have taken atlest 30 mins more to have established this more firmly.

In a nutshell:
Positives:
+ Performance by Second line actors: Kulbushan Karbandha, Ila Arun, Nikitin Dheer (he's the son of Pankaj Dheer - Karna of BR Chopra's Mahabharatha)
+ Exotic Locales
+ Great Cinematography by Kiran Deohans
+ Costumes & jewellery (my wife kept emoting throughout the movie :)

Negatives:
- Background score - Play back ... All three singers at Khwaja Moinuddin Darga sound like A. R. Rahman (he was cutting cost perhaps)
- Very heavy background score
- Artificial choreography in some songs ... not very realistic for a period movie (very slick and well choreographed bollywood type sequences)

The length of the movie wasn't much of a concern ... as the director is successful in keeping the narration taut. The filming of war scenes are ok ... but if you might have watched LOTR series ... these hardly have any impact. Still a commendable effort. Summing it up - Ashu ... try harder Rahman ... not so hard .. :)