Nazrana

Nazrana is a film wihch will be remembered for a powerhouse cast - Kaka, smita & sridevi.

Smita Patill has given a very matured performance as always. Sridevi also acts well but her action scenes are funny & totally unnecessary.

Rajesh khanna is probably the only star who has done many heroine oriented movies & yet manages to hold his own.

Music is passable & direction is ok.

Worth watching.

Superstar Rajesh Khanna teams with two titans Smita Patel and Sridevi Mistress-Servant is probably not the best way to portray Smita Patel and Sridevi but works out well

Priti Sapru deserves special mention for the way she acts as a vamp, separates Rajat and Mukta and how she hilariously shouts at Sridevi

Rajesh Khanna and Smita Patel show a good relationship as Rajat and Mukta and beautifully portray it on screen

The lead pair perform well Sridevi is laughable of how the way she beats the goons Shafi Inamdar is funny Dalip Tahil is average Iftekhar is passable Om Shivpuri is a little impressive Pinchoo Kapoor is OK

Over ten movies starring Smita Patil were released after her tragic death at the end of 1986. Nazrana is one of them, and that's something that prompted me to watch it. Despite the fact that it is quite a terrible film, I don't regret having watched it, the reason behind it being the presence of Patil in it. She was one of the finest female actors of Hindi cinema, and even here we can see it, because she did not let the awful, melodramatic script take away from the quality of her performance, and was thoroughly natural and convincing. Actually, her role in this film is not that bad - she plays a young, married but childless woman whose inability to conceive makes her insecure (how ironic, that's what actually in a way brought to her untimely death in real life) and how much more so upon finding about her husband's adultery: a coincidental one-time affair with her own servant. Patil displays the right emotions without being carried away by the film's whiny nature. In regard to the film itself, it really is a wasted chance, having a good story but a terribly exaggerated script with overdone emotions and dialogues, pathetic fantasy-like action sequences, and some really retarded characters.

The film also stars Sridevi, she looks smashing hot and again shows of her incredible dancing skills, but in contrast to Patil, where acting goes, she is at times let down by the script. That's because at first her character is introduced as a street-smart girl, who looks quite gentle but then can fight an army of thugs, making several somersaults, and ultimately defeat them all and remain without a pimple. These scenes were truly laughable and I almost decided to stop watching the film. There was no way for me to take Sridevi's portrayal seriously after watching them. Add to that the fact that her voice is dubbed in the film by some dubbing artist (those were the days when Sri was still working on her Hindi, her mother tongue being Tamil), and the authenticity of her performance is reduced, which is sad because she has also been able to rise above a poor script. Obviously you can forget everything once you get to see her gorgeous body and her astonishing dance performances, particularly her artistic and hot-blooded rain number for the song "Chan Chananan Paayal Bole". It's great to see her famous instant breaks into dance, like a cannon which was waiting for its explosion.

The leading hero of this film is Rajesh Khanna. I've never been a fan of his acting, and here he is painfully bad. Priti Sapru is very theatrical and unimpressive as the vamp. The courtroom scenes are as expected clichéd to the core, and the ending is particularly corny. Nazrana is a bad, forgettable film which has its few moments. It's mainly watchable for Smita Patil and to some extent Sridevi, so I say do not watch it unless you are a fan of Smita and would want to see her in one of her latest films, a fan of Sridevi, or a lover of soapy and over-the-top Hindi movies.

It is quite rare when two powerhouse performers, like Sridevi and Smita Patil who have such a different approach to acting, share screen in one film. However, it is a pity that this is wasted in a bad movie. If only there was a good director and writer who had cast them together. There is nothing wrong with the way the two perform. Actually, what 'Nazrana' really has going for it is Smita Patil and Sridevi. Ravi Tandon's direction is quite poor but this may be due to the terrible script he has got to work with.

Sridevi's character has to tan her skin in order to appear dark to protect herself from goons that are raping the young light-skinned women of the neighbourhood. It is understandable that such low-class goons won't even bother noticing a dark skinned woman (considering the cultural history where people are taught that light skin equals beauty and dark skin equals ugly).

But, what is most frustrating is when Rajesh Khanna's character, who is supposed to be this well educated agent, all of a sudden can't keep it in his pants when he discovers that Tulsi is actually light skinned. Watch his reaction in the scene where he watches Tulsi dance in the rain and the tan colour pour down her body revealing the real skin colour. Such retarded mentality is expected of lower class citizens but when an educated, well-cultured and sophisticated member of society acts like a humping dog, based on skin colour, that's going a little too far especially when this is presented as something normal and okay. Despite the poor characterization, Rajesh Khanna is terrible. There's a sequence where Sheetal points a gun towards him and his laughably bad response is proof enough. Oh and the songs are downright forgettable.

The best moments are the scenes between Sridevi, Smita Patil and Priti Sapru. It is a delight to watch Patil and Sridevi interact. Their on screen relationship is that of mistress and servant but not the conventional kind. There is a camaraderie between them that is disrupted when Rajat could no longer keep it in his pants. Both actresses are terrific and Smita proves yet again (against popular belief) that she can pull off a glamorous role. Priti Sapru deserves special mention as she effectively pulls off the role of a calculating and manipulative vamp.

I would recommend this movie only for the performances of the two lead actresses. Not very often does one get to see two such megatalents in the same screen space throughout most of the film and this is one of those movies, albeit a bad one, where the viewer at least has the joy of watching them perform together.

Nazrana review :

In the film, Rajesh Khanna playing a music composer, is some sort of Greek God cum Kaamdev mix who attracts every women he is even remotely associated with - first, Smita Patil who elopes to marry him, next Preeti Sapru who is his phoren returned colleague and dreams to become his wife no 2 and finally, Sridevi who is his housemaid but ends up in bed with her maalik in a particular weak moment. Ahem!!

Nazrana is filled with implausible situations, highly melodramatic scenes and heavy dialogues and Khanna, playing the irresistible hero, looks tired and dazed here. The film is only memorable for being Smita Patil's first posthumous release after her untimely death in December 1986.

Regards, Sumeet Nadkarni.