Guru Mahaaguru

I purchased and invested two hours of my time and made this film the first Bollywood film to watch in almost two weeks and was thoroughly disappointed. I still have no idea how so many IMDb viewers could give this drivel a 10. It makes me wonder if I am going to have similar experiences with other highly rated IMDb Bollywood films.

As much as I love most of Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah's work, they were really slumming on this one. The rest of the cast was OK. Watch Maqbool if you want to see them in a much better vehicle together. The story was disjointed, predictable, frequently lost it's way and the ending seemed almost tacked on. The comedy attempts were lame and only seemed to drag the film along more. The music was nothing to write home about with the best two songs being rip offs of great songs from Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Kureukshetra and not nearly as good. I also cringed every time the cheesy cutesy music came on when a character was unsuccessfully trying to do or say something funny. Car chases were overdone, beyond over the top and completely improbable. The fight/action scenes, and there were many of them, were so bad they were comical although they tended to get boring after a while. They were bad even by Bollywood standards. The actors seemed to just go through the motions and there was little effort to make them seem even a little realistic. It was hard to believe that this film came out in 2001 because everything about it looked so dated. Guess I should have written this review before I voted because a "4" was being very generous.