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.
