Shabd

Trying hard to like Leena Yadav's debut film 'Shabd', you sit thru the entire feature in eager anticipation of a/the/any magic moment. But ...

Although the premise was novel, the buildup was not. One sex scene does not compensate for the lack of sexual chemistry between the leading pair. The Booker-prize winning author is trying so hard to come up with an authentic story for his next novel that he goes and casts his own wife as her rebellious alter-ego, easily falling for the 'forbidden fruit'. Shaukat Vashist requests, goads, almost forces his wife Antara to initiate an illicit relationship to help him craft a leading character in his next novel. When the 'truth' becomes stranger than his bookish 'fiction', and Antara meets and eventually falls for a dashing (yea, no less) young colleague, Mr Novelist is quite unable to handle it. But he saves the best, a one-page ending, for last.

We are not led to believe that the entire thing is the writer's fertile imagination gone awry. Evidently Yash's character is real (witness the college peon asking Shaukat if he had any message for Yash, etc) and so is the romance that ensues between Yash and the writer's wife Antra. In the end, it appears the writer of "Shabd" was herself so confused about the interactions between her characters (there were only 3!) that she couldn't figure out how to end the characters or the movie!! The performance by Sanjay Dutt was the saving grace of this film. Zayed Khan is miscast as the college professor and lacks acting skills. Aish tries hard but her dialogs are so mushy; could have used some zing.

The writer of this review believes that the writer of this movie should have worked harder on the writer in her movie.

I said that I was going to re-post after I watched the movie and restate if my feelings still remains. I watched the movie today and it was okay. My expectations weren't too high for this movie, and the movie wasn't as bad as I read it would be. The main thing that took me off is Zayed Khan as Yash. I think his acting did not fit well and there was no connection or chemistry between him and Aishwarya (he also doesn't look well on screen with Aishwarya). He was just wrongly casted for the part or maybe he just didn't do justice. Even after Tamara told Yash she was married, I didn't have any type of affection or remorse towards Yash or Tamara and Yash's relationship (I think I was more happy that she told him to just Yash out of the picture)--it was just blend. The humor was confusing (yash humor especially) and not funny. I know when I re-watch this movie, I would forward through it.

Another thing is the intro of the movie and the actors. I don't think it captured the audience as much as it should have. Again, when Yash was introduced I found him rather annoying. Aishwarya and Sanjay's acting abilities did not fall short especially towards the ending. Sanjay played well as a confused writer who got fiction and reality confused and Aishwarya as the victim in Shaukat's fiction and reality.

The art in this film is also very good and beautiful. Overall, this movie has the potential to be a really good film with some changes; unfortunately, it fell short with the blend acting, chemistry, lack to carry out the concept story, and lack to get the audience interested with the characters.

7.5 out of 10 mainly for some direction and art concept of the movie. I appreciate Aishwarya more in films such as Raincoat, Chokher Bali, HDDCS, and Devdas.

The director Leena Yadav is falsely imprisoned in her aura that she is Stanley Kubrick re-incarnate. Its obvious that Sanju and Ash have signed the dotted line without reading the script and the director should be lauded for making mickey out of them.

The script does not have holes - it has craters. And in terms of execution - it makes you feel that at the end of every shooting schedule the director goes into hibernation and forgets where she left off.

Our writer uses still uses type-writer for drafting his stories, which cleverly signifies the power outages in India. And did I tell you that our writer is suit-fetish? How does it justify the writer being recipient of Booker's prize award when he at loss to delve into the psyche of a woman for his forthcoming novel? Taking too many liberties of Booker's prize eh? (Culprit: Baghbaan!).

It is evident that Ash lacks conviction owing to her Hollywood assignments. Sanju's monologues gets on the nerves. Zayed Khan as a professor. Excuse Me! Bollywood badly needs a dedicated casting dept. Let me re-iterate here that Zayed does not even pretend making wee-bit of effort. It re-enforces my opinion that "star-kids are pampered lot".

And please help me decide which one was worst - chemistry between Sanju and Ash or Zayed and Ash.

Sadiya is only saving grace to the film and does her role with conviction.

Avoid at all costs!

Just came back watching the movie and I should say it beautifully portrays the mind of a writer. The way he thinks when writing a novel and things he goes through. It really happens when you're writing some stories and get so deep inside the thoughts that you don't realize what the truth is.

Sanjay Dutt and Aishwarya Rai pair's up really nice. Things would have been much better if Zayed Khan wouldn't have been the part of this story. You surely wanted a more dedicated and good performer like Saif Ali Khan or Hritik Roshan.

Overall, I would rate this film as 7 out of 10 and would encourage an applause from the audience.

My initial impression about this movie was that it would be yet another love story( which i hate so much i can't tell you ), but still decided to watch it as i didn't get the tickets for 'Black'. But i'll say that this movie is different and that was the precise reason, i liked it. The movie is all about an author Shaukat ( Sanjay Dutt ), a very complicated character played brilliantly by Sanju. He is a booker-prize winner author whose last book was discarded by all for being very 'unreal'. So after a gap of 2 years, he decides to write a 'real' story.... I won't go into much details of his adventure...he asks her wife(aishwarya) to have a romantic relationship with a younger guy(Zayed), and he writes on the events taking place in their lives ... he tries to dictate the scenarios....tries to predict everything that will happen in their lives just as he predicts the fate of the characters in his book... Sanjay Dutt has given a great performance...aish is looking beautiful..and zayed is as always average... One thing that i didn't like about this movie is that the actors were crying a lot more that was expected/necessary in the situations....anyway, a good movie by a debutant director...