As of May 31, 2005, 13 people have voted for "Chand Bujh Gaya." It has a weighted average of 9.9 and an arithmetic mean of 7.4. Nine people have given this a 10/10, two a 2/10 and another two a 1/10. I'm on the side of the nay-sayers for this movie. I hated it.
It had potential to be something special, at least in the early stages of pre-production. A film about the Godhra train burning was just what needed to come out of Bollywood, especially with the ever-increasing Western interest in Indian movies. Director Shariq Minhaj really messed up that opportunity with this film.
The story is average, especially for a Bollywood film. The popular themes one would find in Indian films (culture-clashes, tradition, star-crossed love) are all here. Minhaj thought that s/he would spice things up a little by making the main character an extremely annoying joker. S/he also put in this really weird part about these two twin brothers who have to tell their family's history because it's SO funny. (It's not.) Also, where there should have been serene silence, s/he either put in a boring and overlong musical number, or loud and cheesy music. Where there should have been little dialogue, s/he put too much.
This example is based on an actual exchange that occurred in the film:
(Two people are rushing to get to a car in order to find someone)
Person #1: "We must hurry."
Person #2: "I know, we don't have much time."
#1: "Come on."
#2: "Let's go."
(They finally leave.)
As if that weren't enough, the real problems start during production. Faisal Khan plays the annoying joker, a Hindu man-child who falls in love with a Muslim woman. He looks lost playing the joker, and only gets a real opportunity to display his apparently limited acting skills after the train firebombing. Shama Sikander doesn't ruin her performance, but that's because her character isn't that deep. Frankly, nobody's character is that deep. God bless him, they try as hard as they can, but their performances are either not enough or are overshadowed by the bad ones. Also, sometimes the characters aren't given enough time to be developed, such as some guy who was called "CM." Apparently, his in an important character, but it is introduced in the last twenty minutes of the movie. Oy ve.
The four musical numbers are not good. The first one is too long, although the dancing is decent. The other three consist of characters moving around in slow-motion as someone sings in the background. For all of these scenes, the music sucks. (Some of you may be thinking that I have something against Bollywood dance music. I don't. I happened to enjoy a lot of the song-and-dance numbers in "Sharabi" and "Ek Mahal Ho Sapno Ka.")
The cinematography is horrible. For about half the movie, important characters are left out of the shots. Sometimes, the man behind the camera tries to fix this by slowly moving the camera, but this just puts other people out of the shot. Again, oy ve.
Also, the last two minutes have to be the most drawn-out moments I've ever seen in a movie.
So, what don't I hate about the movie? The second unit scenes, particularly the train firebombing and the resultant riots. Sure, sometimes you can clearly see the protective gear that the stuntperson is wearing when s/he is set on fire. Sure, sometimes the extras who are running away from the rioters are smiling and look like they're having the time of their lives. But, this is a low-budget picture. The producers probably couldn't afford to do re-shoots, so they had to work with what they had. For the most part, the second unit director knew what s/he was doing, and most of his/her scenes worked.
Still, the vast majority of this movie was awful. I don't know what these nine voters who gave it a 10/10 were smoking, but it must've been pretty powerful. If you're like me and enjoy watching movies while you're sober, stay away from this one.
